Moving Parts ─ Monologues from Contemporary Plays

Moving Parts offers actors the best monologues from great plays—pieces by both well-known and up-and-coming playwrights, including many minority artists—that offer a variety of dramatic styles for beginning and experienced actors.

Included are more than a hundred monologues from such contemporary voices as Eric Bogosian, Caryl Churchill, Christopher Durang, Maria Irene Fornes, Athol Fugard, Philip Kan Gotanda, Václav Havel, Lanford Wilson, and George C. Wolfe. Designed for easy browsing, the monologues are indexed by gender, age, and subject to help actors locate appropriate material, and each is introduced with a short description of the plot, setting, and character type. These monologues stand on their own as good theater, while they give actors a well-defined character, a story to tell, and a wide range of behavior and feeling to portray.

Nina Shengold's plays include Finger Foods, War at Home, Homesteaders, and Romeo/Juliet, and have been produced around the world. Her one-act No Shoulder was filmed by director Suzi Yoonessi, with Melissa Leo and Samantha Sloyan. Nina won a Writers Guild Award for her teleplay Labor of Love, starring Marcia Gay Harden; other teleplays include Blind Spot, with Joanne Woodward and Laura Linney, and Unwed Father. Her books include the novels Clearcut, River of Words: Portraits of Hudson Valley Writers (with photographer Jennifer May), and a growing posse of pseudonymous books for young readers. A graduate of Wesleyan, she is currently teaching creative writing at Manhattanville College. Nina lives in New York's Hudson Valley, where she has been books editor of Chronogram magazine since 2004.

Eric Lane has edited 12 contemporary play anthologies for Viking Penguin and Vintage Books with his longtime collaborator, Nina Shengold, earning them a Lambda Literary Award nomination. Eric's plays have been performed in the United States, Canada, Europe, Israel, and China, and include Ride, Floating, Heart of the City, Times of War, and Dancing on Checkers' Grave. Eric wrote and produced the short films First Breath and Cater-Waiter, which he also directed. For TV's Ryan's Hope, he received a Writers Guild Award. His honors include the La MaMa Playwright Award, the Berilla Kerr Award, plus fellowships at Yaddo and St. James Cavalier in Malta. Eric is an honors graduate of Brown University, and is the artistic director of Orange Thoughts Productions, a not-for-profit theater and film company in New York City.