Talk to Me: Monologue Plays [Paperback]

Eric Lane (Editor), Nina Shengold (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 7, 2004

In this one-of-a-kind collection of monologue plays, Eric Lane and Nina Shengold have gathered a breathtaking array of human voices and stories by master playwrights and emerging new writers. Each of the plays, ranging from one-acts and ten-minute plays to full-length works, creates a rich and specific world. In these pages, readers will meet a dazzling group of dramatic and comic characters: an actress chasing a role as a prison guard on a soap opera, an Indian waiter new to America, a lesbian performance artist taking her father to Auschwitz, a surfer dude trying to summarize the plot of Moby-Dick in under two minutes, and a Dutch librarian hunting down a book that's 123 years overdue. Because each selection is a complete monologue, Talk to Me is an unprecedented source for actors in search of material for auditions, classes, and performances, as well as a literary gold mine for anyone who loves drama.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

For reasons as much economic as inspirational, this is an age awash with solo performers, which may explain the recent explosion of monologue plays, many of them quite good, as this anthology attests. Many top young playwrights--Neil Labute, Jose Rivera, David Ives--excel at monologues, and some seem to prefer them to traditional, dialogue-based theater; David Cale, Danny Hoch, and Anna Deavere Smith all concentrate exclusively on monologues. That they also perform their pieces may account for their preferences, though their work is strong enough to bear performance by others. All the writers cited above and many more are represented in this big, rich volume of full-length monologue plays, one-acts, and shorter pieces. Some of these plays are available elsewhere--most notably the excerpt from Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992--while others, like Aasif Mandvi's brilliant portrait of immigrant Indian life, Sakina's Restaurant, are available only here. A collection of interest to both actors, especially those looking for new audition pieces, and readers eager to keep up with current trends in American theater. Jack Helbig
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Nina Shengold won the ABC Playwright Award and the LA Weekly Award for her play "Homesteaders." Her one-acts have been performed all over the country, and her TV scripts include Hallmark Hall of Fame's "Blind Spot," starring Joanne Woodward and Laura Linney, and "Labor of Love,” starring Marcia Gay Harden. She is artistic director of the theater company Actors & Writers, and she is the book editor of Chronogram, a Hudson Valley magazine of arts and culture. Her first novel, Clearcut, is forthcoming from Anchor Books in 2005.

Eric Lane is an award-winning playwright, filmmaker and book editor. Plays include: Times of War, Cater-Waiter and Dancing on Checkers’ Grave, which starred Jennifer Aniston. His new play Heart of the City has been optioned for off-Broadway. Eric has written and produced two short films: First Breath and Cater-Waiter, which he also directed. Honors include a Writer’s Guild Award, La MaMa Playwright Award, Berrilla Kerr Award and two-time O’Neill Center finalist. He has won fellowships at Yaddo and St. James Cavalier in Malta. Eric is Artistic Director of Orange Thoughts Productions, a not-for-profit theater & film company in New York City.

Shengold and Lane are the editors of Plays for Actresses, Leading Women,Take Ten: New Ten-Minute Plays, Take Ten II, and Under Thirty: Plays for a New Generation, all in Vintage. For Penguin they edited Moving Parts: Monologues from Contemporary Plays, The Actor's Book of Scenes from New Plays, and The Actor's Book of Gay & Lesbian Plays, which was nominated for the Lambda Literary Award.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (December 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400076153
• ISBN-13: 978-1400076154
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.9 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #567,194 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Resource, December 22, 2004

By 

NYCaster - See all my reviews

This review is from: Talk to Me: Monologue Plays (Paperback)

As a casting director, I have to say that this is one of the best collections of scenes for actors to use for auditions. Getting my attention after a long day seeing the same old thing is difficult, and the scenes in this book are different and exciting enough to really pique my interest.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth Owning and Staging, July 12, 2005

By 

Thomas Tsunami "BassmanT1" (Bend, Oregon USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Talk to Me: Monologue Plays (Paperback)

I took this book out from my local Library and really enjoyed "Underneath the Lintel", one of the best 1 man plays I've read. Also the 3 scenes in a Funeral Home (I forget the title) was excellent and had been read on NPR by professional Actors such as Laura San Giacomo and Rue McLanahan. I hope to produce these both locally. Great material for Actors to use as Audition pieces and fun reading for anyone. I have served on the Play Selection Commitee for the local Community Theater and most of this material is better than a lot of the plays submitted for this season. Also, it's better than most of the monologue books at the Library. Enjoy!