Reader’s Theater

Local writers, directors and actors from our community present staged readings of exciting new plays that we believe speak to our audiences

Overview

All Reader’s Theater events are on Saturdays at 7:00pm.

The readings take place in the Theater at Allens Lane Art Center and are available to in-person audiences.  A short Talk Back with the playwright, director, and actors will follow each reading where the audience is invited to ask questions and to provide feedback on the work they just saw. These readings are available with a pay-what-you-wish reservation.

Black is the New Black

Written by Sharese Salters
December 9, 2023, at 7:00pm

Aria Winters is just about to enjoy a standard Netflix binge when five very random men (the sweetheart, the smart jock, the frat boy, the lover, and the classic man) show up at her front door. Aria finds herself the star of a surreal dating show and fends off her many supposed admirers. A wildly hilarious ride that also shows the many perils faced by Black women in the dating world.

TICKETS 

AUDITIONS for BLACK IS THE NEW BLACK on November 6, 6:45 – 9:00 pm. 

Roles Casting:

CAST OF CHARACTERS ARIA WINSTON: Black, 27-year-old woman. From Chicago, in Law school, a little bit of a worry wart, smart, determined, a moral person.
KINSLEY MARIE ADAMS: Not-white, mid-late 20’s. Fun, carefree, lives on the edge.
DEATON: Mid-late 20’s, Classic man, Loves his mother, Uptight yet chill.
CRISTOPHER: Mid-late 20’s, Lady’s man, into love and comic books.
CARLOS: Mid-late 20’s, A former (or current) nerd, big on family, books and sports.
OWEN: Mid-late 20’s, A frat bro! He loves hanging out with the bros.
 JASON: Mid-late 20’s, typical hot guy, gamer, works out, kind of a Chad.
VOICE: Never seen, can be a recording, strange, omniscient, also a sells representative?
A REPORTER: Can be doubled with the VOICE
STAGE DIRECTIONS: Can read for VOICE/REPORTER as well
 
 ***This play should have a multicultural/multi-racial cast; BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ actors are highly encouraged to apply!

 

Black Roses in the Garden

Written by Camille James
February 3, 2024, at 7:00pm

1970s – Harlem – during the second wave of Women’s Rights. This play gives the podium to the hidden voices of Black queer women who expressed their ideas, desires, and pleasures in a now dwindling lesbian bar culture. In a hidden, dank, dimly lit bar, we join four women on a journey of laughter, determination, and courage in love and sisterhood that feeds them at the root.

Eve in Paradise

Written by Megan Edelman

May 4, 2024, at 7:00pm

Eve in Paradise is an adaptation and a memoir. Eve is a biblical troublemaker, a seventeenth-century puritanical ideal, and a 21st-century intersectional feminist, who has lost her faith. The audience finds Eve embodying Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost and cutting it with scenes from her own life. As she grapples with the original text, she shares her journey as a child of the catechism, a questioning teenager, and an adult who strives to find the beauty not in God, but in humanity.

Covid-19 Safety

As we monitor the status of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Allens Lane Art Center Theater has decided on the following guidelines to best ensure the safety of our audience members and performers on stage while also expanding our seating capacity to better serve our community.

2022-2023 Season Guidelines

  • No eating or drinking (other than water) will be permitted in the theater.
  • Performers and staff will be fully vaccinated.
  • Audience members are no longer required to show proof of vaccination, however, masks are required for all audience members while inside the theater.

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Mount Airy, Philadelphia

Since 1953