Salt Lake Acting Company Presents
Women+ on the Edge of Democracy
Monday, November 2, 2026
Directors
Cynthia Fleming, Adriana Lemke
Stage Manager
Marci Piña
Play review and selection from the Women+ on the Edge of Democracy anthology for SLAC’s one-night, special event reading were supported by SLAC staff members Latoya Cameron and Akina Yamazaki.
Women+ on the Edge of Democracy is presented by the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in partnership with the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Original artwork by Paula Scher and Pentagram.
More information on Women+ on the Edge of Democracy can be found here.
Plays & Cast of Characters
ATTESTATION by Lynn Nottage
Moderator and others: Marc Nielson
Candidate and others: Latoya Cameron
COMMON GROUND by Lauren M. Gunderson
He—Anyone with a phone: Marc Nielson
She—Anyone with a phone: Sophie Jean White
Artistic Director—A voice of welcome: Adriana Lemke
AND WHERE HAS IT GONE THAT THICK AND HEAVY HISTORY BOOK WE CARRIED THROUGH THE HALLS OF LEARNING, SKINNIED NOW, PAGES AND PAGES YEARS AND YEARS ERASED. WASN’T IT BEAUTIFUL? by Susan Miller
Chairperson: Marion Markham
Newsgirl: Taylor Wallace
NIGHTLIGHT by Kimber Lee
Kaia: Hye Soo Dixon
Danny: Eliyah Arman Ghaeini
Narrator: Latoya Cameron
AN UPLIFTING HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION SPEECH by Sarah Ruhl
Woman: April Fossen
PECKING ORDER: A PLAY FOR TWO HENS by Elizabeth Diggs
Stacy: Wendy Dang
Matilda: Stephanie Howell
SEARCHING FOR ELSIE PARRISH by Heidi Schreck
Heidi: Tracie Merrill
HEADSHOTS & BIOS
LATOYA CAMERON (she/her) is an actor, singer, director, and writer. She is a proud member of Actors' Equity Association and is signed with Talent Management Group (TMG). She received the Mayor’s Artist Award in 2023 and the Afro Utah Festival’s Entertainment Excellence Award in 2025. Stage Credits: The Guys (Stage Reading), Murder Ballad, R+J: Star-Cross'd Death Match (2015 & 2025), Beloved King (NPSS), You Will Get Sick, Passing Strange, Four Women Talking About the Man Under the Sheet, Form of A Girl, and Stupid Fucking Bird, to name a few (Salt Lake Acting Company). Other Credits: Grasmere (Voodoo Theatre Company), Just Add Water, The Clean-Up Project (named The Utah Review's Top Utah Enlightenment Moment in 2022), Singing to the Brine Shrimp, A Version of Events, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, to name a few (Plan-B Theatre Company); Rocky Horror Show (2015 & 2016), Elf the Musical (2013), RENT (Pioneer Theatre Company); Shakespeare in Love, As You Like It, Henry V, Mary Poppins (Utah Shakespeare Festival); The Color Purple, Closer (Wasatch Theatre Company); A Christmas Carol (Denver Center of the Performing Arts); Shelter, the Musical (New York Musical Theatre Festival); HAIR (Egyptian Theater). Directed: Whitelisted (co-directed with Tito Livas), Sankofa, This Journey: Go Back and Get It! (Salt Lake Acting Company); Town Hall (University of Utah); Title of Show, Dreamgirls (The Grand); RENT (The Ziegfeld Theater). The second season of her podcast Sistas Unscripted with her two sisters is live now (follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook!). She is also the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Dramaturg for Salt Lake Acting Company, a part of the Leaders of Color (LoCF) 2022-23 National Cohort for Creative West, and has been a Change Leader since 2022. She is looking forward to directing Lizzie in this current season! Socials: Instagram: @Loyaness_Roar & @SistasUnscripted
WENDY DANG (she/her) is an actor, author, and playwright. She also owns The Dang Bakery and is one of the founders of Época: An Acting Class For People of Color. She thanks her husband, Tyson, and two dogs for their continued support. She is proud to have the world premiere of her first play, WHAT THE PHO? at Plan-B Theatre Company in Spring of 2027. Wendy's acting credits include Romeo & Juliet, Bald Sisters, and Egress (Salt Lake Acting Company); Fourteen Funerals (The Purple Rose); and the films Marry Christmas (Netflix), Mistletoe Mixup (Netflix), and The Ladies Room.
