Talk-show confessions, online rants, stand-up routines, inspirational speeches, banal reflections and calls to arms: we live in an age of solo voices demanding to be heard. In The Contemporary American Monologue Eddie Paterson looks at the pioneering work of US artists Spalding Gray, Laurie Anderson, Anna Deavere Smith and Karen Finley, and the development of solo performance in the US as a method of cultural and political critique. Ironic confession, post-punk poetry, investigations of race and violence, and subversive polemic, this book reveals the link between the rise of radical monologue in the late 20th century and history of speechmaking, politics, civil rights, individual freedom and the American Dream in the United States. It shows how US artists are speaking back to the cultural, political and economic forces that shape the world. Eddie Paterson traces the importance of the monologue in Shakespeare, Brecht, Beckett, Chekov, Pinter, O'Neill and Williams, before offering a comprehensive analysis of several of the most influential and innovative American practitioners of monologue performance. The Contemporary American Monologue constitutes the first book-length account of US monologists that links the tradition of oratory and speechmaking in the colony to the appearance of solo performance as a distinctly American phenomenon.

Audition monologues for male characters selected from recent works by American playwrights including Tony Kushner, Jon Robin Baitz, Constance Congdon, Paula Vogel, Donald Margulies, Emily Mann, Eric Bogosian, Nicky Silver, and others. Unique to the TCG monologue series is a bibliography of other works by the playwrights included.

Audition monologues for female characters selected from recent works by American playwrights including Tony Kushner, Jon Robin Baitz, Constance Congdon, Paula Vogel, Donald Margulies, Emily Mann, Eric Bogosian, Nicky Silver, and others. Unique to the TCG monologue series is a bibliography of other works by the playwrights included.

The dramatic trilogy has been flourishing for some time now in new works and revivals of older works by American, British, and European playwrights. This book analyzes recent American works by Caucasian, African American, Asian American, and Hispanic American men and women. There are five chapters beginning with Opposing Families (trilogies of, e.g., Lanford Wilson, Foote, Machado, and McCraney are examined). Carson, Rabe, and McLaughlin are among those in the Classical Reimaginings chapter while Coen, Berc, and Wolfe constitute the Medieval Reimaginings chapter. Van Itallie, Havis, Rapp, and Hwang, among others, create New Forms. LaBute, Fierstein, and Nelson, among others, create New Selves. The concluding chapter is devoted to Ruhl's Passion Play, which spans 400 years of theatre-creating from Elizabethan England to Hitler's Germany to the Reagan era in America.

This reference contains alphabetically arranged entries on nearly 70 American women poets who published significant works after WWII. Each entry consists of four sections: Biography, Major Works and Themes, Critical Reception, and Bibliography (both primary and secondary). Those profiled include well-known poets such as Maya Angelou and Sylvia Plath as well as those who are only beginning to attract the interest of critics. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Preparing for an audition and unsure of what you want to do?The Ultimate Scene and Monologue Sourcebookis the book you've been waiting for. Unlike “scene books” that reprint 50 to 75 monologues excerpted from plays but don't include any background information, this annotated guide tells you what you really need to know about audition material from more than 300 contemporary plays. Here is how the book works. Suppose that you're looking for a dramatic male/female scene. When you scan “Part One: Play Synopses and Analyses,” you come across an entry forThe Middle of the Nightby Paddy Chayefsky. This is what you see: The Middle of the Night by Paddy Chayefsky (Samuel French) Synopsis: A kindly 53-year-old widower falls in love with a 23-year-old woman who is unhappily married to a musician. No one in their circle of acquaintances approves of this union, but their love is true. Analysis: Excellent human drama, frequently touching. Actors who play the widower need to have a good feel for New York City/Brooklyn speech patterns. This sensitivity isn't as essential for the part of the woman. All levels. Scenes/Monologues: Male Monologues (1), Female/Female Scenes (1), Male/Female Scenes (2) In addition to basic information about the play (author and publisher), the entry provides you with the story line, a critique of the play, and the number of audition-worthy monologues and scenes it contains. If the description of this particular play piques your interest, your next step is to turn to “Part Six: Male/Female Scenes” for specifics about the selection. This is what you'll see there: The Middle of the Night by Paddy Chayefsky (Samuel French) Drama: Act II, Scene 2, pp. 40-44; The Manufacturer (53) and The (23). After an unsatisfactory attempt at lovemaking, The Manufacturer feels awful that he wasn’t able to perform ually. The is very understanding. He then asks her to marry him. The actor playing The Manufacturer must have a good feel for regional New York speech patterns. This skill is less critical for the actress playing The . Start, The Manufacturer: “I’m sorry, Betty.” End, The Manufacturer: “Oh, my sweet , I love you so much you don’t know. If you change your mind tomorrow, I won’t be angry with you. I won’t lie to you, Betty. I’m afraid.” This entry tells you what type of scene this is (dramatic), where you'll find the selection (act, scene, and page numbers), the length of the scene, the names and ages of the characters, the context in which the characters are speaking, and the first and last lines of the scene. If the material seems appropriate, all you have to do is get a copy of the play and get to work. BecauseThe Ultimate Scene and Monologue Sourcebookenables you to make informed decisions about the suitability of more than 1,000 monologues and scenes-which you can find easily through the book's extensive cross indexes—you’ll gain a critical edge in the auditioning process.