Praise and Requests

Hi there my name is brian i am a manchester and london based actor i just came across your website in an attempt to find a specific monologue, though it didnt have what i am looking for it was fun to go through and good to see another independant resource for monologues. just wanted to say thanks and keep up the good work
best regards brian

ps you wouldnt know where to find a monologue from a young american/english soldier in iraq speaking on conflict? im looking for a sort of 2-3 mins reply to a shrink to add to my catalogue.

I expect that I'll write one one day soon. After I've met and talked to such a person.
I just wrote a short play, "Rehabilitation", on the subject. But the wounded soldier is a female.

LMC wrote:
Having read several of your one act plays, I have now turned to some of your full length ones. I was wondering if I could get a full copy of "Amazons" and "No Secrets, No Lies." I greatly enjoy your writings! I especially appreciate how they force you to think. I read "Under Siege," and I am still thinking about it a lot. It definitely posed a challenge to my traditional mindset. Thank you for writing!

Question from a student about a monologue

This morning I got an email Question from a student about a monologue:
On Mar 13, 2007, L K wrote:
Hi,-- about Eulogy--
I am planning on using this piece for theatrical
auditions in the very, near future. I chose this
piece because I can relate to the subject matter and
it is a very, dynamic piece. Can you tell me what
your inspiration was?

I replied:
It's a composite character, combining two women who talked to me in 2 different conversations with a few others present. The first was after a Memorial Service at my UU church, where I sat having tea with an acquaintance and a few strangers and the general topic was the multiple Eulogies we'd just heard. We agreed how moving it was when different friends and relatives revealed the depth of love inspired by someone-- someone that we who were at the table knew only slightly. A young woman said that sometimes there is a side of someone that only one family member knows: and that person may never reveal it. I remembered part of that story about that young woman's father when a few years later, when after a Creativity class another woman talked about being asked to speak at the funeral of her abusive father. I imagined myself in each woman's place, and then the two merged into a single voice and story. I'm sure that I added parts of my own experience with a distant & curmudgeonly -- but not overtly abusive or rejecting -- father to the mix. My own father had just died when I wrote it.
Does this help?

she wrote back to say that it did help -- though I'm not sure why. Isn't this how most writing happens???

ICWP Celebrations in Boston March 2007

original "call" to ICWP list with some timely updates....

The International Women's Day or Women's History Month ICWP Celebrations in Boston March 2007

These will be mainly networking events: a chance for women playwrights to introduce themselves and present an attractive sample of their work: Short pieces! So that we get a critical mass to interact and a sense of the abundance of talent and the wide range of subjects and styles women writers have to offer. The work will be self-selected and self-produced by the writers. I'm not jurying, except in so far as I am inviting the women who participated successfully in the 2003 Her-Rah to be part of 2007. This isn't an event for testing new material, but for showing off a bit of the best that you have to your colleagues and theatre professionals. We had a wonderful time together in 2003, getting to know and admire each others' work and sharing contacts. I'm trusting that the Muse will smile on our endeavors this time too.


VIRTUAL PARTICIPATION: Boston Playwrights Theatre is donating space for an event Thursday March 8th that will focus on monologues for actors to use for auditions. Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro, who organized for ICWP in 2003, has taken responsibility for this. Some of Boston's best actors and directors have signed on, and the Playwrights Theatre will promote the idea of actors and acting teachers going directly to local women playwrights to get fresh unpublished material. There will be a directors/coaches panel led by Victoria Marsh, discussing how to choose and use monologues, and a network and smooze reception. The Theatre only seats 75, but is legal for 90 with standees -- we're hoping to use the lobby/greenroom for an after-show party that will include more actors/directors/playwrights than will fit into the event, but that is still at the wish stage. VIRTUAL PARTICIPATION by ICWP writers for whom it is impractical to be present will work like this: You snail me a packet of 100 copies (single or double sided) of a page that includes your contact info, tiny bio, description of your monologues and their availability, and a sample or 2 from your monologues that give a sense of your work in this genre; OR you email me the same info, edited to fit onto a single side-- simple txt formatting, please-- I'm a mac user and MSWord has a nasty way of gumming up my word processor programs-- and I will print out 100 copies on my laser printer. However these playwright-advertising pages come to me, I will collate them into packets to be offered to the directors and lit mgrs and actors who take part in this BPT/ICWP event. Any packets that are not claimed at the BPT will be taken to later ICWP events and offered to people there. Advertise!

