Original illustrations by Jean Cocteau and Andrzej Klimowski Two of the seven monologues by Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) in this edition were written for Édith Piaf. The other five were written for Cocteau’s friend, the celebrated actor Jean Marais, to perform on radio. Although perhaps a minor part of Cocteau’s output of films, plays, poems and ballet scenarios, these exquisite miniatures remain a fascinating form of his dramatic expression. Georges Feydeau (1862-1921) is best known for his enduring farces, such as A Flea In Her Ear, yet he wrote over 20 monologues for actors to perform at charity concerts and in fashionable drawing rooms. The six included in this volume were written over a period of 16 years from 1882. Peter Meyer’s translations of eleven of these monologues were commissioned by the BBC and performed on radio by leading actors including Eileen Atkins, Jill Bennett, Richard Briers, Judi Dench, Alec McCowan and Timothy West. The Liar and I Lost Her have been newly translated for this volume.

Can language hide thoughts? This question is considered by one of Europe's most eminent scholars in his influential essay "Linguistics of Lying," presented here for the first time in English, along with additional essays selected by the author. His survey of the different ways in which language is untrue links linguistic and literary categories in unexpected fashion to anthropology, sociology, ethics, and even good manners.

In Fashioning Spaces, Heidi Brevik-Zender argues that in the years between 1870 and 1900 the chroniclers of Parisian modernity depicted the urban landscape not just in public settings such as boulevards and parks but also in “dislocations,” spaces where the public and the intimate overlapped in provocative and subversive ways. Stairwells, theatre foyers, dressmakers’ studios, and dressing rooms were in-between places that have long been overlooked but were actually marked as indisputably modern through their connections with high fashion. Fashioning Spaces engages with and thinks beyond the work of critics Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin to arrive at new readings of the French capital. Examining literature by Zola, Maupassant, Rachilde, and others, as well as paintings, architecture, and the fashionable garments worn by both men and women, Brevik-Zender crafts a compelling and innovative account of how fashion was appropriated as a way of writing about the complexities of modernity in fin-de-siècle Paris.

There was an owl sat up an oak;The more he heard the less he spoke;The less he spoke, the more he heard;Oh that we were all like that wise old bird. The verbatim monologues in Deep Heat are drawn from conversations Robin Soans has had or overheard, or are edited versions of interviews he has conducted in the course of research for his plays. Subjects range from people who have held high office to those who have blown them up; from those who live in large country houses to others whose home is two blankets and a pile of leaves in the corner of a disused garage. So much of what is passed on as historical fact is the version of events that those with an ulterior motive choose to project. This book doesn’t seek to judge, nor provide solutions; it seeks to redress the balance by giving a fair hearing even to those who may not share the same views as ours. Useful as audition pieces for actors, but equally of interest to the historian and sociologist in all of us. We are after all human, full of contradictions, and we can never inch our way towards greater self-knowledge if we don’t see more of the picture than is traditionally the case.

Essays on twentieth-century French playwrights who were largely influenced by non-French traditions, during the greatest age of French theater since the mid 1700s. French drama of the twentieth-century was cosmopolitan, experimental and eclectic and attempted to appeal to a wider audience than in the past. Dramatists came not only from Paris but from the provinces and the French states of the Caribbean as well as from Francophone countries such as Belgium.

This new volume presents the set selections for candidates entering Graded Examinations in Acting at Levels 1 and 2 in 2004-2009. The collection includes monologues and duologues from both classical and contemporary plays for young actors. The selections are varied in content, tone and style and are accompanied by a brief outline of the context and setting. The compilation will provide any student of drama with opportunities for creatively exploring character and story.