MONOLOGUES! (And Writing Them)

Reading each play was a bit of a weird experience for me. "Ironic" isn't quite the right word, but I think it's close to the kind of sense I got.
I read The New Orleans Monologues first, and it really showed me what I do in my own writing (or, what I did the last time I tried to write a play) -- too much character development. That's not to say that the plays had too much, it's just that's the major thing they're all really good at portraying. It seems like it's easier to get into a character when it's just a monologue rather than a play. (Uh-oh, now look at me, I'm already saying "just" a monologue...)
You know, sometimes, with a play, you can feel like you're really there. Or, at least, that you could have been. With the monologue-formatted story (Okay, it's time for me to hit "copy" on monologue so I don't keep having to re-type it.), you get a lot of emotion, and it can be powerful, but it doesn't feel like it quite... means as much? I guess what I'm trying to say is while monologues are nice, I'm trying to boil it down to that whole "show, don't tell" mantra -- all the monologues are doing is telling you. In that sense, it's almost better to read the plays than to see them, because then you can make sure you get the most out of the story (even if you lack some of the emotion that might be present in a performance), which is the overarching feeling I got out of The Laramie Project's excerpts.
Who knows; I might just think this way because I haven't seen either of the former performed ever.
And now, I get to show you how un-cultured I am. :P I've only seen The Vagina Monologues here, and I was going to say it ruined it for me (Still not a good performance, though. You can't cast EVERYONE. One monologue should not be split up between five people. I mean, people make memorizing easier by cutting down lines, but this is ridiculous; everyone only says, like, two sentences.), but after reading it, I really can honestly say I just don't want to read about puffy vaginas, I don't want to imagine that obnoxious Jewish Queens accent (because I always think of that woman on Seinfeld that always says "You gotta see the bay-bee!"), and I don't want to hear about a "connoisseur" of vaginas. Don't get me wrong, I like vaginas, but I don't need to, like...
...Never mind. All I'm saying is, sure, writing's fine, but to have something just for the sake of having it and trying to make people uncomfortable and then be all, "Oh, but it's so great! Embrace weirdness/yourself/vaginas/it's a social experiment!" and all that crap is just annoying.

But, okay, yeah, writing. I feel like I've been fairly critical, but I do have a lot of respect for monologues. They're hard as hell to write. I've only really ever written one that I've liked, and that was luck-of-the-moment inspiration. From an acting standpoint, though, they're not *that* tough, I just suck at memorization, so they're a bit difficult for me, at first. :P
And, these plays are not necessarily bad plays, by any means. They're good. I think I would like NOM, and be blown away by LP, if it were done right. I liked the consistent narrator in NOM, but the other characters seemed a bit out of place at times. LP was certainly more polished with all its' characters, but that could also be attributed to our copy of the former being a draft script.

So, what did we learn, kids? I liked the narration, I really like the character development (I'm a big fan of that, sometimes too big. Haha), monologues are indeed impressive and hard to write, but... Not my thing. I want dialogue to do all the work for me, yes, and all these plays gave me a really good window into natural language, but this format probably isn't for me.

ADDENDUM:
EDIT: I added annotations to the video. Heh