“Characters are everything,” says New York Obie-winning actor and writer Eric Bogosian. “In the early years, my writing was generated by my acting because I’ve been an actor since high school. In the 1980s I was interested in how characters pop out of me. I let them speak, and this was how the first monologues got written. I would tape myself being a character and let him say whatever he had to say. Eventually I wrote them down, and that was the first show.”
Bogosian’s latest book, 100 (Monologues) (Theatre Communication Group, June) amasses the monologues he’s written over a 20-year period, between 1980 and 2000, primarily from six shows he wrote and performed off Broadway. He tells Show Daily, “About a year ago I was absentmindedly counting how many monologues I had written and sure enough, it came to 100, so I got in touch with TCG because they are the publisher of all my plays and solo shows, and said, ‘Why don’t we put them all in one book and call it 100? And they said, ‘That’s a good idea,’ so we proceeded accordingly.”
With respect to the craft of writing these pieces, the actor notes, “They’re the product of a long process going from improv to working it, to editing on the page and going back to live performance, and back and forth, until finally I say, ‘I’m satisfied with this.’ Each one of them grew over the years—they’re like river rocks that have been polished over a long period of time.”
There is also a website (http://100monologues.com), which originated from a discussion at one of Bogosian’s regular poker games with actor friends like Bobby Cannavale and Liev Schreiber, where you can see a range of his colleagues perform the monologues. Bogosian directs each shoot. “We wanted to give students an opportunity to take a look at what a very skilled actor like Michael Shannon or Jessica Hecht would do with one of these monologues. We’re going to shoot them all, and every Tuesday at midnight, a new one shows up on the site.”
The author is excited about being at BEA and being part of the publishing world. “To me it’s the big leagues—bigger than the theater world, because there’s something about writing a book and putting it out into the world. I love the fact that you can walk around here, touch the books, and see the authors. And you learn things about your own work, because people are conversing about their experience with it. I’m crazy about books, so wherever there’s a lot of books, I’m a happy guy.”
Bogosian sign galleys today at the TCG booth (11040A), 1–2 p.m.