APRIL FOSSEN (she/her) has previously appeared at SLAC in Mercury, Bull Shark Attack, Blackberry Winter, and the NPSS readings of David Kranes' Part of the Story and L.L. West’s Mary in the Looney Bin. She has also appeared locally in A French Toast (Meanwhile Park); The Audacity and Suffrage (Plan-B Theatre Company); A Streetcar Named Desire (The Grand Theatre); Stage Kiss (Wasatch Theatre Company); August: Osage County (Silver Summit/Utah Rep); Be Here Now and Mother of the Maid (Pygmalion Theatre Company); Pride and Prejudice and Clue (Hale Center Theater Orem); Medea and Women of Trachis (Classical Greek Theatre Festival); and Titus Andronicus and Three Days of Rain (Pinnacle Acting Company). Regional credits include work with Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the California Shakespeare Festival. April holds a Bachelor’s degree in Theatre Arts from UC Berkeley.
ELIYAH ARMAN GHAEINI (he/him) is excited to return to SLAC! SLAC: Whitelisted and A Year With Frog and Toad. Regional: The Ally (Theatre Wit); Shakespeare in Love, West Side Story, The Odd Couple (Female Version), and In the Heights (West Valley Theatre); Twelfth Night (Creekside Theatre Festival). TV/Film: The Chosen (CW), High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (Disney+), Amber Brown (AppleTV), Cinderella in the Caribbean, Artifact War. BFA: Northern Illinois University. @Eli.A.Ghaeini
STEPHANIE HOWELL (she/her) has played a bird more than once. You may have seen her here at SLAC as Donna in Mr. Perfect or as Jean in Good People (neither birds). Most recently, she played Elizabeth Sawyer in Witch at PYGmalion Productions. Other favorite roles include Judy in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Pioneer Theatre Company); Marie Curie in The Half-Life of Marie Curie (PYGmalion Productions); Birgit in The Ice Front (Plan-B Theatre Company), and Juliana in The Other Place (Utah Repertory Theatre). Stephanie holds a B.S. in Theatre Arts from Northwestern University and is a member of Actors' Equity Association.
MARION MARKHAM (she/her) is grateful to be part of SLAC’s reading of Women+ on the Edge of Democracy. Recently, she made her Utah directing debut with Sunny in the Dark by Elaine Jarvik. At SLAC, she has appeared in You Will Get Sick and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City. Her stage credits include Mme. Dindon in La Cage Aux Folles at Pioneer Theatre; Off-Broadway performances at New York Theatre Workshop, The Public Theater, Theatre 1010, and The Hudson Guild, and an international tour as Maria in West Side Story. She has performed numerous Shakespearean roles with The Colonial Theatre and has appeared regionally at TheatreZone, Goodspeed, American Musical Theatre, Ocean State Theatre, Ivoryton Playhouse, and the Fulton Opera House. Television credits include Law & Order, Saturday Night Live, and All My Children. Marion has created and performed more than 50 cabaret shows nationwide.
TRACIE MERRILL (she/her) always feels at home being back at SLAC. A Jersey girl who relocated to Utah 20 years ago, she has performed locally (& alphabetically) with Good Company Theatre, the Grand, Pioneer Theatre Company, Plan-B, Pygmalion, SLAC, Salt Lake Fringe Festival, and the University of Utah. An AEA member, she received her BA from UNC Chapel Hill, MFA from UT-Knoxville, and a classical degree from Weber Douglas Academy in London.
TAYLOR WALLACE (she/her) was born and raised in Salt Lake City. Her acting credits include Plan-B's Free Elementary School Tours of Eb & Flow, Ellamental, and Squeak, as well as several workshops of new plays and stage managing the World Premieres of The Clean-up Project, Go Home Come Back, Bitter Lemon, Full Color, The Beatrix Potter Defense Society, and Dumbed Down. Acting in [SIC] *(Three Penny Acting Company); Passing Strange, ASM-ing Elephant & Piggie's "We Are in a Play!" and Form of a Girl Unknown (Salt Lake Acting Company). Stage Managing To Saints and Stars (Good Company Theatre). Acting in Pride and Prejudice and Dreamgirls (The Grand Theatre); and Medea and Helen (Classical Greek Theatre Festival). BA, Theatre Studies, Westminster University.
