This unique anthology provides a wealth of material for actors and acting students, and a wonderful overview of the best recent plays for anyone interested in theatre. The more than 150 monologues cover a diverse range of subjects, and offer a variety of dramatic styles and moods. Each monologue is introduced with a short description of the plot, setting, and character type by the leading plauwrights of our time.

Featured dramatists include:

Christopher Durang, Wendy Wasserstein, Lanford Wilson, Wallace Shawn, Tina Howe, Caryl Churchill, Athol Fugard, Beth Henley, Sam Shepard, David...

Today's most exciting work for the stage is emerging far from Broadway's "mainstream," at Off and Off-off Broadway theaters, at regional companies around the country, and from abroad. Here is an up-to-the-minute collection of scenes--ideally suited for both classroom and audition use--from the best dramatists now being produced.

Moving Parts offers actors the best monologues from great plays--pieces by both well-known and up-and-coming playwrights, including many minority artists--that offer a variety of dramatic styles for beginning and experienced actors.

Included are more than a hundred monologues from such contemporary voices as Eric Bogosian, Caryl Churchill, Christopher Durang, Maria Irene Fornes, Athol Fugard, Philip Kan Gotanda, Vaclav Havel, Lanford Wilson, and George C. Wolfe. Designed for easy browsing, the monologues are indexed by gender, age, and subject to help actors locate appropriate...

This one-of-a-kind anthology features thirty-six hilarious short plays by major American playwrights and emerging new voices, all guaranteed to send readers and audiences into peals of laughter.
From the surrealistic wit of Steve Martin's "The Zig-Zag Woman" to the biting political satire of Steven Dietz's "The Spot," from Christopher Durang's wonderfully loopy "Wanda's Visit" to Shel Silverstein's supremely twisted "The Best Daddy," there's something in here to make everyone laugh. There are plays for casts of all sizes, from monologues to large ensembles, with diverse and challenging...

Gather any group of actresses, from students to stars, and someone will inevitably ask, "Where are all the great roles for women?" The roles are right here, in this magnificently diverse collection of plays full-lenghts, one-acts, and monologues--with mainly female casts, which represent the answer to any actress's prayer.
The editors of the groundbreaking anthology Plays for Actresses have once again gathered an abundance of strong female roles in a selection of works by award-winning authors and cutting-edge newer voices, from Wendy Wasserstein and Christopher Durang to Claudia...

A ten-minute play is a streak of theatrical lightning. It doesn't last long, but its power can stand your hair on end. This splendid anthology contains enough wattage to light up a small city. For in its pages, thirty-two of our finest playwrights hone their skills on a form that has been called the haiku of the American stage. The plays that Nina Shengold and Eric Lane have collected in this volume range from monologues to an eight-character farce. Eminently producible, ideally suited for the classroom and audition, Take Ten is a marvelous resource for teachers and students of drama,...

A dazzlingly diverse anthology of thirty-five short plays spanning the theatrical spectrum.
A ten-minute play is a blaze of theatrical energy. In this follow-up to their groundbreaking collection Take Ten, editors Eric Lane and Nina Shengold have put together a veritable bonfire of talent. Take Ten II: More 10-Minute Plays provides a fast-track tour of the current theatrical landscape, from the slapstick ingenuity of David Ives Arabian Nights to the searing tension of Diana Son s 9/11 drama The Moon, Please, to Susan Miller s luminous fable The Grand...

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...

For the vast generation of actors in their teens and twenties, as well as for teachers, directors, and producers, Under Thirty is an unparalleled source of diverse and challenging roles, created by some of today s finest writers. The twenty plays presented here in full or in part include insightful looks at the pressure-cooker caste system of American high schools as well as heartbreaking, edgy portrayals of twentysomethings adrift in the city. There are snappy romantic duets, large-cast ensembles, and everything in between, populated by richly dimensional, mold-breaking...

Set in the gloriously rugged backwoods of the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s, Nina Shengold's gripping debut novel follows three people in search of new lives deep into uncharted terrain of the body and heart.
When rough-hewn loner Earley Ritter picks up a hitchhiker one rainy night, he can't imagine how much it will change his life. A "shake-rat" who salvages cedar stumps left when loggers clearcut, Earley seems to have little in common with Reed Alton, a gifted Berkeley dropout. But when Earley meets Zan, the fiery and mysterious woman Reed has been following, erotic sparks fly in...