Customer Reviews

Creating Your Own Monologue

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I take acting lessons in a group acting course and this book Creating Your Own Monologue, not only helped me with my own acting but the class and coach was thrilled that I had brought it in because using this book helped all of us to improve our work tremendously .

I feel that this book is the most helpful book I've ever read about monologues. Mr. Alterman ABSOLUTELY knows his subject! I have written 5 wonderful monologues due to this brilliant book. Every step was so clear. The interviews were also quite wonderful!

After years of looking all over for that "perfect" monologue I finally bought Mr. Alterman's book. It was a god-send. I actually wrote a WONDERFUL monologue due to this book. I now write monologues all the time and they get a terrific response! This book is really an actors dream Try it, you'll see. It's really a totally empowering book for actors!

This book contains two parts. The first part tells you how to write a monologue. The second is a compilation of interviews with one-person show actors and actresses. It is the second part I find most informative where each artist tells what this type of performance means to him. One artist describes it as theatre where the audience is part of the cast. Very true. But I find the monologue writing part of the book useless. Nothing I don't already know. The monologues included in the book are not much better.

I've read a lot of how-to- books on writing a monologue for yourself but this one really hit the nail on the head. I've written about 8 monologues since reading this book and am about to start writing my own solo show. Every detail on writing for yourself is here-- THE BEST!

This book will not help you write monologues. It has only a few, very vague tips on writing monologues and some rah rah you-can-get-over-writers'-block "tips." (Get up and get some coffee!) The sample monologues, which for the most part aren't very good, have no description or analysis of why they were chosen or what point they are meant to illustrate. (Though they do have short blurbs written about them that read as though the author of this book had crushes on the monologists!)
A huge portion of the book are profiles of these monologists (what kind of jobs they held before, why they love theater...). I'm not sure how this is supposed to help me write monologues.
There are no exercises, no specific tips on judging your work, no concrete goals or steps of any kind.
At the end of the book is a section on places to send out your work. It's now woefully out of date, not that this book is worth a new edition.

Barely literate grammar and sloppy copy editing match this book's thin content. The book ignores masters of the genre, presents formulae for doing what everybody's doing. Some of the interviews contain useful hints, but nothing to justify purchasing or reading the book. Shame on the publisher!