Contemporary Duologues: Two Women

Trilby James

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781780018539
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Acting & Auditioning

THE GOOD AUDITION GUIDES: Helping you select and perform the audition piece that is best suited to your performing skills

As an actor at any level – whether you are doing theatre studies at school, taking part in youth theatre, preparing for drama-school showcases, or attending professional acting workshops – you will often be required to prepare a duologue with a fellow performer. Your success is often based on locating and selecting a fresh, dynamic scene suited to your specific performing skills, as well as your interplay as a duo. Which is where this book comes in.

This collection features twenty-five fantastic duologues for two women, almost all written since the year 2000 by some of our most exciting dramatic voices, offering a wide variety of character types and styles of writing.

Playwrights featured include Alexi Kaye Campbell, Helen Edmundson, Vivienne Franzmann, Sam Holcroft, Anna Jordan, Chloë Moss, Rona Munro, Lynn Nottage, Evan Placey and Jessica Swale, and the plays themselves were premiered at the very best theatres across the UK including the National Theatre, Manchester Royal Exchange, Shakespeare's Globe, and the Almeida, Bush, Soho, Royal Court and Tricycle Theatres.

Drawing on her experience as an actor, director and teacher at several leading drama schools, Trilby James equips each duologue with a thorough introduction including the vital information you need to place the piece in context (the who, what, when, where and why) and suggestions about how to perform the scene to its maximum effect (including the characters' objectives).

The collection also features an introduction on the whole process of selecting and preparing a duologue, and how to present it to the greatest effect. The result is the most comprehensive and useful contemporary duologue book of its kind now available.

'Sound practical advice... a source of inspiration for teachers and students alike' Teaching Drama Magazine on The Good Audition Guides

The Girl’s Guide to Saving the World

Elinor Cook

WHOJane and Bella, both approximately twenty-nine years old. (Out of context they could be played either younger or older.)

WHEREA lavatory.

WHENPresent day.

WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENEDThe following duologue comes at the start of the play (and sets the tone for an exploration of what it means to be a modern-day feminist). Bella is taking a pregnancy test.

WHAT TO CONSIDER

• The sexual politics of our times and in particular the ‘societal’ pressures on both men and women to conform.

• For all the advances made by women in the twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries, it still holds true that if a man is promiscuous he is considered ‘a lad’, while a woman who sleeps with many partners is considered ‘a slut’ or ‘a slag’.

• Although the play can read like a feminist tract, it is also very funny. The dilemma between adhering to feminist ideas and embracing a ‘normal’ sex drive and procreative impulse, is what gives the scene its humour. You will need to strike the balance between what is serious an...