An invaluable selection of pieces resource for actors working in radio, theatre or television.

Actors need to learn not only how to use their voice, but to use voice and language together. This book is about the expressive potential of language, and how actors can develop the verbal skills to release that potential. Written by tutors at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and authors of the successful companion title, The Vocal Arts Workbook and DVD, this book includes each aspect of verbal expression: Sound: How to develop a sensitivity to the qualities of speech sounds and use them more expressively. Image: How to bring life and specificity to images when you speak. Sense: How to focus your energy on those words and phrases that convey what is most significant in a speech or scene. Rhythm: How rhythm is created and used in both verse and prose. Argument: How to understand the structure or logic of language and speak with authentic energy. This book puts it all together using one classical and one modern scene as examples. Each of the chapters consists of several sections addressing the learner throughout—framework, exploration, exercises, follow-up, suggested texts, and further reading—and also provides teaching tips that give specific notes for teachers.

Audition monologues for female characters selected from recent works by American playwrights including Tony Kushner, Jon Robin Baitz, Constance Congdon, Paula Vogel, Donald Margulies, Emily Mann, Eric Bogosian, Nicky Silver, and others. Unique to the TCG monologue series is a bibliography of other works by the playwrights included.

In 1926, radium was a miracle cure, Madame Curie an international celebrity, and luminous watches the latest rage- until the girls who painted them began to fall ill with a mysterious disease. Inspired by a true story, Radium Girls traces the efforts of Grace Fryer, a dial painter, as she fights for her day in court. Her chief adversary is her former employer, Arthur Roeder, an idealistic man who cannot bring himself to believe that the same element that shrinks tumors could have anything to do with the terrifying rash of illnesses among his employees. As the case goes on, however, Grace finds herself battling not only with the U.S. Radium Corporation, but also with her own family and friends, who fear that her campaign for justice will backfire.

This collection includes three haunting short plays that are among our most popular titles: the monologues THE WOMAN WITH 27 CHILDREN and BELLE OF THE BIJOU and the one act LATE/LATE...COMPUTER DATE. THE WOMAN WITH 27 CHILDREN: Angel lives alone in the house on the hill, built by her now-deceased husband, Vernon, the love of her life. She is utterly lost without him to guide her. BELLE OF THE BIJOU: Tonight Belle has come to clean out her movie memorabilia accumulated over the years in the ticket booth in the now closed Bijou Theatre. Fear about leaving her ticket booth, her only true reality, becomes overwhelming. LATE/LATE...COMPUTER DATE: Isobel and Veronica, spinster sisters, live alone in genteel clutter. Veronica has never a date. Until now.

This unique collection of monologues for women contains fifty pieces by women playwrights from all over the country.

Clean Break is a British theatre company set up in 1979 by two women in prison. It exists to tell the stories of women with experience of the criminal justice system and to transform women's lives through theatre. Over 40 years, Clean Break has commissioned some of the most progressive and brilliant women writers to write ground-breaking plays, alongside developing the writing skills of the women they work with in its London studios and in prisons. This is a collection of monologues from this canon. Rebel Voices: Monologues for Women by Women celebrates the opportunities inherent when women represent themselves. Offering female performers a diverse set of monologues reflecting a range of characters in age, ethnicity and lived experience, the material is drawn from a mix of published and unpublished works. This book is for any performer who does not see themselves represented in mainstream plays, for lovers of radical women's theatre and for rebels everywhere who believe that the act of speaking and being heard can create change.

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award A journalist by trade, who now suffers from an immune deficiency developed while researching this book, presents personal accounts of what happened to the people of Belarus after the nuclear reactor accident in 1986, and the fear, anger, and uncertainty that they still live with. The Nobel Prize in Literature 2015 was awarded to Svetlana Alexievich "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time."

National Book Award Finalist • Here is the unforgettable story of the Binewskis, a circus-geek family whose matriarch and patriarch have bred their own exhibit of human oddities—with the help of amphetamines, arsenic, and radioisotopes. One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Their offspring include Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family’s most precious—and dangerous—asset. As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.

Casting is a crucial creative element of any production - and yet the craft and skills needed to put together a successful and exciting cast are often overlooked. The Casting Handbook explains the casting process from beginning to end and covers everything producers and directors needs to know – as well as proving a fascinating and illuminating read for actors. The book explores: how to prepare a breakdown where to source actors how to prepare for a casting session how to make casting decisions how a cast is put together how deals are done ethics and the law, with special reference to casting children how a casting director contributes to the initial development of the script how the casting works from fringe theatre to Hollywood blockbusters The Casting Handbook considers actors’, producers’, agents’ and directors’ relationship with a casting director, the day to day work that is casting, and how approaching it in a professional and informed manner can make the difference to the final product. Including interviews with actors, agents, directors, casting directors and producers; case studies; exercises; and a fact file of useful templates and contacts, this book offers a thorough induction into the casting process, suitable for students and early career professionals in any media.