A collection of one-act plays from American playwrights, which cover such themes as love, fantasy, politics, grief, marriage, crime, and deceit.

This second volume of the best monologues from the Best American Short Plays series features a diverse selection drawn from the outstanding works from many of today's best American playwrights. In these monologues, the playwrights capture much of the flavors, feelings, and thoughts of American culture over the past several decades. The result is a collection of taught, engaging monologues offering fascinating perspectives. They are written with an eye toward the stage that makes them excellent source material for actors young and old alike. And they offer a freshness and directness that make them excellent companions for readers attracted to good, often quirky, and always engaging contemporary literature.

A collection of one-act plays from American playwrights, which cover such themes as love, fantasy, politics, grief, marriage, crime, and deceit.

A collection of one-act plays from American playwrights, which cover such themes as love, fantasy, politics, grief, marriage, crime, and deceit.

Applause is proud to continue the series that for over 70 years has been the standard of excellence for one-act plays in America. As previous series editor Ramon Delgado wrote in his introduction to The Best American Short Plays of 1989, the choice of entries for each edition has been based on the same goal: “to include a balance among three categories of playwrights: 1) established playwrights who continue to practice the art and craft of the short play, 2) emerging playwrights whose record of productions indicate both initial achievement and continuing artistic productivity, and 3) talented new playwrights whose work may not have had much exposure but evidences promise for the future.” From its inception, The Best American Short Plays has identified new, cutting-edge playwrights who have gone on to establish award-winning careers, including Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Wendy Wasserstein, David Mamet, and Horton Foote. This volume, Bill Demastes' first edition as series editor, illustrates how well the short story play can grapple with the many dimensions of love. The selected plays present unique perspectives on the wide range of love's impact on our lives, each giving a thoroughly modern twist to the idea that life would be so much easier (but also much less interesting) if we could only avoid love's mercurial influence.

Countless actors have learned and benefited from The Actor at Work through fifty years and ten editions. Robert Benedetti continues this strong tradition in this Eleventh Edition. Designed for acting courses beyond the introductory level, The Actor at Work takes readers through understanding first their own bodies, voices, and thoughts, then techniques of action, and finally creating fully realized performances. The exercises that accompany each lesson form a program of self-discovery and self-development and are arranged roughly according to a natural acquisition of skills and insights.

Since the first edition of The Actor in You was published a quarter-century ago, thousands of students have benefited from Robert Benedetti’s decades of experience educating some of the United States’ finest actors. In this Seventh Edition, Benedetti expresses the fundamental elements of acting in simple language, leading readers through understanding their own bodies and voices, acting technique, and the basics of rehearsals and staging shows. Each step includes exercises to aid students in self-discovery and self-development as they grow from novices into practiced actors.