The Modern Monologue

First published in 1994. The Modern Monologue is a continuation of the previous collection The Classical Monologue. This starts at the dawn of the modern age in 1892, presenting a survey of indispensable speeches from plays that continue to shape the course of modern theatre. The plays included in this collection also happen to be the ones that have helped to define modern acting in all its many guises. Modern playwrights such as Brecht, Genet, Beckett, Ionesco, Pinter, Shepard, Guare, Nichols and Churchill, to name only a handful of the dramatists represented here, assume that a play and its characters are malleable and shifting; that mood swings, strangeness and sudden eruptions are key components of modern theatre's compelling attraction.

Michael Earley is Chief Producer of Plays for BBC Radio Drama in London. He was Chairman of the Theatre Studies Program at Yale University and taught acting, dramatic literature and playwriting there and at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, The Julliard School's Acting Program, Smith College and various other schools and universities in America and Britain. Philippa Keil is a writer, editor and translator who trained at the Yale School of Drama. She graduated from Sussex University where she acted, directed and produced plays for the Frontdoor Theatre, and then worked professionally in London at Richmond's Orange Tree Theatre.