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The Great Guskin (John Lahr, The New Yorker) shares the approach he uses to help actors land roles, develop them, and keep them alive

About the Author

Harold Guskin has worked with dozens of stage and screen actors and is himself an actor and director. He lives in New York City with his wife, the playwright and screenwriter Sandra Jennings.

About the Author
In the course of his long and prolific career, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) wrote 60 plays, in addition to music and literary criticism. An avid socialist, he regarded his writing as a vehicle for promoting his political and humanitarian views. With Saint Joan, Shaw reached the height of his fame, and it was this play that led to his Nobel Prize for Literature for 1925.

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Jay 'The Sport' Jackson dreams of being the heavyweight champion of the world. But it's 1905, and in the racially segregated world of boxing, his chances are as good as knocked out. When a crooked boxing promoter hatches a plan for 'the fight of the century', The Sport just might land a place in the ring with the reigning champion.

About the Author
Marco Ramirez has had plays produced at Center Theatre Group (Los Angeles), The Old Globe (San Diego), The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (DC), and Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival of New American Plays. He's currently an artist in residence at Atlantic Theatre Company, and is under commission at both Playwrights Horizons and Center Theatre Group. On television, he's been nominated for WGA and Emmy Awards, and his writing credits include Sons of Anarchy (FX), Da Vinci's Demons (Starz), Orange is the New Black (Netflix), and Marvel's upcoming Daredevil (Netflix).

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Each of the plays in this theater book is a complete dramatic work balanced for a two-actor performance. Lengths vary from ten to thirty minutes. Many different types of roles from liberated women to bumbling detectives, from childhood sweethearts to homeless immigrants. Many styles: slapstick comedy, modern drama, satire, character study, and tragedy. No royalties required. Especially good for classroom and workshop use. Scripts are excellent for secondary and university-level forensic competitions.

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A young playwright, Thomas, has written an adaptation of the 1870 novel Venus in Fur by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (after whom the term "masochism" was coined); the novel is the story of an obsessive adulterous relationship between a man and the mistress to whom he becomes enslaved. At the end of a long day in which the actresses Thomas auditions fail to impress him, in walks Vanda, very late and seemingly clueless, but she convinces him to give her a chance. As they perform scenes from Thomas's play, and Vanda the actor and Vanda the character gradually take control of the audition, the lines between writer, actor, director, and character begin to blur. Vanda is acting . . . or perhaps she sees in Thomas a masochist, one who desires fantasy in "real life" while writing fantasies for a living.

An exploration of gender roles and sexuality, in which desire twists and turns in on itself, Venus in Fur is also a witty, unsettling look at the art of acting--onstage and off.

About the Author

David Ives's plays include two evenings of one-act comedies, All in the Timing (win­ner of the Outer Critics Circle Award) and Time Flies, as well as New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza; Is He Dead? (adapted from Mark Twain); Irving Berlin's White Christmas; Polish Joke; and Ancient History. He has also adapted Cor­neille's The Liar, Molière's The School for Lies, and Regnard's Le Légataire universel.

About the Author

Erich Segal is Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. He was Professor of Classics at Yale and is author of Roman Laughter, a study of Plautus. He also wrote Love Story.

About the Author

Peter Burian is Professor of Classical and Comparative Literatures and Theater Studies, Duke University.

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About the Author
Christopher Marlowe (1564-93) was educated at Cambridge and soon established his reputation as a playwright. Away from the stage, Marlowe was a man who courted danger as a homosexual, a spy, and an outspoken atheist. He was murdered at the age of 29 in a tavern in Deptford.

Teresa, the author of No Sex in the City, along with Lisa, the main character, takes readers on a thought-provoking and thrilling ride about the highs and lows of dating. This book is a page-turner. Buckle up and enjoy the ride.

In January of 1983, fourteen-year-old Cindy found out that she was pregnant. Her faith-filled mother was crushed. She ended up giving birth and naming the baby Matthew. Cindy ended up calling Matthew her little asterisk. As Cindy tells us the story of her life, Matthew seems to be a footnote to everything that happens. But Matthew is not just an asterisk in his mother's story. Family members and friends also share their stories, and Matthew seems to be an asterisk in all of them. Who is Matthew? Who is his father? Just how important is Matthew to everyone he encounters as he grows up? Read stories that are raw and emotional. Sometimes funny, often sad, but always compelling. Enjoy this unconventional look at someone's life through the eyes of many different people, including Matthew himself.

