Contemporary Scenes for Young Actors
Original price was: $50.00.$35.00Current price is: $35.00.
34 Scenes to Challenge & Excite Your Acting Students
Introducing Contemporary Scenes for Young Actors, a new eBook featuring 34 high-quality, instantly involving scenes for actors aged 8-16 and for the teachers, directors and acting coaches who work with them.
Written by award-winning NYC playwright Douglas M. Parker, this incredible collection of high-quality scenes uses only accessible, contemporary language and situations and offers your young actors a broad range of circumstances and emotions to work with. Ideal for kids and teens of today.
Scenes with Substance
If you work with young actors, you’ve experienced the difficulty of trying to find quality material for them to work with in class.
You want something that will excite your students, while challenging them with unique, accessible and authentic characters with real emotions.
Scene work is crucial to developing young actors because it gives them the chance to work on dialogue, character and relationships in a focused, intimate setting.
Unfortunately, finding quality scenes that don’t “write down” to kids can be a challenge. Most scene books available to kids and teens are either anthologies, in which scenes are taken from older plays, lack context and use outdated language, or they’re filled with unappealing original scenes that offer little more than cliche situations and unrealistic dialogue.
Contemporary Scenes for Young Actors is packed with 34 rewarding, relevant scenes guaranteed to electrify your actors, your audience, and you!
With this eBook you’ll receive:
- 100-page PDF containing 34 scenes for young actors age 8-16
- A broad variety of two and three-person scenes
- Gender-neutral characters to provide ultimate flexibility
- Emotional arcs and strong endings to challenge actors and keep audiences engaged
- A range of circumstances and emotions, from comedic to heartfelt to whimsical
- Material that is ideal as short performance pieces and for use in the classroom
A note from playwright Douglas M. Parker
Scenes are the most basic building block of any theatrical work that has a plot. And although not all scenes involve two or more actors, most scenes do. Put two or more actors together onstage and the possibility for almost any situation or emotion instantly comes alive – along with the possibility for every form of human relationship, from equal to unequal to evolving.
With that thought in mind, the thirty-four scenes contained in this book provide young actors with the material to explore a full spectrum of age-appropriate emotions and relationships, ranging from fear to friendship, love to loathing, and cooperation to competition – with moments of sadness, sympathy, silliness, envy, guilt, anger, and almost everything in between.
To help young actors get the most from their experience, the language used in every scene is typical everyday language, rather than the sometimes outdated or highly poetic language that is often found in books of scenes collected from older plays. This emphasis on contemporary language and situations allows the actors to focus directly on the scenes, emotions and characters, without being distracted by unfamiliar words or turns of phrase.
At Beat by Beat, we’re passionate about raising the bar on the quality of resources that are available for young actors…and you’ll find this book to be no exception. Over 30,000 people a month visit the Beat by Beat website, discovering tools and resources which have brought joy to teachers and creativity to young actors around the world.
You have our personal guarantee that if you aren’t completely satisfied, if you don’t love this monologue book and use it all the time, call or email us within 30 days and we’ll refund every penny immediately.
With the purchase of this eBook you’ll receive:
- Instant download of a 100-page PDF eBook containing 34 high-quality scenes
- Two and three-person scenes with a range of emotional and situational content
- Permission to print and photocopy as much as you need for personal or classroom use
- A 30-day no-risk guarantee!
List Price: $50.00
Doc List –
FINALLY
Miles ahead of similar books I’ve bought over the years. Solid material that treats the emotions of young people with intelligence and gives younger actors challenges with sharp, smart and very entertaining scenes.
Whitclem –
Great Resource.
You know it works when the kids like it as much as the teacher. My group this semester has gotten such a kick out of this book. Very accessible scenes. Great range of emotions and characters. Unexpected twists in virtually every scene.
Steve Austin –
Five Stars
A great resource for my teen on-camera actors! Keep the books coming! Thanks!
JAS –
Totally unexpected.
Wow – I was definitely not expecting this level of craft. So many scene books for younger actors seem to have such ridiculously unrealistic dialogue that I did not have high hopes for this one and I’m happy to say that I was very pleasantly surprised. The funny scenes are funny in a real way (not in an “aren’t kids cute” way). And there are scenes in this book that are so touching, I actually teared up.
Karen Salzbank –
Just good writing!
My sister-in-law works with young actors and, knowing my background, suggested I pick up a copy of Mr. Parker’s book. Wow – I wish I were still working with kids myself. It’s like this book comes from a different universe. Someplace where young people have real emotions and talk like real people.
Jack Bradly –
Recommend
Both teens and pre-teens in my acting classes all found performance pieces that they really connected with. Very pleased.
Thomas Seabolt –
Five Stars
Thank you.
TAM126 –
Great Scenes for Children.
This writer writes very well for children and young teens; he has a great mastery of their language so the scenes are funny on their own and work well for this age group without being offensive or stupid. I’ve bought book after book of useless scenes written for children that don’t go anywhere and use inappropriate language or situations that Midwestern parents just don’t appreciate. These scenes really worked – which was a relief as it can take FOREVER to find useful and relevant scenes with appropriate language for children that doesn’t belittle their development. I used these for my acting classes scene night this fall (which ranged in age from 8-14) and the scenes were very successful. Will definitely buy more from this author!
Kelly A. –
I would definitely recommend!
This was the ONLY book I could find on this site with scenes that had appropriate language and storylines. I would definitely recommend!
Cory –
A Solid Scene Book for Emerging Actors.
I’ve used a couple of scenes from this book for a drama/theatre camp that I’m teaching this summer and the players love it! It really is accessible for the kids and the scenes are actually interesting for both them and adults alike. Some of the scenes are serious while others are light-hearted. I could definitely recommend this to anyone wanting some quick scenes to practice characterization and working with a partner. Most of the scenes are brief and contain 2 parts. There are a couple of three-part scenes that are slightly longer.
P. –
Drama Book
I use this book with my drama students in elementary.
cheylouwho –
Perfect for teens theater. I teach a musical theater class for kids ages 10 and up. This is a great resource for them to practice speaking lines! Each scene is the perfect time length for them to do as either a cold read or something they can practice before hand, and are age appropriate. The kids really loved them and the comedic ones are definitely their favorite.