Monologues from the Edge: Great Audition Pieces for Unconventional Actors

Starting with an understanding that all actors are by nature unconventional, Monologues from the Edge presents performers with a wide range of monologues featuring characters who stand outside social norms and ideas of acceptability. Compiled by dramaturg Steve Marsh, this collection includes many contemporary monologues from plays he had the opportunity to review during his time on the nominating committee of the Drama Desk Awards in NYC. Marsh’s sincere theatrical bliss comes from understanding and working with playwrights and their dramatic structures, and his definition of the ＂edge＂and his choice of dramatic works is sure to inspire all actors who endeavor to understand all of the characters and their motivations completely.

Steve Marsh spent the past twenty years working on plays as an actor, director, dramaturg, and playwright in university theaters and small venues in and around New York City. He served on the Drama Desk Awards nominating committee during the 2014-2015 theater season. As a senior lecturer, he has had the opportunity to practice and profess all manners of theater arts at the State University of New York where he was graduate director of the MFA program in Dramaturgy. Marsh worked with Alan Alda and the Center for Communicating Science to develop and facilitate communication workshops at dozens of science institutions and universities, and he helps run the Science Playwriting Competition at the Yang Institute of Theoretical Physics. In addition to an MFA in dramaturgy, he holds a BFA in acting from New York University, where he studied with famed acting teacher Lee Strasberg. Marsh has written two award-winning short plays, Hanging On! and My Penny.