Contemporary Duologues Collection

Two Men | Two Women | One Man & One Woman

Trilby James

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781780018782
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Acting & Auditioning

THE GOOD AUDITION GUIDES:
Helping you select and perform the audition piece that is best suited to your performing skills

This collection, available only as an ebook, combines all the material available in the separate print volumes, Contemporary Duologues: Two Men, Contemporary Duologues: Two Women and Contemporary Duologues: One Man & One Woman.

As an actor at any level – whether you are doing theatre studies at school, taking part in youth theatre, preparing for drama-school showcases, or attending professional acting workshops – you will often be required to prepare a duologue with a fellow performer. Your success is often based on locating and selecting a fresh, dynamic scene suited to your specific performing skills, as well as your interplay as a duo. Which is where this book comes in.

This collection features seventy-five fantastic duologues, mostly written since the year 2000 by some of our most exciting dramatic voices, offering a wide variety of character types and styles of writing.

Playwrights featured include Mike Bartlett, Howard Brenton, Jez Butterworth, Caryl Churchill, Helen Edmundson, Ella Hickson, Sam Holcroft, Anna Jordan, Lucy Kirkwood, Evan Placey, Jessica Swale and Jack Thorne, and the plays themselves were premiered at the very best theatres across the UK including the National Theatre, Manchester Royal Exchange, the Traverse in Edinburgh, Shakespeare's Globe, and the Almeida, Bush, Hampstead and Royal Court Theatres.

The collection is divided into three sections, with twenty-five duologues for two men, twenty-five for two women, and a further twenty-five for one man and one woman.

Drawing on her experience as an actor, director and teacher at several leading drama schools, Trilby James equips each duologue with a thorough introduction including the vital information you need to place the piece in context (the who, what, when, where and why) and suggestions about how to perform the scene to its maximum effect (including the characters' objectives).

The collection also features an introduction on the whole process of selecting and preparing a duologue, and how to present it to the greatest effect. The result is the most comprehensive and useful contemporary duologue book of its kind now available - and this combined ebook represents great value for money.

'Sound practical advice... a source of inspiration for teachers and students alike' Teaching Drama Magazine on The Good Audition Guides

CONTEMPORARY DUOLOGUES

Two Women

3 Winters

Tena Stivičic

WHOAlisia Kos, thirty-six, and her sister, Lucija Kos, thirty-three. (Out of context these characters could be played younger.)

WHEREThe Kos’ family home in Zagreb, Croatia.

WHENNovember 2011. After midnight.

WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENEDThe play tells the story of four generations of the Kos family. It travels forwards and backwards in time charting war and political upheaval during the years 1945, 1990 and 2011 in what is now Croatia, a part of the former Yugoslavia. Central to the story is the house in which they live. In the duologue that follows, the year is 2011. Lucija is about to be married to entrepreneur Damjan. Her sister Alisa, visiting from England where she is studying for her PhD, is concerned about how Damjan has managed to purchase the house, which was once partitioned by the state and shared between three families.

WHAT TO CONSIDER

• The historical and political background. Take time to research the key events as described in the play.

• The tension between the sisters. Like many sisters they are rivalrous but also close.

• Lucija was a fat child while Alisa was the one with boyfriends.

• Alisa has had several failed relationships, some of them gay.

• Alisa has travelled and forged an academic career, while Lucija has stayed at home to be married to a local entrepreneur.

• Karolina was daughter to the original owners of the house – the aristocratic Amruš family. After the Second World War Karolina’s father fled to Argentina, along with other Nazi sympathisers. Read the play to find out how the family are related to Karolina and why it is that Karolina insists that the house is theirs by rights.

• Their great-grandmother, Monika, was a maid in the Amruš household.

• General Tito was the Prime Minister of former Yugoslavia, and the ‘Party’ is the Communist Party. Their Grandma Rose was a loyal Party member.

• Dunja is their aunt.

WHAT ALISA WANTS

• To prick her sister’s conscience.

WHAT LUCIJA WANTS

• For Alisa not to judge her.

WHAT THE SCENE IS ABOUTSisterly rivalry, sisterly love, change, survival, social conscience versus greed.

NBThis play offers a number of other duologues from which to choose.

ALISA walks into the dining room, carrying a bottle of whiskey. She finds LUCIJA in her pyjamas, at the table, eating the apple cake from the tray. An old trunk is pushed to the side of the room.

ALISA. What are you doing?

LUCIJA. Couldn’t sleep.

ALISA. Nervous?

LUCIJA. Hungry. I haven’t eaten properly in a week.

ALISA sits at the table, pours herself a drink.

ALISA. You haven’t eaten properly in a decade.

LUCIJA. Not true. I had a very indulgent Sunday lunch in 2007. What about you?

ALISA. Can’t sleep either. (Re: the trunk.) Where did that come from?

LUCIJA. The attic. Everyone seems to think that old crap from every nook and cranny in the house should be dumped on me to deal with.

ALISA. That ought to give you a pleasant sense of entitlement.

LUCIJA keeps eating. ALISA opens the trunk and pulls out an old, early-twentieth-century lady’s dress.

LUCIJA. Karolina’s?

ALISA. Too fancy to be Great-Grandma’s? I think it’s the one in the portrait.

ALISA brings the dress to her face and inhales the smell.

Smells like history. Put it on.

LUCIJA. No. You think?

LUCIJA undresses and carefully puts on the dress. It’s too tight across her chest and altogether a size too small.

People were smaller a hundred years ago.

ALISA. Certainly in the chest area.

LUCIJA. Congratulations. It’s been all of six hours before you started giving me shit.

ALISA raises her hands in a conciliatory manner.

It’s easy for you to judge. Having not taken after the fat side of the family. Do you know that breasts are made of fat? You lose the fat, you lose the breasts. Or keep both. What kind of a Sophie’s Choice is that?

ALISA. So, Sophie lost the fat and put on a pair of wedding breasts.

LUCIJA. I didn’t put them on you, did I?

ALISA approaches LUCIJA and starts buttoning up the dress at the back. LUCIJA pulls her belly in and inhales as ALISA straps her into the dress.

ALISA. ‘Fooling around doesn’t mean you’re gay’?

She pulls the dress tighter. LUCIJA...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• One Man & One Woman
• Two Women
• Two Men
• The Good Audition Guides
• The Duologues
• About The Author
• Copyright Information