Doris, a grieving widow, lost her husband to Lung Cancer 4 years ago. Samuel 'Sam" took his last breath, as she looked on, helplessly. After 50 years, 4 months, and 27 days of marriage, she believed that the best part of her life was over. Lonely and living her "new normal," she is visited daily by her effervescent 26-year-old granddaughter, Nia who tries to convince her grandmother that life is to be lived out loud. Nia, much to her parent's disapproval, earned a "useless" bachelor's degree in kinesiology and is now working on her master's in physical therapy. To complete her thesis, she starts a Seniors Only gym. After much cajoling, Nia convinces Doris to attend a class at the gym. There, Doris meets Glenn.... "like Close." Glenn is a 75-year-old divorcee who is not looking for a relationship, but he soon finds himself in Doris' heart and her bed. Who, in their right mind, starts a sexual relationship in their 70s? Is there even sex after 70? Secrets are revealed and everything that happens in the dark comes to light...the bright blinding light of the sun.

In her seventh drama book for teens, Rebecca Young demonstrates her wonderful ability to write in the voice of teenage characters and emphasize believable experiences that appeal to young actors. Boyfriend issues, girlfriend issues. Teacher issues, parent issues. Sports issues, band issues. Love, hate, jealousy, betrayal, and so much more. Middle school years are some of the best and hardest times a student can go through, and Young captures both the drama and especially the humor of this unique age. The book is fairly even divided between monologues for girls, for guys, or for either, and the wide variety of topics ensures a good fit with any student's personality. All monologues are between one and two minutes and are suitable for auditions, classroom performance, speech competitions, or acting practice.

About the Author
Dominique Morisseau was born in Detroit, Michigan. Her other plays include Pipeline, Sunset Baby, Blood at the Root and Follow Me to Nellie's. She has been awarded the Steinberg Playwright Award, the Spirit of Detroit Award, a PoNY Fellowship, the Sky Cooper New American Play Prize and an Obie Award.

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My name is Christopher John Francis Boone. I know all the countries of the world and the capital cities. And every prime number up to 7507.

About the Author

Mark Haddon's work as an author includes A Spot of Bother, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, The Real Porky Philips, Agent Z and Titch Johnson - Almost World Champion. His work for television includes Coming Down the Mountain, Fungus the Bogeyman and Microsoap. Polar Bears (2010) was Mark Haddon's first work for the theatre.

About the Author
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616) is today's most widely known and loved playwright.

About the Author

"He was not of an age, but for all time," declared Ben Jonson of his contemporary William Shakespeare (1564-1616). Jonson's praise is especially prescient, since at the turn of the 17th century Shakespeare was but one of many popular London playwrights and none of his dramas were printed in his lifetime. The reason so many of his works survive is because two of his actor friends, with the assistance of Jonson, assembled and published the First Folio edition of 1623.

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First performed about 1805, King Lear is one of the most relentlessly bleak of Shakespeare's tragedies. Probably written between Othello and Macbeth, when the playwright was at the peak of his tragic power, Lear's themes of filial ingratitude, injustice, and the meaninglessness of life in a seemingly indifferent universe are explored with unsurpassed power and depth.
The plot concerns a monarch betrayed by his daughters, robbed of his kingdom, descending into madness. Greed, treachery, and cruelty are rife and the denouement of the play is both brutal and heartbreaking. In fact, so troubling is its vision of man's life that, until the mid-19th century, the play was performed most often with a non-Shakespearean happy ending, with Lear back on his throne and Cordelia, the daughter nearest his heart, happily married to the noble Edgar. But there is a dark magnificence to Shakespeare's original vision of the Lear story, and the play is performed today essentially as he wrote it, uncompromised by later improvements. King Lear is reprinted here from an authoritative British edition, complete with explanatory footnotes.

About the Author

He was not of an age, but for all time, declared Ben Jonson of his contemporary William Shakespeare (1564-1616). Jonson's praise is especially prescient, since at the turn of the 17th century Shakespeare was but one of many popular London playwrights and none of his dramas were printed in his lifetime. The reason so many of his works survive is because two of his actor friends, with the assistance of Jonson, assembled and published the First Folio edition of 1623.

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About the Author
Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) electrified the theatrical world with her first play, A Raisin in the Sun, which won the New York Critics Circle Award for the 1958-59 season. Before her tragic death from cancer at the age of 34, she had already produced a remarkable body of work, including The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window and Les Blancs. Her former husband and literary executor, the late Robert Nemiroff, posthumously produced and published her To Be Young, Gifted and Black and the musical Raisin.

This is the story of Jacob Kalinsky, born in Koretz, Poland, in 1904 to a mean-tempered tyrant of a father and a sweet and loving mother. At the age of twelve, Jacob's mother, Sarah, dies, and Jacob, along with his nine-year-old brother, is sent to live in the care of a brothel run by a loving madam named Jordanna.

It takes Jacob's father three long years to send for his sons. During that time, Jacob suffers many indignities, but when he was raped by a Polish soldier, it molds his life. The shame of this event remains his secret, never to be shared with anyone. That is, until a day, many years later in America, fate brings the Polish soldier back into Jacob's life.