SUGGESTED SCENE WORK FOR ACTORS
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
Drama Book Shop in New York City (for buying scripts)
250 West 40th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues)
New York, NY 10018
1 212 944-0595
Project Gutenberg (free website with scripts and films to download and print)
In New York, you can go to the Lincoln Center Library, which has a large collection of plays.
20th Century Contemporary
Scenes mostly for men and women (some plays may have both)
WOODY ALLEN
MAXWELL ANDERSON
(the only American writer who wrote modern plays with classical theme)Paddy Chayefsky
Jules Feiffer
Bruce Jay Friedman
Herb Gardner
William Gibson
Ernest Hemingway
William Inge
Sidney Kingsley
Sean O'Casey
Harold Pinter
Murray Schisgal
Sam Shepard
Bernard Slade
Renee Taylor & Joe Bologna
Lanford Wilson
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)
- The 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 by Aleksei Arbuzov
- 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
Alan Ayckbourne
- Bedroom Farce - man and woman (many other plays)
Christopher Durang
- Beyond Therapy - man and woman (many other plays)
John Guare
- House of Blue Leaves - man and woman (many other plays)
- Six Degrees of Seperation
Kaufman and Hart
Arthur Kopit
Leonard Melfi
Tom Stoppard
Thorton Wilder
Samuel Beckett
Bertolt Brecht
Dürrenmatt
Athol Fugard
- Blood Knot - and other plays (South African writer)
Lillian Hellman
Ionesco
Ken Kesey
Tony Kushner
- Angels In America - various
Arthur Miller
Sean O'Casey
- Shadow of a Gunman - man and woman
Clifford Odets
J.B. Priestley
George Bernard Shaw
(all of his works)Irwin Shaw
Martin Sherman
Peter Weiss
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.
Late 19th and early 20th Century
Late 18th and early 19th Century
17th century
- John Ford
- 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 Molina - Don Juan (if you have the courage, read Byron's epic poem)
- Racine
- Schiller - Mary Stuart