sheila duane

A well-meaning but confused community college instructor tries to connect with a transgender student who feels bothered.
The script is titled The Encyclopedia (the upload title is not correct).

This monologue is the story of the woman who should have married Emmitt Till. As she is dying, Fate, a woman, comes to her and tells her what her life was supposed to be, who her husband was supposed to be and gives her a glimpse of the child she never bore.
Attached are two versions of this monologue:
1) Extrajudicial - shortened and revised with dramaturg Renee' Flemings (who also performed the monologue in the DUAF 2024).
2) Original script titles Mrs. Emmett Till.

This condensed version of A Christmas Carol is designed for reading rather than performance.

Royce Stevenson is the owner of an art gallery funded by
profits she inherited from her father who made his fortune
as a used car dealer, Hoping for a positive review of her
gallery, she accepts an interview request from a reporter
who has a tragic history with Royce's father and the Quality
Used Car dealership.
2 Women, 1 Man

An Irish immigrant woman, Gram, living in the Bronx who is trying to keep her daughter and granddaughter safe from the physical and emotional injuries that plague the lives of women. Gram sees the world through the lens of Irish mythology and finds a pooka and a gancanagh wooing her daughter and granddaughter; she’ll have none of it.

Inspired by Waiting for Godot, Waiting for Gordie is the story of Deanna, who enters a junk shop hoping to sell her copy of an autographed Doors album. She meets Esra, who is also waiting for Gordie.

Trish visits her mother, Barbara, in a mental health/rehab facility visiting room. Barbara is there because Trish found her unresponsive from a drug overdose. The family is in crisis.

Evie is recovering from a gunshot wound in a safe house in New York City. She was shot when white supremacists stormed the university political science department where she worked. Because she suffers from PTSD, she isn’t sure whether the shouting and thrashing sounds she hears from the next apartment are real or figments of her fear-ravaged imagination. Further, she is afraid that hiding next door is the fourth university attacker who managed to escape the police. Panicked, Evie calls the police and asks to speak with an officer. But will anyone believe her?

Lily is an 'older' dime-a-dance girl who finds solace remembering her late husband as she dances with the young men from the local army base.

A young woman plans to exhume her parents and move them to a location closer to her home so she can get reacquainted.

A bloody knife walks into an interrogation room with a newly minted widow. A detective, who claims to be an expert on newly minted widows, tried to intimidate either or both into a confession...

Holly's best friend is a walking, talking six-foot tall knife who loves to smoke. Her husband, Adam, is a former fire-fighter whose recovery from a work-related burn is slow and hindered by his best friend: six-foot tall capsule who hates Holly and wants Adam to divorce her. Their son, Seth, is in college and trying to live a normal life, a difficult task under the circumstances. 'A normal life' becomes impossible for him after he discovers his mother's criminal secret.

What makes a woman a victim? Can victims throw off their victimhood and become whole beings again?
Restoration Parts is the story of a family broken by a child's rape at age six. The child, Girl, grows up to take back her life from trauma. Was it murder or self-defense?

Rev. Marcus Keyes has spent the last four decades in prison for killing two rapists in 1940 Milling, Tennessee. He is dying of cancer and wants to spend his last days in his own bed. A lawyer from his home state of Pennsylvania has come to Tennessee to apply for a compassionate release for him.
Alice Halpen, his attorney reviews his file, his conviction, and the original evidence against. She meets the members of the small community who know that Rev. Keyes should not be in jail but who have also been physically and psychologically beaten down by the Klan and have become paralyzed.
No one is safe from retribution.

A community college English teacher vents her frustrations about the downward spiral of education in the age of the cell phone to her less than serious students during conference week.
This is a monologue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN5n8O4pCjA

A college English teacher cannot complete her lesson until she convinces a young man that verbal assaults are not protected speech.

A femme fatale tells the audience how she stays thin. A monologue

Wanna Sing the Blues is the story of a young southern belle, Kitty Greene, who (like most people at one time or another) falls in love with a lothario saxophone 'bluesman.' Kitty seeks the assistance of Papa A, a man who was once the most famous Bluesman in Mississippi. And Papa A teaches her to sing the blues!
Wanna Sing the Blues was brilliantly read by AJ Melnick as ‘Papa A’ Cosmo Abraham and Renee Panagos as Miss Kitty Greene in May of 2020.

Ellie and Liz, two white bread-eating, volvo-driving, church-going American soccer moms, decide to be adventurous and go to the local sex club. They're surprised to meet someone they know.

Harvena, the 60-ish owner of the MirrorMax Circus who speaks with a Russian accent, is interviewing young male dancers to be her "Peanut Dancer" for her televised circus. The play begins as Harvena interviews Ambrose, a young, male, classically trained dancer who is an applicant for a circus dancer job. She forces him to wear a ridiculous, overly-sexy costume and treats him like a sexual object as she force-feeds him peanuts.

It's 1978; the Bonanza Shooting Gallery, Coney Island, has been the scene of four grizzly murders. A young female detective tries to crack the case. But who is the Shooting Gallery Killer? Is it the missing Eddie Melville, stooge for the Russian mob? His wife? Or maybe it's one of the many thugs who works for the infamous Mr. Koslov, the owner of the biggest gambling joint in the area? Maybe it's Mr. Koslov himself?
This play is an homage to 1970s era cheesy police dramas.

Two women in their seventies, one white and one black, make it their regular practice to read Oprah magazine together every month. They're best friends and share everything, until one woman does the unthinkable...

Three female actors are hired to make a commercial for a new product called The Power Mop. The actors learn that the creators of the commercial’s script are using the adage “A woman’s place is in the home” as the subtext for their premise and dialogue. The women respond by educating the youngest actor, Eve, about economic unfairness in the workplace.

The Dating Site is a play about a young woman named Alice who is creating an online profile for a social media dating site. Because of her insecurities, she has invited an imaginary ‘ideal woman’ to help her develop an interesting profile. The question of the play is whether a person's online identity is even remotely like that same person's real-life identity. This question creates a dialog between typical Alice and perfect Alisha. As part of the story, Alice receives interest from a gentleman who has clearly created an idealized identity of his own.

It is 1978 at the University of New Mexico. Students are preparing for an ERA / Women's Rights Rally, filling envelopes for a mass mailing. The students tell the stories of the feminists in their families while Schlafly, across the stage, quotes from her anti-feminists writings. The juxtaposition creates a comical tension between 'real life' and 'white, conservative America' on steroids.