Salt Lake Acting Company - New Play Sounding Series

New Play Sounding Series
Free Reading: THE ROBERTASSEY

A Comedy by Kathleen Cahill

Monday, April 29 @ 7pm

Director: Penelope Caywood

Actors: Joe Crnich, Olivia Custodio, Alexandra Harbold, Robert Scott Smith

Reader: Valerie Kittel

Stage Manager: Miranda Giles

Roberta Mahoney is 40, unemployed, and taking a trip to Dublin, her father’s birthplace, with his ashes in her suitcase. Her pregnant sister Carol, talked her into it. Roberta hated her father, Hiker, an alcoholic veterinarian who loved animals – especially a pet skunk – more than his family. Roberta arrives in Dublin but her suitcase doesn’t.  Her trip turns into a magical mystery tour and the lost suitcase comes to represent her life of loses –her inability to develop intimate relationships, or to find something to do in life that matters to her – all caused, she believes, by her alcoholic father who keeps appearing, carrying her suitcase and singing his old songs. She meets a woman in a second hand clothing store with a skunk’s tail, a hotel concierge who shows up wearing Roberta’s shoes, and two baggage handlers named Garth and Aemon, who insist they are different people but who look exactly alike; one of them seduces her with his “orphic songs.” Everyone in Dublin seems to be involved in Roberta’s predicament.

THE ROBERTASSEY is a comedy about grief, loss and love; a comical metaphor for the process of learning how to live. As the recorded voice in the lost luggage department says: “Please continue to hold. Don’t give up.  Hold on for as long as you possibly can.“

SLAC thanks the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation for their generous support of this vital program.

Reserve Tickets Here

Doors open at 6:30pm. Open seating; first come, first served.

Pictured clockwise from top left: Playwright Kathleen Cahill, Olivia Custodio, Robert Scott Smith, Alexandra Harbold, Joe Crnich, and Valerie Kittel

New Play Sounding Series
Free Reading

Monday, March 4 @ 7pm

Director: Jason Bowcutt

Dramaturg: Camille Washington

Actors: Colleen Baum, Dee-Dee Darby-Duffin, Susanna Florence, Tamara Howell, Nicki Nixon

Reader: Michelle Love-Day

Stage Manager: Katelyn Limber

On the morning of February 21, 1895, the day after the great man died, Susan B. Anthony shows up on his widow’s doorstep. She is there to grieve — but is she also feeling guilty? FOUR WOMEN TALKING ABOUT THE MAN UNDER THE SHEET is an exploration of feminism and race, asking “what compromises should you make in pursuit of a cause?”

SLAC thanks the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation for their generous support of this vital program.

Reserve Tickets Here

Doors open at 6:30pm. Open seating; first come, first served.

New Play Sounding Series
Free Reading

Monday, October 29 @ 7pm

Director: Per Smedegaard
Assistant Director: Cynthia Fleming

Actors: April Fossen, Nicki Nixon, Topher Rasmussen, Lane Richins, Cassandra Stokes-Wylie
Reader: Joshua Black

Stage Manager: William Richardson
Sound Technician: Katelyn Limber

From Denmark's Teatret Svalegangen, comes this racy, absurd, yet painfully relatable new play about the many faces of feminism.

SLAC thanks the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation for their generous support of this vital program.

Doors open at 6:30pm. Open seating; first come, first served. 

RESERVE YOUR TICKETS HERE

New Play Sounding Series
Free Reading

Monday, September 24 @ 7pm

Director: Shannon Musgrave

Actors: Lily Hye Soo Dixon, Ava Kostia, Adriana Lemke

On the brink of her next round of funding, Sarah Boyd, Founder and CEO of Tactix, must hold her company together through a pesky journalist's questions and glaring doubts thrown her way surrounding the promises her company has made. It's a heavy load, and Sarah knows that she is the only one great enough to bear it.

SLAC thanks the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation for their generous support of this vital program.

Doors open at 6:30pm. Open seating; first come, first served. 

Adapted from the short story "Part of the Story" by Stephen Dobyns

New Play Sounding Series
Free Reading

Monday, April 30 @ 7pm

Director: Robin Wilks-Dunn

Actors: Daniel Beecher, April Fossen, Jacob Johnson, Teresa Sanderson, Matthew Sincell, Cassandra Stokes-Wylie

Stage Manager: Jordan Simmons

Five adult birth-children. Their birth mother. A first-time, get-together, potluck brunch in a trailer-home in Michigan. A dead lover in the back room. Story-telling; joke-telling. Bad behavior. Good behavior. Y'all come, now.

SLAC thanks the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation for their generous support of this vital program.

Doors open at 6:30pm. Open seating; first come, first served. 

New Play Sounding Series
Free Reading

Monday, March 5 @ 7pm

Director: Shawn Fisher

Actors: Jeanette Puhich Foulger, Morgan Lund, Amy Ware

Reader: Olivia Custodio

Stage Manager: Ashley Winch

When Constance’s troubled son is lost at sea, and her long-lost daughter suddenly decides to visit, she is forced to face the truth about her family and the secrets that broke it apart so many years ago.

SLAC thanks the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation for their generous support of this vital program.

Doors open at 6:30pm. Open seating; first come, first served. 

For a sneak peak of the reading, take a look at this article by Matt Morris of Utah Arts Magazine.

New Play Sounding Series
Free Reading

Monday, May 1 @ 7pm

Director: Robin Wilks-Dunn

Actors: Colleen Baum, Jacob Russell Johnson, Darby Mest, Nicki Nixon, Richard Scott, Matthew Sincell

Stage Manager/Reader: William Richardson

Winter is coming and the squirrels of the great tree are feeling the pinch. The greatest squirrel in the greatest tree in the greatest forest in all the land will not share his nuts. What's worse, rival squirrel families and rival squirrel species are all begging, pleading, and tricking to try to get his nuts. Will the tree survive? Will his family? Will war come and bring the whole thing tumbling down? The answer is yes, but we might have some fun getting there.

SLAC thanks the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation for their generous support of this vital program.

New Play Sounding Series Free Reading

Monday March 6 @ 7pm

Director: Cynthia Fleming

Actors: Austin Archer, Carleton Bluford, Trent Cox, Dan Larrinaga, Samantha Matsukawa, Andy Rindlisbach, Katryna Williams

Stage Manager/Reader: Morag Shepherd

The story of a girl who dances in silent films in 1921 New York City, her family, her lovers and friends, and the famous couple who almost ruined her life.

Workshopped in the 2017 SLAC Playwrights' Lab.

SLAC thanks the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation for their generous support of this vital program.

New Play Sounding Series Free Reading
Monday, November 21 @ 7pm

Director: Shannon Musgrave
Cast: Anne Louise Brings, Eric Cadora, Dee-Dee Darby Duffin, Jacob Russell Johnson, Melanie Nelson, Topher Rasmussen

It’s company outing day, and Laura, one of the top travel agents of her generation, is having the best / worst day of her life. So much so that she decides to end it all. Afterwards, her colleagues try to piece things together on a memorial blog, but how do you mourn someone you didn’t know that well?

A comedy about depression, or: a treatise on travel agents who don’t travel.

Workshopped in the 2016 SLAC Playwrights' Lab, LAURA AND THE SEA has gone on to be developed in the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, was a finalist for the L. Arnold Weissberger Award, the Princess Grace Award, and was a semi-finalist for the Relentless Award.

SLAC thanks the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation for their generous support of this vital program.