SOPHIE JEAN WHITE (she/her) is a repeat offender at SLAC, having graced their stage in The Gaslight Zone, Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Rock Experience, and Radiant Vermin (SLAC Making Space for Artists Program). A proud graduate of the U of U Actor Training Program, Sophie spends her free time luring friends into non-optional hangouts disguised as self-produced theatre. Other theatrical offenses include The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals (West Valley Performing Arts) and How Letty Lawless and the Brine Shrimp Band Beat Big Daddy Cox and His 9-Gigawatt AI Data Center in the Small Western Town of Salt Lake City Utah (Emily’s House), where she got to play the dastardly, smooth-headed worm-ish Spencer “Big Daddy” Cox. She hopes to one day play a normal person, but for now, she remains at large and committed to making that everyone else's problem.
ELIZABETH DIGGS
Elizabeth Diggs’s plays include Grant & Twain, Nightingale, American Beef, Close Ties, Goodbye Freddy, How to Plant a Rose, Dumping Ground, Priceless, and Custer’s Luck, published by Dramatists Play Service, Smith and Kraus, and Doubleday. She wrote the libretto for the musical Mirette (based on the Caldecott Award book by Emily Arnold McCully), with Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt. For TV, she wrote for the series St. Elsewhere. Her plays have been produced at many regional theatres including Capitol Rep, Goodspeed Opera House, SouthCoast Rep, Portland Stage, the Alley Theatre and many more. And in New York, at the Vineyard and Ensemble Studio Theatre, where she is a longtime member.
Liz was Professor of Dramatic Writing in the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. She lives in Columbia County and New York City with her partner, Emily McCully.
LAUREN M. GUNDERSON has been one of the most produced playwrights in America since 2015, topping the list 4 times, including 25/26. She is a two-time winner of the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for I and You and The Book of Will, the winner of the William Inge Distinguished Achievement in Theatre Award, Lanford Wilson Award, Otis Guernsey New Voices Award, Jeff Award, and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Arthur L. Weissberger Award, and the John Gassner Award. Her plays and musicals have been translated into a dozen languages and produced across the world, and her anthology, “Revolutionary Women,” is published by Bloomsbury. She is an Emory and NYU graduate, a screenwriter, musical book writer, and children's author who lives in London and hosts the How to Playwright podcast. LaurenGunderson.com and @LalaTellsAStory
KIMBER LEE
Plays: the water palace (Susan Smith Blackburn Special Commendation), to the yellow house (La Jolla Playhouse), untitled fck mss s**gon play (Royal Exchange Theatre & Young Vic, UK), saturday (Colorado New Play Summit), RE- (Upcoming production, Escola do Largo/Lisbon), tokyo fish story (South Coast Rep, TheatreWorks/SV, Old Globe), brownsville song (b-side for tray) (Humana Festival, LCT3, Long Wharf Theatre), and different words for the same thing (CTG). Recipient of the inaugural Bruntwood Prize International Award, Hodder Fellowship, Helen Merrill Award, 3-time Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Finalist, Edgerton New Play Award, Ruby Prize, PoNY Fellowship, Horton Foote Award, and Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. MFA: UT Austin.
SUSAN MILLER is a two-time OBIE winner and Guggenheim Playwriting Fellow whose play A Map Of Doubt And Rescue won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her play 20th Century Blues premiered at Contemporary American Theatre Festival and later ran Off-Broadway. Miller's acclaimed solo play, My Left Breast, premiered in Louisville’s Humana Festival. She's also proud to have co-led The Dramatists Guild Fellows Program. Plays: Average American, Nasty Rumors And Final Remarks, Flux, Cross Country, Confessions Of A Female Disorder, For Dear Life, It's Our Town, Too, The Grand Design, Census. Theatres: The Public, Second Stage, Naked Angels, NY Stage & Film, Mark Taper Forum, Trinity Rep, City Theatre Miami, The O’Neill, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, etc. Miller was Consulting Producer/Writer for Showtime’s The L Word and ABC’s Thirtysomething, winning the WGA Award for her groundbreaking LGBTQ Web Series, Anyone But Me, with 80 million views worldwide. www.SusanMillerPlaywright.com
SARAH RUHL is an American playwright, author, and teacher. Her twelve plays include In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2010; Tony Award Nominee, 2010); The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2005; Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2004); and Eurydice (Named one of the most impactful plays of the last 25 years by The New York Times). Her plays have been produced on Broadway, and across the country, as well as internationally; and translated into fourteen languages. Most recently, Signature Theater dedicated a season to her body of work. Her opera Eurydice (with composer Matthew Aucoin) debuted at the Metropolitan Opera and earned a Grammy nomination, and her musical Wonder with A Great Big World recently finished running at the American Repertory Theater. Her books include Smile, a memoir, 100 essays I don’t have time to write, and Lessons from my Teachers. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a PEN Center Award for mid-career playwrights, a Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, and a MacArthur “genius award” Fellowship. She teaches at the Yale School of Drama and lives in Brooklyn with her family. 
