Salt Lake Acting Company continues its New Play Reading Series with two plays being read on Monday and Tuesday, Feb. 12 and 13, both at 7:30 p.m.
Thomas G. Dunn's "Victor and the Virgin," about the efforts of a Victor Recording Co. engineer trying to track down a brilliant New Orleans jazz musician in 1925, will be read on Monday, with Craig Wright's "Molly's Delicious," a comedy set in a Minnesota apple orchard, on Tuesday.David Mong, SLAC's literary manager, is directing "Victor and the Virgin," featuring William March (currently appearing in SLAC's world premiere engagement of David Kranes' "Winter of the Deer") and Elizabeth Whitney.
March will portray Tom Flynn, the Victor engineer, and Whitney will read the part of Connee Perente, a woman/child of indeterminate age who will do anything to be recorded.
The setting is New Orleans, where Flynn is searching for the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, a group that has made a scratchy but brilliant recording in Chicago some months earlier.
Mong describes Dunn's play as "a fascinating fictionalized account of the first recording of a black musician in an age of institutionalized bigotry. Funny and deeply moving, it evokes a time and place that was a wellspring of music history and cultural richness."
Tony Larimer, who directed SLAC's season opener, Edward Albee's "Three Tall Women," is directing the reading of Craig Wright's "Molly's Delicious."
Wright, a versatile playwright from Minnesota, also wrote the satirical "The Big Numbers," which was read last season.
"Molly's Delicious" is set in Pine City, Minn., in the autumn of 1965 in the home and orchards of Cindy and Lindy Linda.
Cindy's young niece, Allison, has come to stay with the Linda family. The less-than-discreet swelling about her midsection tells why.
Her merchant marine boyfriend is in the South Seas and not returning any letters, so Cindy steps in to introduce Alison to Alec, the son of the town's only mortician. Alec is rumored to have once said Allison was pretty.
The cast includes Larimer, Gene Pack, Teresa Sanderson, Megan Roth Scoville, Jay Perry and Geoffrey Spade.
"With great warmth and wit, Craig Wright captures a moment when the world expands with possibility," said Mong.
Informal discussions of the plays will be held following the readings.
Both readings are free and open to the general public.