Salt Lake Acting Company - New Play Sounding Series

We're delighted to announce our first in–person New Play Sounding Series reading in over two years: Sleeping Giant by Steve Yockey. The free reading will take place in SLAC’s Upstairs Theatre on Monday, May 2nd at 7pm.

Salt Lake Acting Company audiences will remember two previous world premieres authored by Yockey: Blackberry Winter (2015) and Mercury (2017). Since seeing Mercury receive its world premiere at SLAC, Yockey has gone on to become a multi award-nominated (WGA, PGA, Emmy) creator of the popular HBO Max series The Flight Attendant.

Sleeping Giant, a new play which will also receive a full production at SLAC next season, is described by the playwright as follows:

When a firework-filled marriage proposal goes very wrong, the accompanying explosions wake up something very old that’s been sleeping in the nearby lake for thousands of years. What follows are intimate, darkly comic, and sometimes startling vignettes about the lengths people go when they desperately want something to believe in.

“After truly killer experiences with Blackberry Winter and Mercury, SLAC has become a vital and dynamic creative partner,” stated Yockey. “Their artists and their audiences just get it. And Cynthia [Fleming] sets the bar for artistic excellence. I'm thrilled to be back.”

Comprising the cast of the NPSS reading of Sleeping Giant are SLAC alum Alexis Baigue (Stupid F***ing Bird), Lily Hye Soo Dixon (Mercury), Tito Livas (Mercury) and Cassie Stokes-Wylie (Death of a Driver). Kimi Handa Brown, playwright from last year’s NPSS reading of Daddy Issues, will read stage directions. Directing the reading will be Emilio Casillas in his SLAC directorial debut. Casillas is also a co-writer of the upcoming #SLACabaret 2022.

RSVP Here

While admission to the NPSS reading of Sleeping Giant is free, reservations are required. They can be reserved directly via the link above, or by contacting the SLAC Audience Relationship Team at or 801-363-7522.

Please note: all SLAC attendees must show proof of full vaccination and wear a properly-fitting mask. Please visit our COVID-19 safety guide for more information.

Production images from Mercury and Blackberry Winter. All images by David Daniels.

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 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, April 25 @ 7pm

Director: Dave Mortensen
Featuring: Brighton Hertford, Dee-Dee Darby-Duffin, Elise Groves, Jenessa Bowen, Stephen Drabicki, Tito Livas, Aaron Adams
Reader: Joy Haynes

This pitch black comedy has an illicit affair, a couple hanging on by a thread, bears at the window, and an adorable missing dog named Mr Bundles. No one's happy, people stop being nice, and blood spills in a story that mashes up violent myth and ideas about "good neighbors" to explore what happens when the mercury rises.

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