Salt Lake Acting Company

SUNLIGHT by Sharr White

Monday November 17th at 7:00 PM

The Salt Lake Acting Company’s New Play Sounding Series presents a reading of SUNLIGHT by Sharr White. The reading will be held Monday, November 17th at 7:00pm and is free to the public, thanks to the support of American Express and Salt Lake County’s Zoo, Arts, and Parks Program. There will be a discussion following the reading with New York-based playwright Sharr White.

The reading will be directed by SLAC Literary Manager David Mong.

The cast will feature Anne Cullimore Decker, Joseph Crnich, Jeanette Puhich, and Richard Scharine.

SUNLIGHT takes place over a winter’s evening at the home of Matthew Gibbon (Richard Scharine), the controversial president of a private college. A legendary “progressive,” he has finally gone too far in shutting down the student newspaper. In an ironic twist, he closes the paper down because he feels the young neo-cons controlling it have slandered him. A virtual 180 turn from liberal students protesting the actions of a conservative administration. He also responds in a fairly crude manner (trashing the Dean’s office in a shockingly disgusting way) to news that the Dean of the Law School, his son-in-law Vincent (Joseph Crnich), has been subpoenaed to testify in a congressional investigation on abuses of power by the White House administration. At the Dean’s behest, students at the law school had actually been researching ways around constitutional limits of power. Gibbon’s daughter and Vincent’s wife, Charlotte (Jeanette Puhich), a sharp and steely lawyer, has taken over in this crisis as the Board of Trustees meets for a no-confidence vote on her father. She moves aside Gibbon’s personal assistant of many, many years, Maryanne (Anne Cullimore Decker), who, as an integral part of the family, is not the least bit happy about it. When Vincent appears at the house with an ultimatum for Gibbon from certain members of the Board, the stage is set for this complex and character driven exploration of “hubris” before the fall.

SHARR WHITE (Playwright) Sharr White’s plays have been seen at a number of cramped, overheated and sometimes fantastic spaces in New York City, including Todo Con Nada (THE DREAM CANVAS); The Ohio Theatre (THE LAST ORANGE DYING); Raw Space (SAFE FROM THE FUTURE); HB Playwrights Foundation (THE THIRD TEMPLE, workshops of SIX YEARS); a hotel suite on the 38th floor of the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square (HEAVEN AND ALL THINGS LOVELY); and Lincoln Center Theatre’s Director’s Lab (workshop of IRIS FIELDS). Sharr is a two-time finalist for the Princess Grace Award (SATELLITES OF THE SUN and THE ESCAPE VELOCITY OF SAVAGES); a winner of the Dr. Henry and Lillian Nesburn Award as part of the Julie Harris Award in Playwriting; and a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. He is a member of the Playwrights Unit at the Ensemble Studio Theatre and a member of Los Angeles’ Apartment A Productions. Sharr's newest play, SUNLIGHT, was commissioned by South Coast Repertory, appeared as a workshop both at SCR's 2008 Pacific Playwrights Festival and at Marin Theatre Company's Nu Werkz series, and will premiere at MTC in the fall of 2009. SIX YEARS was first produced as part of Actors Theatre of Louisville’s 30th Anniversary Humana Festival of New American Plays.

NOTE:
The New Play Sounding Series is free to the public, however, audience members will receive a ticket as they enter the building at SLAC, on a first come-first serve basis. The building will be open at 6:00pm for the 7:00pm reading.