Meanwhile, for in-store browsing and buying in D.C., Capitol Hill's BackStage Books - a key source in our area for theater books, costumes, and supplies - now carries Idylls for a Bare Stage.
Go in at the following location or call ahead to reserve your copy (and while you're at it, pick up a mask or face paint for yourself or the kids - Mardi Gras is next around the corner, and then Purim!)
Backstage, Inc.
The Performing Arts Store
545 8th Street, SE
Washington, DC 20003
Phone: (202) 544-5744
Phone: (202) 544-5744
Participants in the thriving theater community of D.C., should they go to BackStage and flip through the pages, will notice that Idylls for a Bare Stage - as book, play, and specialized form for theatre - is a three-in-one offering relevant to their own engagement in contemporary performing arts:
1, as a book, just out from a Baltimore-based independent publisher, poetry for poetry readers / poetic monologues for the auditioning actor - juicy, challenging, skills-showcasing monologues.
2, as a play, for production by theater companies, troupes, or individual performers, either in part (with individual scenes or "idylls") or as a whole.
And 3, as a new - an old-new - theory and practice for theatre: through the ancient form of the "idyll," reinvented by poet and playwright Magus Magnus, monologue becomes theatre in and of itself, easy to mount, capable of being performed almost anywhere.
Especially for the actor... just as much as these are monologues useful for auditioning, the book's overall concept actually encourages a turning of the audition monologue on its head, providing the means for a showcase of his or her skills through the art of the Idyll - poetic monologues designed for performance - thereby affirming the actor as an individual artist, as self-determining as the poet, the painter, and the musician / songwriter.
