List $19.95

Written & performed by Ruth Draper - Unabridged Selections - 2 COMPACT DISCS - 2.5 hours

Publisher, Susan Mulcahy, Acme Content Company (2000)

"When I first discovered Ruth Draper's recordings, suddenly I had a standard. I had something to aspire to. I was thrilled at the perfection of these monologues and the richness and the humanity of them." --Lily Tomlin

"I was in awe of Ruth Draper. Each of her characters was like a Rembrandt on stage - a total human being, a total portrait." --Uta Hagen

"Ruth Draper makes movies for the ears." --Tom Waits

"I have always felt that Ruth Draper was (with Martha Graham) the greatest individual performer that America has ever given us." --Sir John Gielgud

"Each of Ruth Draper's monodramas presents a dazzling mosaic of a human being. I don't believe there can ever have been an actor who managed to show you so many sides of a character." --Simon Callow

"...solo performances so richly characterized, intricately detailed, knowing and hilarious that it seemed hard to believe they could all be the work of a single person." --Tim Page, Washington Post, February 21, 2001

"...the greatest of all monologists, the immortal Ruth Draper." --Michael M. Thomas, New York Observer, November 20, 2000

"...an almost mythical figure in the solo performance world." --Nikki Weinstein, Time Out New York, November 2-8, 2000

Disc 1

The Italian Lesson
The Actress
Doctors and Diets
A German Governess with a Class of Children

Disc 2

A Class in Greek Poise
On the Porch in a Maine Coast Village
Three Women and Mr. Clifford: Part 1 - The Private Secretary, Part 2 - In the Motor, Part 3 - At Mrs. Mallory's

About the Performer: Ruth Draper was the undisputed queen of the one-woman theater in the 20th century. Throughout her nearly forty years as a professional performer, from her official debut in 1920 until the night she died in 1956, Draper filled theaters all over the world with her unique ability to transform herself into a vast array of characters. From New York society matrons and New England crones to British schoolgirls and Continental divas, the portraits she created were as authentic as they were mesmerizing. Equally transfixing were the scores of characters she merely evoked, but with such precision that they too seemed to live on the stage. Fans of her original "monodramas" included European royalty and U.S. presidents, and such stage legends as Sarah Bernhardt and George Bernard Shaw. Henry Adams considered her a genius; Henry James wrote a monologue for her (she never performed it); John Singer Sargent sketched her; and John Gielgud declared himself "infinitely fortunate" to have both known her and seen her onstage.

Given the ephemeral nature of theater, it is rare for the legacy of a performing artist such as Draper to endure. She would now be nothing more than a historical footnote were it not for a series of recordings she made for RCA from 1954 to 1956. Through them, though for years they were difficult to obtain, Draper has a sizable contemporary following, and has influenced such artists as Lily Tomlin, Charles Busch, John Lithgow, Simon Callow, Charles Nelson Reilly, Julia Sweeney and Tom Waits.

While researching an article about Ruth Draper that appeared in the November 1999 issue of Vanity Fair writer and editor Susan Mulcahy learned that Draper's recordings had gone out of print. Mulcahy decided to produce the first CD compilation of Draper's recordings (Ruth Draper and Her Company of Characters : Selected Monologues), containing seven of Draper's sketches. She also produced the second compact disc compilation (More Selected Monologues), containing ten of Draper's pieces.