Play Groups Books

full of emotions. if you've ever gone through. ..anything. . .in your life there will be a monologue to accentuate those feelings for an audience. if nothing else the monologues themselves are quite interesting to read, so simply looking through it for a suitable monologue should be enjoyable.

This book has interesting monologues to read; but as far as using it to find audition material. . .forget it. It is not clearly organized. I like monologue books that are divided into serious, comedic, etc, so I can go straight to the type of monologue I want. But this book is full of monologues with obscure chapter headings that make absolutely no sense. This is not a resourceful book. . .I would use it only for entertainment purposes, but then again, if I time for that, I'd rather read the entire play, rather than an excerpt.

I'm just beginning acting classes and I just picked this book by simply leafing through. When I got home and actually looked through it, I became so nervous because I couldn't find anything I felt I could use. If you have the chance, look at the book before you buy it.

This book is packed with information, unfortunately very little of it is useful. I purchased it for my school work and was unable to use it as source material. The book is layed out with a bunch of statements that Artistic directors should follow and then it lists how or why Artistic directors should follow them. It dosen't really cover much ground that is useful for a small time director or artist. If you were managing a large scale theatre than this book might be helpful to you.

I ran across this book accidentally. Having worked in both theater administration and as a theater artist, I was curious. The author, Todd London, is currently the Artistic Director at New Dramatist in New York City. There is and introduction by Lloyd Richard, former Artistic Director of the O'neill Conference and well know Director, and a forward by Peter Zeisler.

Basically, this is a book that covers everything discussed in a series of meetings with the Nation's Artistic Directors in 1987. This is an important read if you are a theater artist and have never worked running a theater, or if you wish to pursue a carrer in theater. I gave it five stars not because it is a fun read, and it's not about new directions in theater art. Theaters from all over the country are represented in this book. This is a serious glimps into the questions theaters constantly struggle with in terms of artists, adressing audience, and operating a theater. It's good to understand while artists ar busy being accepted and rejected, theaters are constantly trying to forge some kind of a direction where they can nurture a portion of artists, and create an audince for them, and survive themselves. This book lets you know what theaters are trying to do. It shows the best side of theaters, but I think the information in this book will help artists know when a theater is not aiding thier growth while working with one.

If you work for a theater, then you probably have addressed some or many of the issues and questions here in some form, but there are a lot of ideas here, and that's what theater has been build with.

Having enjoyed some of Wilde's plays and some movie versions of his work, I looked forward to reading his words, and I was not disappointed: Wilde's wit is well known and is fully on display in this collection. What I particularly enjoyed was tracing the threads and development of ideas through both his high points and decline. Terry Eagleton is a good choice to give the introduction, and he too does not disappoint. I may not be as careful a reader as a previous reviewer as typographical errors were not obvious to me.

The selections led me to buy this volume, but the book is ridiculously full of typos. I am looking for another Wilde anthology for that reason alone.

Reading this play was a bit like "listening" to music by simply looking at the notes on the page. I saw excerpts from this play at the Tony awards and just those short bits were far more moving than reading the play itself ,without benefit of seeing actors interpret the words and add their own movements and inflections.
Don't get me wrong. This is still very moving on the page and I savored the ability to linger on particular sentences, to imagine the thoughts of the various characters. I found the interplay between a man whose wife has died and the psychiatrist he seeks to help him to be fascinating. Each character was complex and well fleshed out.
But plays are essentially written in conversational form, without the added touches that a novel or short story might have, details about setting, actions, etc.. Those touches, arguably, are what make some plays seem so much flatter on the page than when presented on stage, so relatively one-dimensional. Still, this would be EXCELLENT maerial for an acting workshop and/or aspiring dramatists and it isn't a bad book...as it is...but it left me wanting more, wanting to see the production itself.

Saw this production in NYC- McPherson is a beautiful writer with wonderful images that haunt the reader/viewer. McPherson is expert of creating tales that spin out of control... However, Shining City is... well... terribly sexist and misogynistic. On one level it is the simple story of how women/wives get in the way of straight guys who want to scew around with others ~ and gee, they are haunted by guilt... poor guys. (Are we supposed to sympathized with these jerks? How in God's name do women fall for such creeps???) The brief male/male affair may have been DRAMATIC to straight viewers,(GASP!) but this gay man just found it embarrassingly trite. C'Mon McPherson, you are capable of better ways to haunt the characters....! The theme of same sex realtionships as dramatic plot development may have worked in the 1950's... but now, no way. If this play is representitive of the way many straight men behave in long term relationships, I'm really glad i'm gay!

I got this book looking for a variety of Monologue. I feel this book is lacking in the comic genre. All the monlogues are very heavy. Even Monologues written by Durang and other humorous Authors are the most serious parts in their plays. Also doesn't give much range even in dramatcis genre. Good if you are a female in your mid to late 30's (I'm mid twenties)

Perhaps best left in the hands of children who love history (are there such?) or just those who enjoy board games, "Ancient Board Games" provides durable playing surfaces and markers, but little or no data. Also, if I'm not mistaken, for none of these games were the full rules discovered.

This video, although filled with terrific footage of the forest, only contains stories about five different animals. For this reason alone I would not recommed this video to anyone with young children as the pace is too slow for a small child. I also feel that there should have been a more diverse group of forest animals included in the video. Many of the animals were similar, like the elk, moose and the big horn lamb. The scenery itself is beautiful and some of the shots were very nice. It may be more suitable for older children.

Interesting play about two brothers in South Africa. These brothers are the only characters in the play other than the mentioned absent ones. Disturbing ideas of family values and loyalty. Particularly eerie ending.

Though I have not been through this book in depth, I had a hard time finding something that was not too preach-y, and with interpretive and doctrinal spins of the author. I will have to spend quite a bit of time adjusting material for a more open view. The scripts give start points to do this, though. Those with similar interpretations and doctrines will likely not have issues with this material. I notice the high schoolers I work with dislike being characterized as teens, in which adults develop material to speak to them on their ground, but frequently miss it. This book seems to do just that in many places.

One of the gods daughters came to earth to see how earth was. On earth one character is hunting for the love of his life, that has left him. Time passes with out memories. The play over all is a but confusing, the characters are different everythimg that they are mentioned. But in the long run the characters show you how lonely and depressed that they are.