I am proud to announce that my new book of monologues for women has been published and is available here and on www.amazon.com.
I woke up one morning recently and thought, “I’ve got some soliloquies tucked away that would make pretty good monologues. This book is, I think, unique because all the contemporary monologues are original. Directors get bored and tired of the same old shoes like speeches from Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Barefoot in the Park, Streetcar Named Desire, Pygmalion, View from the Bridge and others. Make them sit up and listen when you use something they have never heard before!
And that brings me to the point that I want to share with my readers out there who are writers or want to be writers. Previously I was talking about my digging out some old and new work and turning them into a book of monologues. Never, never throw anything away. Open up that dusty old box of your scribbles that you have hidden away on the top shelf of the closet. You might be surprised what you find and how much you like it after a year, five years or ten. “Note from a Watery Grave” which I scribbled down back in 2002?….turns out it was pretty good with some additional editing on my part. The end result was a new book. My motivation: as an actor, I know how hard it is to find that perfect monologue for an audition. How difficult it is to get the director’s attention and keep it.
While compiling this book, I remembered how I would go to an audition and announce that my classical piece was going to be Anne from Richard III. The director (or audition panel) would roll their eyes and yawn in my face. The ‘Anne’ that they were thinking of was an old tired thing that’s been done to death, when Richard confronts Anne over the coffin. My ‘Anne’ was a conversation that I pieced together into a soliloquy and I was certain that they had never seen. I got the same reaction from the director every time; they sat up and listened! And afterwards, they laughed and told me they were expecting something else and how refreshing mine was.
A final note: I have included not only some classics (so that your audition will show contrast in your acting ability) but also some original monologues for the African-American actress.