Talk to Me: Monologue Plays

In this one-of-a-kind collection of monologue plays, Eric Lane and Nina Shengold have gathered a breathtaking array of human voices and stories by master playwrights and emerging new writers. Each of the plays, ranging from one-acts and ten-minute plays to full-length works, creates a rich and specific world. In these pages, readers will meet a dazzling group of dramatic and comic characters: an actress chasing a role as a prison guard on a soap opera, an Indian waiter new to America, a lesbian performance artist taking her father to Auschwitz, a surfer dude trying to summarize the plot of Moby-Dick in under two minutes, and a Dutch librarian hunting down a book that's 123 years overdue. Because each selection is a complete monologue, Talk to Me is an unprecedented source for actors in search of material for auditions, classes, and performances, as well as a literary gold mine for anyone who loves drama.

Nina Shengold won the ABC Playwright Award and the LA Weekly Award for her play "Homesteaders." Her one-acts have been performed all over the country, and her TV scripts include Hallmark Hall of Fame's "Blind Spot," starring Joanne Woodward and Laura Linney, and "Labor of Love,” starring Marcia Gay Harden. She is artistic director of the theater company Actors & Writers, and she is the book editor of Chronogram, a Hudson Valley magazine of arts and culture. Her first novel, Clearcut, is forthcoming from Anchor Books in 2005.

Eric Lane is an award-winning playwright, filmmaker and book editor. Plays include: Times of War, Cater-Waiter and Dancing on Checkers’ Grave, which starred Jennifer Aniston. His new play Heart of the City has been optioned for off-Broadway. Eric has written and produced two short films: First Breath and Cater-Waiter, which he also directed. Honors include a Writer’s Guild Award, La MaMa Playwright Award, Berrilla Kerr Award and two-time O’Neill Center finalist. He has won fellowships at Yaddo and St. James Cavalier in Malta. Eric is Artistic Director of Orange Thoughts Productions, a not-for-profit theater & film company in New York City.

Shengold and Lane are the editors of Plays for Actresses, Leading Women,Take Ten: New Ten-Minute Plays, Take Ten II, and Under Thirty: Plays for a New Generation, all in Vintage. For Penguin they edited Moving Parts: Monologues from Contemporary Plays, The Actor's Book of Scenes from New Plays, and The Actor's Book of Gay & Lesbian Plays, which was nominated for the Lambda Literary Award.