45 exciting selections for student actors ages 14-22.

author: Jack Sharrar Craig Straight binding: Paperback

Now revised to reflect the latest industry trends and realities, this bestselling guide (60,000 copies sold) offers actors the best, most specific advice for auditioning.

author: Gordon Hunt binding: Paperback

The Hottest Collection of Comedy Monologues Available! If you've ever searched for a good comic monologue-whether for a professional audition, a class, or a competition-you know how frustrating the hunt can be. We've combed over some of the world's best comic writing to bring you 222 Comic Monologues: Two Minutes and Under. It's all funny stuff here: classic and contemporary works; roles for men and women ages 7 to 100; entertaining voices from writers as varied as Christopher Durang and Langston Hughes, Dorothy Parker and Steve Martin, Margaret Cho and Molière. You'll find shades of comedy from light to dark: situational humor, word play, absurdity, and surrealism. These monologues are alternately romantic, silly, militant, downright zany-first-rate character work by both new and established comic writers.

binding: Paperback

The casting director for Chicago, Pippin, Becket, Gypsy, The Graduate, the Sound of Music and Jesus Christ Superstar tells you how you can find your dream! Absolutely everything an actor needs to know to get the part is here: What to do that moment before, how to use humour; create mystery; how to develop a distinct style; and how to evaluate the place, the relationships and the competition. In fact, Audition is a necessary guide to dealing with all the "auditions" we face in life. This is the bible on the subject.

author: Michael Shurtleff binding: Paperback

The Ultimate Audition Book is not fancy, but it's just what the working (and aspiring) actor is looking for: a treasury of well-chosen, short monologues from many time periods and sensibilities that enable an auditioner to make a positive impression fast. What could be better? Jocelyn Beard draws on a variety of writers, including Aphra Behn, David Mamet, George Bernard Shaw, Anton Chekhov, and Samuel Beckett, with enough surprises such as Suzan-Lori Parks and Jose Echegaray thrown in to make the selections flexible for today's growing multicultural arena. The monologues are organized by century, which is perhaps not the first thing an actor considers, but there is ample material in the mix of male/female, comic/dramatic, classic/contemporary, and romantic/political roles.

binding: Paperback

So much mystery and veneration surrounds the writings of the great Russian teacher and director Stanislavski that perhaps the greatest surprise awaiting a first-time reader of An Actor Prepares is how conversational, commonsensical, and even at times funny this legendary book is. After many productions with the Moscow Arts Company, Stanislavski sought a way to introduce his new style of acting to the world outside of his rehearsal hall. The resulting book is a "mock diary" of an actor describing a series of exercises and rehearsals in which he participates. He details his own emotional and intellectual reactions to each effort, and how his superficial tricks and mannerisms begin to disappear as he increasingly gives over his conscious ego to a faith in the creative power of his subconscious. Rarely has any writer on the theater achieved the sort of lucid and inspired analysis of the acting process as Stanislavski does here, and his introduction of such now-standard concepts as "the unbroken line," "the magic if," and the idea of emotional memory has laid the groundwork for much of the great acting of the 20th century. While much excess and nonsense was to follow in the steps of Stanislavski's writings, his original texts remain invaluable, and surprisingly accessible, to any actor or student of drama. --John Longenbaugh

author: Constantin Stanislavski binding: Paperback