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| "If there's one thing I want to teach actors, it is that an artist has two best friends, himself and the play." |
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This is a list that may give you some ideas for scenes to work on. I have also included several websites, where you can buy, or search for, plays and movie scripts |
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Drama Book Shop in New York City (for buying scripts)
Project Gutenberg (free website with scripts and films to download and print)
Script-O-Rama (free website with scripts)
Scripthouse (Pay for scripts hard to find)
Abebooks.com (int'l website with plays in several language)
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20th Century Contemporary
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Scenes mostly for men and women (some plays may have both)
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(click on author's name for more information)
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| Woody Allen |
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| - God |
| - Hannah and Her Sisters |
| - Play It Again, Sam |
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| Maxwell Anderson |
(the only American writer who wrote modern plays with classical themes.)
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| - The Bad Seed |
| - Elizabeth the Queen |
| - Joan Of Lorraine |
| - Richard and Anne |
| - Truckline Cafe |
| - Winterset |
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| William Inge |
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| - A Loss of Roses |
| - Dark at the Top of the Stairs |
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| Sean O'Casey |
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| - Bedtime Story |
| - Juno and the Paycock |
| - Shadow of a Gunman |
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| Eugene O'Neill |
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| - Anna Christie |
| - Beyond the Horizon |
| - The Iceman Cometh |
| - Long Day's Journey Into Night |
| - Moon for the Misbegotten |
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| Harold Pinter |
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| - The Collector |
| - The Homecoming |
| - The Lovers |
| - Old Times |
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| John Patrick Shanley |
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| - An Italian-American Reconciliation |
| - Danny and the Deep Blue Sea |
| - Doubt |
| - The Dreamer Examines His Pillow |
| - Women of Manhattan |
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| Sam Shepard |
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| - Fool for Love |
| - LIe of the Mind |
| - Simpatico |
| - True West |
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| Neil Simon |
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| - Barefoot in the Park |
| - The Gingerbread Lady |
| - The Odd Couple |
| - Prisoner of Second Avenue |
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David Rabe
Jon Robin Baitz
Michael Weller |
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| Some scenes for women (there are many more) |
Night Mother by Marsha Norman
Five Women Wearing the Same Dress
Stage Door by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman
Agnes of God by John Pielmeier
Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley
Julia (a film based on Lillian Hellman)
Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams
Sally and Marsha by Sybille Pearson
A Couple of White Chicks Sitting Around Talking by John Ford Noonan
Laundry and Bourbon by James McClure
The Odd Couple by Neil Simon
Antigone by Jean Anouilh
plays by Wendy Wasserstein
Aristophanes Assembly of Women, Lysistrata
several plays of Chekhov and Ibsen and Shakespeare
20th Century Foreign Authors:
The Hostage (Brendan Behan)
He Who Gets Slapped
Liliom by Ferenc Molnar
The Promise
Entertaining Mr. Sloane by Joe Orton
Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel
The Just by Camus
Caligula by Camus
The Balcony by Jean Genet
The Screens by Jean Genet
The Queen and the Rebels by Ugo Betti |
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| Some Plays with Political and/or Social Orientations |
| Comedy |
Dario Fo- Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! - 2 women
An Ordinary Day - 1 woman, or a woman and a man
Accidental Death of an Anarchist |
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| John Guare |
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| - The House of Blue Leaves - man and woman |
| - Six Degrees of Seperation |
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| Kaufman and Hart |
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| - Once in a Lifetime |
| - The Man Who Came to Dinner |
| - You Can't Take It With You |
| - Front Page |
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| Tom Stoppard |
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| - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead - 2 men |
| - The Lovers |
| - The Homecoming |
| - Old Times |
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| Alice in Wonderland |
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| Drama |
Ettore Scola A Particular Day - man and woman
(only available on video) |
| Death of the Maiden |
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| Bertolt Brecht |
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| - The Caucasian Chalk Circle |
| - Saint Joan of the Stockyards |
| - Mother Courage |
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| Athol Fugard |
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- Blood Knot
and other plays (South African writer) |
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| Lillian Hellman |
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| - Another Part of the Forest |
| - The Children's Hour |
| - Toys in the Attic |
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| Ionesco |
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| - The Bald Soprano |
| - The Chairs |
| - Rhinoceros |
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| David Mamet |
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| - Edmund - man and woman |
| - Glengarry Glenross |
| - Sexual Perversity in Chicago and The Duck Variations |
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| Arthur Miller |
| (almost all of his plays) |
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| - All My Sons |
| - The Archbishop's Ceiling |
| - The Crucible |
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| Clifford Odets |
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| - Awake and Sing |
| - Golden Boy |
| - Paradise Lost |
| - Rocket to the Moon |
| - Waiting for Lefty |
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| JM Synge |
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| - Playboy of the Western World |
| - Riders to the Sea |
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Wedekind Children of Darkness
Spring Awakening (translated by Edward Bond)
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| Tennessee Williams |
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| - Camino Real |
| - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof |
| - The Night of the Iguana |
| - The Rose Tattoo |
| - 27 Wagons Full of Cotton |
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| Who's LIfe Is It, Anyway? - man and woman |
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| Sally Potter Orlando (read novel by Virgina Wolfe) man and woman |
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| Elephant Man - man and woman |
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| A Walk in the Woods |
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There are also lots of published movie scripts, and of course, novels and short stories that have good scenes in them: Emile Zola, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Salinger, Dorothy Parker, Guy de Maupassant, et al.
Classical Plays:
late 19th and early 20th Century
Chekhov (social, which in a sense is political)
Schnitzler
Ibsen
Strindberg
Pirandello
Buckner - Voyceck
Feydeau
Gorky - The Lower Depths
Gogol
Turgenev - A Month in the Country
18th and early 19th century
Marivaux
Musset
Beaumarchais - The Marriage of Figaro
The Barber of Seville
17th century
You should read as many as possible
John Ford - Tis A Pity She’s a Whore
Wycherley - The Country Wife
Moliere (Richard Wilbur translations)
Carlo Goldoni
Shakespeare
Lope de Vega - Fuente Ovejuna (revolutionary)
Calderon de la Barca - Life Is a Dream
Tirso de Molino - Don Juan (if you have the courage, read Byron’s epic poem)
Racine
Schiller - Mary Stuart
before
Aristophanes - Assembly of Women, Lysistrata
Sophocles
Euripedes
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