Salt Lake Acting Company - New Play Sounding Series

Salt Lake Acting Company Presents Free Reading of New Play from DEATH OF A DRIVER Playwright

Summer, 1998. Once popular, Arrowhead Community Pool has seen membership decline for years. Retired pool president Dorothy Wilson blames video games and air-conditioning. But when new pool president Freddie Rosedale abolishes Dorothy's longstanding alcohol ban and installs a frozen margarita machine, the place comes back to life, and a battle begins. SWIMMING POOL is a dark ensemble comedy about American excess and restraint on the cusp of the 21st Century. 

Featured in the one-night-only reading are Sean Carter, Barb Gandy, Tamara Johnson-Howell, Dan Larrinaga, Tito Livas*, Morgan Lund*, Kimiko Miyashima*, Nicki Nixon, and Lane Richins*. Robin Wilks-Dunn (I’LL EAT YOU LAST, GOOD PEOPLE) serves as director, Natalie Keezer will read stage directions, and Katelyn Limber* is stage manager.

Founded in 1994, Salt Lake Acting Company’s New Play Sounding Series (NPSS) continues its record-breaking 25^th year with Will Snider’s SWIMMING POOL. The NPSS is the longest-running play reading series in Utah. Past works that have been workshopped in the NPSS to later receive full productions at SLAC (and elsewhere) include SILENT DANCER and HARBUR GATE by Kathleen Cahill, MERCURY by Steve Yockey, STAG’S LEAP by Sharon Olds, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS by Mike Daisey, A SLIGHT DISCOMFORT by Jeff Metcalf, and THE RECEPTIONIST by Adam Bock. Elaine Jarvik’s FOUR WOMEN TALKING ABOUT THE MAN UNDER THE SHEET, featured during last season’s NPSS, will receive its world premiere at SLAC in 2020.

SLAC's 2019 NPSS reading of FOUR WOMEN TALKING ABOUT THE MAN UNDER THE SHEET by Elaine Jarvik

SWIMMING POOL is free and open to the public. Reservations are required and can be made via SLAC’s website or by calling 801.363.7522.

*Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States

SLAC acknowledges the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation for their generous support of the 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, February 1 @ 7pm

Director: Tracy Callahan
Featuring: Daniel Beecher, Anne Louise Brings, Anne Cullimore Decker, Cragun Foulger, Bob Nelson
Stage Manager/Reader: Sarah Danielle Young

WINTER is the story of an older couple who has an end-of-life pact, until one of them backs out. This new play from Julie Jensen, inspired by the story "Robeck" by Margaret Pabst Battin, is a beautiful tale of family and the right to die.

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 9 @ 7pm

Director: Nancy Borgenicht
Featuring: Meg Gibson, Tamara Howell, Valerie Kittel, Susan Levin, and Shannon Musgrave
Dramaturg: Kathleen Cahill
Stage Manager: Justin Ivie

In this intimate sequence of poems, which tell the story of Sharon Olds' divorce, the author opens her heart, sharing the feeling of invisibility that comes when we are no longer standing in love's sight; the surprising physical passion that still exists between a couple during parting; and the loss of everything from her husband's smile to the set of his hip. Adapted for a theatrical reading by Nancy Borgenicht, STAG'S LEAP is both an elegantly personal story of divorce and a universal journey through love, sex, sorrow, memory, and new freedom.

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

*First published in Stag's Leap (Alfred A Knopf) copyright Sharon Olds 2012

New Play Sounding Series Free Reading
Monday, September 21, 2015 @ 7pm

Director: Shannon Musgrave
Cast: Olivia Custodio, Danny Egan, Brighton Hertford, Patrick Kintz, William Richardson
Stage Manager/Reader: Sarah Danielle Young

Sloane isn't sure why exactly her husband Timothy brought home a probably dangerous drifter. It's something about "doing a good deed." Of course, it's hard to think straight when her kleptomaniac neighbor keeps dropping by to chat and steal. And then things get violent. BLEEDING HEARTS is a dark farce about the disappearing middle class and the way people can slowly forget how to put themselves in each others' shoes. 

On Monday February 2nd, the words of Tony Kushner will once again reverberate off the walls here at the Salt Lake Acting Company. SLAC is proud to present TINY KUSHER, a series of five short one-act plays by Kushner that is presented in conjunction with the Tanner Humanities Center's lecture with Mr. Kushner on February 5 at Kingsbury Hall, with support from Lee and Audrey Hollaar. Kushner's work is no stranger to the SLAC stage; SLAC was one of the first regional theaters to produce ANGELS IN AMERICA in 1995. It was brought back to the SLAC stage in 2010 for the company's 40th anniversary. Keven Myhre, Executive Producer at SLAC and director of the 2010 re-envisioning of the play, said that ANGELS was the one play that "encapsulated SLAC's mission to produce vibrant new work in contemporary theater... [it] defined that moment in our history."

TINY KUSHNER, unlike ANGELS, won't keep you in your seat for seven hours. Out of the five short plays, all but one feature characters who really existed, including Laura Bush. In typical productions of TINY KUSHNER, only four actors play the multitude of these eccentric personalities, but SLAC will be using a total of twelve different actors for each play. Director Robin Wilks-Dunn says, "When I heard Tony Kushner was coming to Kingsbury Hall, I thought it would be a nice community event to do a reading of one of his scripts that hasn't been done in Salt Lake before. And I thought the perfect partner would be Salt Lake Acting Company."

If you have never had the chance to hear the words of award-winning Tony Kushner in person, TINY KUSHNER is the perfect opportunity for you. You'll get five different samples all for the price of nothing! Bon appetit, theater goers! It is not to be missed.

-Olivia Custodio