Customer Reviews

The Actor's Book of Classical Monologues: More Than 150 selections From the golden Age of Greek Drama Age the Age of shakespeare The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century

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I love this book. I grew up on the classics. Every summer, from age nine onward, I spent all my days in rehearsals in Shakespeare plays -- starting with walk-on bit-parts: messengers and pages with one-liners and moving up to lead roles as I absorbed Shakespeares words into my being without noticing it.

What Rudnicki does for actors is make the classics accessible to modern actors. He categorizes by period and genre (Greek Drama [The Golden Age], the Age of Shakespeare [and his friends], and the Age of Style [Restoration and 18th Century English monologues]) and divides into male and female monologues, as well as drama, comedy, tragedy, heroic, parody, etc., AND THEN, not only does he give short synopses of each play and play background, but short historical introductions to the periods. And finally, the selections themselves are superb. They plumb every human emotion -- but Rudnicki has made these so accessible, he has used excellent translations for the Greeks and put line breaks into each monologue in such a natural way that every one of them feels more real, contemporary, and accessible.

The translations from the Greek are by Barton and Cavandar, who themselves contributed greatly by developing their own versions (not just translations, but interpretations) over a period of time, working with an ensemble group of dedicated actors. They are exquisite -- and feel like true words spoken not thousands of years ago, but now, today, about our lives here.

Many acting students are afraid of the classics -- afraid of the Greeks or Shakespeare. Rudnicki's book should remove any fears students may have -- and for new and seasoned actors, will provide a wealth of material to use for auditions.

Along with Ginger Friedman's book "The Perfect Monologue," I use Rudnicki's work to help students learn how to identify what I call "universal drives." (See my book "Archetypes for Writers: Using the Power of Your Subconscious," availabe here on Amazon.)

I keep this book handy as a reference book for auditions. This is especially good if you audition for classical pieces, and need two classical monologues. I also own the WOMEN'S MONOLOGUES book by Rudnicki and have used that, too. Both are good sources for auditions.