Here’s a helpful blog post tailored for actors, students, or theater lovers looking to understand and perform the “Lungs” monologue by Duncan Macmillan.
In Duncan Macmillan's play , monologues typically highlight the character "W" (the Woman) and her rapid-fire, anxiety-driven exploration of environmental ethics, modern relationships, and the prospect of motherhood. Unlike traditional plays, Lungs is performed on a bare stage without props or costume changes, forcing the dialogue—often delivered in short, choppy, and overlapping sentences—to carry the entire weight of the narrative's time jumps. Key Monologues in Lungs
Macmillan’s stage directions often imply that there is no pause for thought. The monologue mimics a panic attack. When W speaks, she is gasping for air, hyperventilating through the logic of her argument. The text forces the actor to find the rhythm in the run-on sentences, creating a crescendo of neurosis that mirrors the feeling of being suffocated by the world's problems.
If you’ve been assigned the male monologue from Duncan Macmillan’s Lungs , you already know it’s deceptively simple. Two characters (W and M), no set, no props, just two people in a bare space navigating a high-stakes conversation about having a child. But the monologue often referred to as the “I’m not a bad person” speech (M’s breakdown in the middle of the play) is a beast of anxiety, love, and eco-guilt.
: This monologue explores the "eco-anxiety" central to the play. W calculates that a child represents 10,000 tonnes of CO2—the weight of the Eiffel Tower—concluding that she would effectively be "giving birth to the Eiffel Tower" in an overpopulated, "rotten" world.
