Later Chapters: The Best Monologues and Scenes for Actors Over Fifty

Every actor knows the importance of finding pieces that can show emotional range in a very short time. Prepare a monologue, they say, one or two minutes in length. And don’t use anything from the play we’re casting but make sure it will show us how right you are for this role, they say. But when you are an actor over fifty, it isn’t easy to find a great many scenes or monologues that will be suitable for many different auditions. And it would be nice to have something fresh that the casting agent or director hasn’t seen a thousand times before. Playwright and editor Diana Amsterdam has collected a nice selection of twenty-two monologues (ten for men, twelve for women) and twenty-four scenes (for two or three people with a wide variety of ages and relationships but each including either a man or woman over fifty). Each piece includes a very brief character description and circumstance set-up. You won’t find work by Eugene O’Neill or William Shakespeare or Tom Stoppard in this collection. Some of the pieces have never even been published. This is a targeted collection of fresh material for actors over fifty.