As a monologist, Eric Bogosian currently has no peer. For two decades (from 1980 to 2000), in seminal shows like Sex Drugs and Rock’n’Roll, Pounding Nails in My Forehead and Wake Up and Smell the Coffee, Bogosian created and inhabited many varied and compellingly original characters: a homeless man on a subway, a divorced father with anger issues, a drug dealer a little too enthusiastic about sharing his stash with a customer, a self-help guru who insists that the way to eternal happiness is becoming filthy rich.

 

Although he also wrote the full-length plays Suburbia and Talk Radio, Bogosian will always be thought of—even more so than Anna Deavere Smith and Spalding Gray—as a solo performer whom audiences are entertained and enlightened by, even as he uncovers the darker side of the American psyche.

 

In celebration of his new book, a collection of his work titled (100) Monologues, Bogosian returns to the stage to do what he does best: he will read from and perform an assortment of his “greatest hits”—the selections change from show to show—in a special limited engagement at the Bank Street Theater. Although he has become a terrific actor in movies and on television, Bogosian back onstage alone is always a good thing.