PHYSICAL PARTICIPATION: If you are an ICWP member and you have some Boston-area connections and can be here for one of the events, please consider participating! I wouldn't encourage anyone to do so who does not already have some connections... Boston does not generally welcome or nurture playwrights. We're working on that here: there is a StageSource committee charged with setting up something for Boston that is modeled on the great work of Chicago Dramatists. Local theatre directors and literary managers will be invited to this event. Chances are, though, that they will NOT come unless someone they know personally is directly involved. But if you have had a play done in this area before, or an area theatre has expressed interest in your work and said something like "If you have something done nearby where I can see it, invite me" and you think that your participation could be a real networking opportunity, then do come! We can't produce for you, but we will assist in any way we can. Maybe the Boston person who is interested your play will be willing to direct the scene or short one act, and provide actors.

So far, there are 6 committed venues for these events, follows:

Kelly Du Mar, a member of Board of Playwrights' Platform and also a veteran of ICWP's Boston Her-Rah 2003, is organizing readings co-sponsored by Boston Playwrights Platform centered on Metro West women for Saturday March 3rd at Wellesley College. It includes a panel on the Wide World of Women Writers. Nora Hussey, head of Theatre at Wellesley, brought a fully mounted production to the ICWP/WPI conference in Galway Ireland, and produces a high proportion of women's work at her theatre, mostly Irish or English. She is the main producer of Polly Teale's work in the US. She will be joined on the panel by directors Nancy Curran Willis, Rose Carlson, and Jerry Bisantz.

ICWP member Hortense Gerardo is featured in an event that will showcase her one act "The Rosewater of Dona Felicidad", an allegorical play based on Dr. Faustus and the fall of Allende circa 1973, which will be performed as a form of object-based theater-- aka puppetry. There's also a women-themed gallery art show -- at Lasell College in Newton. Newton Community Cable will cover it as News. It is Saturday March 10th, and will have a reception with refreshments.

ICWP has secured the Central Square Library in Cambridge for events March 8th 6-9pm
and Sat March -10th "matinee" 10:30 am-2pm.
These are events for which I am hoping for more participants. Central Sq. is a funky diverse location, nestled between Harvard and MIT. You can see the space-- it will seat 70-90-- with bad sight lines-- on the ICWP web site under "Events 2003 Her-Rah". Two of the participants from 2003 have indicated that they want slots in the Sat. "Matinee". I am trying to recruit a sane dependable person to run Central Sq. Thurs eve, because I'll be acting a monologue from Rosanna Alfaro's Martha Mitchell at BPT and can't be in 2 places... Actress Ann Carpenter, who is in the Charlestown Working Theatre's production of ICWP member Jamie Pachino's "Race", is getting two of the CWT actors to reprise a scene from "Race" at Central Sq., probably on Thurs. the 8th.

The Brighton (Boston) Public Library just called to request ICWP Women's History Month readings in their 70 seat performance space on Thursday March 15th 7-9 pm. I queried them-- the Platform used to have play readings there-- last month, but the head Librarian was on vacation. She's back, and very enthusiastic. So this space is open for plays and scenes, and so far I have only 20 minutes of scenes to put in it!

Mouthoffs and the Podcast project

On Sep 19, 2006, at 2:11 PM, Bill wrote:
Hey, Geralyn!
You know that a number of TAS actors have used monologues from your
plays for audition purposes; and that I also do scene study from your
body of work.
Thanks for this new resource.... I downloaded your "Mouth-0ffs"
yesterday. Wonderful and rich material for cold reading exercises and
for possible audition monologues.
Break a leg,
Bill at THE ACTING STUDIO

Thanks, Bill! It makes me happy to imagine young people performing my stuff. If any of your students would like to send me an mp3 or m4a audio file of their performance, I'd love to use it for the Podcasts my husband is producing using mywork. David has put his old college radio/TV production skills together with his computer skills and launched a weekly 10-20 minute radio show, combining monologues or scenes from my StagePage Collected Works with interviews and features on theatre topics. For instance, the last week in August Larry Stark of interviewed me
about my August 14-20 trip to the Women Playwrights Retreat at Ohio State U, and Carol Shelton, one of the Ohio Senior Theatre actresses who read what we playwrights were writing during the Retreat, is heard performing an anti-war rant that she connected strongly with and recorded as an mp3 using my laptop's Garage Band. On Sept 10th's Podcast, Eliza Wyatt, Robert Bonotto and I chat about local theatre and actors John M. Costa and Penny Benson perform 2 very different interpretations of the same Mouth-Off monologue. Sept 17th is June Lewin talking with me about our touring show, Rosanna Alfaro's Martha Mitchell Musical. You can listen to any of these at Podomatic,
or-- better yet! raise my husband's spirits by raising the show's ranking: Search the iTunes Music Store or Yahoo! Podcast sections
for "stage page" and subscribe.