AMERICAN SCREENPLAYS and PLAYS
Actors should have at least one favorite screenplay writer. Or maybe search Google for “Oscar-nominated writers”, scroll the list until you find a film you like, click on the writer’s name to see their Wikipedia page, and note the other films or tv series or plays they have written, and try to watch some of them, or to get the script to read, which can often be obtained online.
But if you find it hard to recognize good writing, then, when watching a film that you like, watch it twice, or use the ‘skip back’ button to watch some lines more than once. This may help you see what can be done with some lines of a script, and not need to go to an acting-coach like me at all.
Or just watch the first ten minutes of the film HELL AND HIGH WATER, written by Taylor Sheridan, where almost every line sounds surprising. And find out who casts the films and tv series written by the writers you like and who casts them!
AMERICAN PLAYS
Actors who want to work in theater should have a list of plays and writers they like, and keep looking for them in any casting lists! This does not mean the plays which are most performed, or produced on Broadway, because the plays may only be famous as they have a star playing in them !
But if there is an actor you admire, and perhaps feel a little similar to, you might just go to their Wikipedia page and copy out the plays which they have performed. The read a ‘review’ to see if they interest you and start studying. Finding audition monologues in plays which you actually like makes them far easier to study!
Some plays are only famous because their original production had a famous actor playing its leading role. And unfortunately the plays by Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee can sound rather old-fashioned now, racist and sexist, and with characters are too obvious to keep any actor excited. But some of these plays can work if actors build up the meanings behind their lines.
Modern plays can be equally ‘obvious’. In the last three years there have been at twelve plays produced in New York about abusive childhoods, some of which actually contained the same lines, and another five have appeared off-Broadway about victims of Covid as though everyone did didn’t already know enough about it!
But even then, once actors realize they must find the meaning behind their lines, some of these plays can become quite exciting. In Arthur Miller’s play DEATH OF A SALESMAN, which bored Miller himself so much that he could not stop re-writing it, is full of cliche characters complaining about social issues audiences already know about! But there is room in the lines for actors to use their own experience of life, perhaps being surprised by a social issue, or laughing at it. or being suicidal. Immediately the lines stop sounding obvious.
The sexism which is so embarrassing now in many plays of Tennessee Williams, seems to come from this quite intelligent man knowing almost nothing about women! But the actors performing the female roles can still make them exciting if they bring their own understanding to the situations which he often describes in five lines !
Some experienced actors may be surprised that I include Mamet, Albee and O’Neill in the list of suggestions ending this page, but their plays simply serious study and discussion before even audition-monologues are tried from them.
There is Shakespeare, of course, which I am surprised to say (even though I now live in the USA,) can be successful with American accents: because all his scenes about love, jealousy, greed, anger, horror, arrogance, intelligence and stupidity – which can be life-changing to see if performed well, – can be thrilling and funny with any accent. Yes, of course, the ‘class-structure’ in most of the plays may be more clear with a UK accent, but American attitudes of prejudice and class are the same .
There are auditions every day of the year for plays, on Backstage, Actors Access and the Equity website, and many actors we admire, when we read their Wikipedia pages, turn out to have started their careers doing them. So here are two possible checklists to help those actors who are still building their own.
About twenty ‘famous’ American plays are encouraged in drama schools every year just because they are famous. The same ‘classic’ plays are often performed on Broadway when big stars are talked into believing the plays will make critics respect the actors for doing them. Unfortunately many of the plays – by Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee and others – are very old-fashioned now, racist and sexist, but they are still forced on audiences and actors in drama schools, so they need to be known. Especially as some of the terrible plays by famous writers can be improved by clever acting.
When many famous plays were written America was only beginning the change of the last fifty years, and they can seem old-fashioned, with nothing to excite an actor or an audience. Their plots simply seem obvious now.
Hundreds of more modern plays have appeared in the last twenty years, many seeming to be written by inexperienced teenagers, and half on the subject of abusive childhoods, many with such similar lines that they might have been written by the same teenage writer.
So . . . if classic plays and new plays are not always inspiring what are actors to do ? The answer is that actors should be able to make any play interesting, and to look on any new production as a chance to act characters truthfully. DEATH OF A SALESMAN, which bored Miller himself as soon as he’d written it, is about social issues which everyone in an audience already knows about (and has seen other plays about) , so the events have to matter to the characters.
This does not mean the Miller’s plays should all be angry and bitter, they should be full of surprise and laughter when lines would otherwise sound obvious. And the crude sexism of Tennessee Williams, resulting from him not seeming to know very much about women, can still be interesting – even if Williams himself probably never realized the depth that could be made out of the women’s lines.
Actors may be bragging, trying to show when they call Mamet and O’Neill “a bore” but they may need to read more than one play to understand what those two madmen are trying to get at.
So it is worth doing the ‘classics’, and the often-trivial plays plugging Off-Broadway? They can still change lives of the audiences watching them, and of the actors doing them, but so many AMerican plays simply need working on day and night!
There’s Shakespeare, of course, which can be done with American accents, because it’s the love, jealousy, greed, anger, horror, arrogance, intelligence and blind stupidity in his plays which makes them thrilling or funny and life-changing, and not a UK accent!
There are auditions every day of the year on Backstage, and Actors Access, and the Equity website. And almost every actor we like, when we read their Wikipedia page, turns out to have started in theater.
Here are two possible checklists for those who are still building them:
About twenty ‘famous’ American plays are encouraged in drama schools every year just because they are famous. The same ‘classic’ plays are often performed on Broadway when big stars are talked into believing the plays will make critics respect the actors for doing them. Unfortunately many of the plays – by Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee and others – are very old-fashioned now, racist and sexist, but they are still forced on audiences and actors in drama schools, so they need to be known. Especially as some of the terrible plays by famous writers can be improved by clever acting.
When many famous plays were written America was only beginning the change of the last fifty years, and they can seem old-fashioned, with nothing to excite an actor or an audience. Their plots simply seem obvious now.
Hundreds of more modern plays have appeared in the last twenty years, many seeming to be written by inexperienced teenagers, and half on the subject of abusive childhoods, many with such similar lines that they might have been written by the same teenage writer.
Actors may be bragging, trying to show when they call Mamet and O’Neill “a bore” but they may need to read more than one play to understand what those two madmen are trying to get at.
So it is worth doing the ‘classics’, and the often-trivial plays plugging Off-Broadway? They can still change lives of the audiences watching them, and of the actors doing them, but so many AMerican plays simply need working on day and night!
There’s Shakespeare, of course, which can be done with American accents, because it’s the love, jealousy, greed, anger, horror, arrogance, intelligence and blind stupidity in his plays which makes them thrilling or funny and life-changing, and not a UK accent!
There are auditions every day of the year on Backstage, and Actors Access, and the Equity website. And almost every actor we like, when we read their Wikipedia page, turns out to have started in theater.
Here are two possible checklists for those who are still building them:
PLAYWRIGHTS:
Sam Shephard
Lorraine Hansberry
Lillian Hellman
Eugene O’Neill
Edward Albee
Tennessee Williams
David Mamet
August Wilson
Neil Simon
W. Shakespeare
SCREENWRITERS:
Greta Gerwig
Quentin Tarantino
Paddy Chayefsky
Nora Ephron
Paul Azursky
Noah Baumbach
Jordan Peele
Woody Allen
Kenneth Lonergan
Richard Linklater
