The Ultimate Audition Book for Teens Volume XI: 111 One-Minute Monologues by Type (Young Actors Series)

Though slightly less predictable than some of Dabrowski's monologue volumes, many of the monologues included in this book deal with conflicts outside of the character and are presented as a series of mostly questions to an unseen and occasionally undefined other character. As stated within the title, the volume is organized by "types" (players, geeks, addicts, troublemakers) feeding in to Dabrowski's biggest problem of stereotyping characters rendering the book useless for true character studies.The most interesting monologues have characters questioning themselves about subjects such as whether or not to ride with a drunk driver (pg 34), convincing a friend not to have sex (pg. 39), contemplating a gender change (pg 54), confronting parents who don't recognize the speaker's worth (pg 55), acting stereotypical of the character's race (pg 71), or confronting an absent father (pg 78).Some of the monologues are humorous looks at the characters' foibles such as self- aggrandizing (pg 14), gullibility (pg 16), acknowledging past mistakes (pg 36), or vanity (pg 27 and pg 64).The benefits of this volume are outweighed by Dabrowski's never-changing voice and diction and by her usual use of general stereotyping of teen cliques (Emo pg 29 or Popular pg 67). This book could be used for classroom rather than tournament use, but volumes such as More Short Scenes and Monologues for Middle School Students (Mary Hall Surface) or More Scenes and Monologs from the Best New Plays (Robert Ellis) would be more universally useful.

At first I was a little uncertain about how this book is structured---putting teens into "types"? But, I confess, it's actually really useful. I use this book in Drama and English classes at two schools with very different cultures. One is very conservative, one is more urban. The material works for both environments. We change words and cultural references here and there from time to time. When students are looking for pieces to perform, they often use "types" as guidelines; I find myself using this book more than I would have expected. Also, we've had some really good discussions and projects come from using some monologues read in class. I would recommend. While every piece won't work for every person or school (of course), there's enough here (111 monologues) to find something that will work for everyone.