HEIDI SCHRECK is a playwright and screenwriter based in Brooklyn. Her critically acclaimed play What the Constitution Means to Me played an extended, sold-out run on Broadway, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, was nominated for two Tony Awards, and won the OBIE and New York Drama Critics’ Circle awards for Best New American Play. It also toured nationally and was the most performed play in America in 2023 and 2024. A filmed version premiered on Amazon Prime Video and received Critics Choice, PGA, and DGA Award nominations. Other plays include Grand Concourse, Creature, There are No More Big Secrets, and a new translation of Uncle Vanya, which recently premiered at Lincoln Center.
Schreck also works extensively in film and television. She is currently writing a screenplay with Sarah Polley for Warner Bros. and developing a live-action She-Ra.
CYNTHIA FLEMING | Director (She/Her)
Cynthia Fleming has been an integral part of Salt Lake Acting Company since 1998 and was named Executive Artistic Director in 2015. Over the years, Cynthia has lovingly shaped Salt Lake Acting Company into what it is today - creating and implementing SLAC’s Arts Education Programs (Title I Arts Education Program, Professional Theatre Program), deepening SLAC’s commitment to New Play Development through the Playwrights’ Lab, establishing a culture of community through the Making Space for Artists Program, outreach, and partnerships with other organizations. Under Cynthia’s leadership, SLAC has continually set the standard for accessibility, equity, diversity, and inclusion; in 2020, SLAC launched The Amberlee Fund, a capital campaign to make SLAC’s historic building wheelchair accessible. To date, Cynthia has produced over 100 plays.
ADRIANA LEMKE | Director (She/Her)
Adriana is a Salt Lake City-based theatre artist and movement professional. Her work has most often been seen on SLAC stages as Fight/Intimacy Director. She’s thrilled to step into the role of Director in a new way at SLAC, most recently with her direction of a reading of The Guys by Anne Nelson and as Assistant Director for Very Like a Whale. Previous Salt Lake Acting Company productions as Fight/Intimacy Director include Murder Ballad, Bat Boy: The Musical, The Roommate, Whitelisted, Hairy & Sherri, Sleeping Giant, Surely Goodness & Mercy, and The Wolves. Other fight and/or intimacy direction credits include The Sweet Science of Bruising, As You Like It, and Julius Caesar (U Theatre). At the Bottom (Pinnacle Acting Company), Ion (The Classical Greek Theatre Festival), Head Over Heels (The Grand Theatre), Twelfth Night (Salt Lake Shakespeare), Man and the Moon (Good Company Theatre), and Hamlet (Sun Valley Shakespeare).
MARCI PIÑA | Stage Manager (She/Her)
Marci Piña is a recent graduate from the University of Utah with a BFA in Theatre Stage Management. Her most recent projects include being the Assistant Stage Manager for The Robertassey (Salt Lake Acting Company); Stage Manager for The Drowsy Chaperone (The Grand Theatre); Everybody (Babcock Theatre), and Seussical (Kingsbury); 1st Assistant Stage Manager for Sweeney Todd and Dead Certain (The Grand Theatre), The Book Club Play and Illyria (Babcock Theatre); and Stage Manager for The Emily Dickinson Musical (Studio 115, Open Door Productions). Marci has previously worked as the resident Stage Manager for Ícaro Compañía Teatral, a professional theatre company in Mexico City, on Urinetown (Teatro Milán), The Pillowman (Foro Lucerna) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Foro Lucerna).
Salt Lake Acting Company is proud to participate in Women+ on the Edge of Democracy, an international project spanning 42 states and four countries. Initiated and created by the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts and presented in partnership with The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Women+ on the Edge of Democracy creates a collective portrait of a nation in doubt and transformation – seen through the eyes of women+ playwrights from around the world who have long chronicled America’s contradictions and dreams.
34 playwrights were invited to write a 10-minute play or monologue in response to two questions: What is the current state of democracy in America from a national and international perspective? What can history, global context, or futurism offer us in this pivotal moment?
SLAC will host a special, free, one-night-only community event featuring readings of seven of these short plays, including work by Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage; Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize nominee Sarah Ruhl; Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award nominee Heidi Schreck; and more.
Women+ on the Edge of Democracy will be at once a work of art, an international reckoning, and an act of radical witness – inviting readers, audiences, and citizens alike to confront questions that define our moment.
