cover image Best Women's Stage Monologues of 1991

Best Women's Stage Monologues of 1991

. Smith & Kraus, $8.94 (0pp) ISBN 978-1-880399-01-9

These collections offer monologues--51 for actors, 54 for actresses--selected by Beard ( One Hundred Men's Stage Monologues from the 1980s ) from some of the better plays of 1991. Each volume contains an introduction by a veteran director, David Frank of the Wisconsin-based American Players Theater and Josephine Abady of the Cleveland Playhouse, offering useful suggestions for the choice and performance of audition monologues. Both collections display a good range of material in terms of age, dialect, ethnicity and class, tone and subject matter. The rhymed quatrains of David Hirson's La B ete and the blank verse of Miriam Hoffman's A Rendezvous with God in the men's volume and free verse by Ntozake Shange and Emily Mann ( Betsey Brown ) and Joyce Carol Oates ( I Stand Before You Naked ) in the women's volume add further variety. The playwrights represented are a distinguished lot, including Jon Robin Baitz, Christopher Hampton, Beth Henley, Harry Kondoleon and Romulus Linney. The depth of writing talent suggested by these excerpts is a hopeful sign for theater in the '90s, particularly for the actors and actresses likely to refer to these volumes. (July)