Provides a collection of monologues taken from fiction, essays, and poetry. The Ultimate Audition Book is not fancy, but it's just what the working (and aspiring) actor is looking for: a treasury of well-chosen, short monologues from many time periods and sensibilities that enable an auditioner to make a positive impression fast. What could be better? Jocelyn Beard draws on a variety of writers, including Aphra Behn, David Mamet, George Bernard Shaw, Anton Chekhov, and Samuel Beckett, with enough surprises such as Suzan-Lori Parks and Jose Echegaray thrown in to make the selections flexible for today's growing multicultural arena. The monologues are organized by century, which is perhaps not the first thing an actor considers, but there is ample material in the mix of male/female, comic/dramatic, classic/contemporary, and romantic/political roles. This latest entry in the publisher's popular monolog series contains choice selections from mostly major dramatic works for brief auditions. Written from the 15th through the late 20th century, these excerpts derive from some of the world's great dramatists, including Moliere, Mercy Warren, Oscar Wilde, Eugene O'Neill, Christopher Durang, and Harold Pinter. The book is divided between women's and men's monologs, and each work is prefaced by a very brief contextual paragraph. Auditioning actors should find this a valuable resource. Recommended for theater arts collections in high school, academic, and public libraries.?Howard E. Miller, St. Louis Science Ctr. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. It is the best of the recent collections of audition materials, particularly for period pieces. -- Choice, February 1998 Since actors often are called upon to provide both a classical and modern monologue, Beard's collection fills a need nicely. -- Stage Directions, April 1998 Playwright/Editor JOCELYN A. BEARD, a veteran of NYU's film school and the Yale School of Drama, has edited almost forty monologue books for Smith and Kraus. Her Screenplay, Igor and the Lunatics, was made into a feature film and subsequently listed in Heavy Metal magazine as "One of the 10 Sleaziest Movies Ever Made!" Notwithstanding, Jocelyn lives in an old haunted house in the Hudson River Valley with her husband, Kevin Kitowski, their beautiful daughter, Blythe, and lots of dogs.