NEW PAGES:

The Essential Anthology of Scenes & Monologues for Actors and Students

Available Now Online & At the Drama Book Shop 

$19.99

Perfect for auditions. Great for scene study classes. Awesome for supporting women in the arts! All proceeds go to the playwrights in the book + SheNYC’s work for gender equity in the entertainment industry.

This anthology is made up of selections from nine shows that made it through to the highly competitive SheNYC Festival stage, written by the best women playwrights in the industry.

This book includes 26 scenes and 12 monologues from: 

• Children of Camelot and To Each His Own by Nakisa Aschtiani
• Valer and From A to Double D by Mandy Murphy
• Fall (Apart) Together by Madelyn Shaffer
• Gray and Memories of the Game by Kristy Thomas
• Dancing Girl and The Human Incubator by Elinor T Vanderburg & Drew Vanderburg

All scenes have at least one female character.

This compilation includes scenes and monologues for men and women; Black, Persian, and white actors; one Blind/Vision-impaired actor (audio recordings of these scenes available); characters aged 11-70; as well as race-, ability-, and gender-neutral roles.

$19.99

All profits from the book sales are split between SheNYC and the authors in the anthology. Purchasing the book supports the careers of marginalized writers and SheNYC’s work!

Published by Always Writing 4 U under publisher Kristy Thomas, in collaboration with SheNYC Arts.

See a Sample of What’s Inside

About the Writers

Kristy Thomas, Playwright and Publisher

Kristy Thomas lives in Kansas City, MO working daily to tell the most dynamic stories. She is a lifelong educator by trade in the areas of theatre, communications, and leadership. She created a writing and publishing company giving opportunities for new writers to see their work in print, Always Writing 4 U, where she also writes one-act plays, poetry, prose, and monologues for competition. She also writes short and full-length plays and is always working to heighten her storytelling abilities, voice, and the voices of the people that she speaks for and through. Writing for television is her life goal in addition to building a better understanding of DEIA and Social Justice across all organizations, but especially education and in theatre where her heart lives. She hopes to accomplish those goals by leading professional developments and public speaking engagements through her second business Thomas DEI Consulting LLC (www.thomasdeiconsulting.com)

Kristy’s first show, Memories of the Game, was presented as a part of the 2017 SheNYC Summer Theater Festival. She then joined our Los Angeles-based producing team to launch the SheLA Summer Theater Festival at the Zephyr Theatre in Los Angeles, California, as a producer in 2018. She returned to the SheNYC stage in 2022 as the Resident Playwright to premiere her second piece, Gray.

Nakisa Aschtiani

Nakisa Aschtiani, a Persian-American playwright and Halloween enthusiast born in Germany and raised in California, lives in Orange County with her amazing husband and three quirky dogs. She is a lover of all things Theatre. When she isn’t writing, Nakisa enjoys cooking and watching game shows with her family.

Nakisa’s play Children of Camelot was presented in the 2017 SheNYC Summer Theater Festival in the Connelly Theater. Nakisa then joined our Los Angeles-based producing team to launch the SheLA Summer Theater Festival at the Zephyr Theatre in Los Angeles, California, as a producer in 2018. She returned to the SheLA stage in 2019 as a playwright with her second piece, To Each His Own.

Mandy Murphy

Mandy Murphy is a New York-based playwright/actress who was born and raised in Texas. She is constantly traveling through the southwest, looking for new stories to tell. Born in Austin, Mandy grew up all along I-35 from San Marcos to Oklahoma. As a storyteller, Mandy is not so concerned with starting conversations about specific topics but simply starting conversations. Constantly looking for the good in things, she uses her southern roots and her big city vibes to bridge the gap in our country between people who only see their differences instead of all of their similarities. She enjoys telling the stories of women who have to make big decisions. Women whose lives have pushed hard to make or break them. Women with secrets, with rage, with curves, mullets, tattoos and everything in between who despite it all love hard and love big. Website: www.mandymurphy.org / Instagram: @mandywritesthings

Mandy began her SheNYC Arts career as an actor, in the 2016 all-women adaptation of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. She then returned as an accepted playwright for the 2017 SheNYC Summer Theater Festival with From A to Double D, for which she won the Festival award for Best Original Script. She followed this with Valer, presented in the 2018 SheNYC Summer Theater Festival.

Madelyn Shaffer

Madelyn Shaffer is a writer and director who pretty much puts on any other hats in the arts that she needs to, in order to keep working in the arts.  Originally from Pittsburgh, PA, Madelyn moved to Texas to get a BFA in Musical Theatre, and then to New York City where she lives now. As a storyteller, Madelyn gravitates toward magic realism, finding comedy in darkness, and observing the amazing resilience of regular people. madelynshaffer.com

After producing Fall (Apart) Together in the very first SheNYC Summer Theater Festival in 2016, Madelyn was grateful to stay involved on the Board of Directors, and meet so many of the singular and inspiring theatre-makers featured here.

Elinor T and Drew Vanderburg

Elinor and Drew fell in love trying to out-write each other in their college playwriting class. Now they write together as a dream-loaded storytelling duo within their informal theater collective, underlords. They create plays for and about misfits, and build fantastical worlds that address urgent social issues and amplify unheard voices. They are endlessly thankful to SheNYC. @weareunderlords

The Human Incubator is a sci-fi musical about reproductive ethics set in a world where humans lay eggs, which premiered in the 2017 SheNYC Summer Theater Festival. Two years later, Ellie and Drew returned to the 2019 SheNYC Festival with Dancing Girl, a moody refresh of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame that centers the story of Esmeralda and the outcasts. Elinor has since joined the SheNYC Arts core team as Art Director, designing the logos and branding for the organization.