Contemporary Scenes for Student Actors

by Michael Schulman (Editor), Eva Mekler

This collection of contemporary scenes provides the student actor, as well as professional and untrained performers, with material from some of the best plays ever written. Each selection contains critical information on characters, setting, and background to give a clear sense of what the play is about. Contemporary Scenes for Student Actors accommodates a wide variety of acting styles, from naturalistic to poetic to highly stylized, spanning a range of ages and a variety of locales, and incorporating excerpts of various lengths.
 
Includes scenes from plays by
· Woody Allen
· Maxwell Anderson
· Jean Anouilh
· Simon Gray
· John Guare
· Lillian Hellman
· Albert Innaurato
· David Mamet
· Mark Medoff
· Arthur Miller
· Miguel Pinero
· David Rabe
· Sam Shepard
· Tennessee Williams
· And many more!

Genres: Theatre

438 pages, Paperback

First published July 31, 1980

About the author

This profile is for the acting teacher and psychologist. For the New Yorker staff writer, see Michael Schulman.

Michael Schulman, editor of Play the Scene and Great Scenes and Monologues for Actors, is an acting teacher who has taught at the prestigious Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and the Actors Studio. He founded the British-American Acting Academy and has written and directed a number of plays for Off-Broadway theatre. He is also a psychologist and an author of books on child development.

Reviews

[Franky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really too wild about the selection of scenes in this book. Yes, the scenes chosen are contemporary, but the big misnomer is that they are for student actors (which is odd given that is part of the title of the book), as a good deal of the scenes are probably not suitable for high school due to either inappropriate subject matter and/or profanity.

Each of the scenes contains a little snippet to give context to the scene, and the book divides the scenes into two men, two women, and one man and one women. There are some familiar authors and works in here too, such as Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. While there are some decent scenes, the collection over all is fairly mediocre.

You could probably find a better of collection of scenes out there.

[Heather Luff · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love how it says scenes for student actors and only 35 out of 80 were even close to being appropriate enough for myself and the principal to approve for competition. This was pretty much a waste of money and time :(