After creation, Eve begins a journal.

King David’s son discovers the eagle’s egg.

A soldier recalls the face of his dead comrade.

An Iraqi woman speaks of fear and pride.

A Wongaibon woman finds family, country and a scruffy dog.

Dalit poetry defies poverty and marginalisation.

An intersex youth claims true identity.

‘In any piece worth performing there is something happening underneath that is not in the script.’

This monologue collection offers up a challenge: to perform with voices that aren’t from play scripts. Working instead from fiction, non-fiction and poetry, these pieces are a fresh and sharp source of material for performance, auditions and workshops. Unusual sources provide the actor or drama student with a new array of monologue possibilities.

The characters range from lovers in the King James Bible to a sci-fi Artificial Intelligence unit navigating gender identities between planets. Classic sources include Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, Ulysses and The Bell Jar and work from Beckett, Kafka and Mark Twain. Strong contemporary monologues come from work by Raymond Carver, Miranda July, Elena Ferrante, Jeffrey Eugenides, Alice Munro and David Sedaris. Australian voices speak in iconic moments from Jasper Jones and John Marsden’s Tomorrow series and from definitive work by David Malouf, Elizabeth Jolley, Geraldine Brooks, Morris Gleitzman, Jeanine Leane, Gayle Kennedy and Alice Pung.

These monologues speak from moments of radical change and subtle exploration. Beneath each is a well-crafted literary work with its own world of characters, conflicts and tension: we invite you to look beyond the script.