2023-2024 Season
A Season of Love, Friendship, and Secrets!

Welcome to Living Room Reading Series, a series of staged readings that include regional premieres and classic plays performed by a repertory of actors from the Charlotte Metrolina Area. Our upcoming shows are listed below. Click on the links to learn more and purchase tickets.

Significant Other by Joshua Harmon. September 3rd

The Minutes by Tracy Letts

October 8th

Jordan Berman would love to be in love, but that’s easier said than done. So until he meets Mr. Right, he wards off lonely nights with his trio of close girlfriends. But as singles’ nights turn into bachelorette parties, Jordan discovers that the only thing harder than finding love is supporting the loved ones around you when they do. From the critically acclaimed writer who brought you Bad Jews.

This scathing new comedy about small-town politics and real-world power, from the author of August: Osage County, exposes the ugliness behind some of our most closely-held American narratives while asking each of us what we would do to keep from becoming history’s losers.

Lonely Planet by StevenDietz
November 5

Described as “an entertaining, powerful, and heartfelt experience that should not be missed” , LONELY PLANET is an intimate portrait of two friends navigating life at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Shop owner Jody becomes increasingly fearful of the world outside and the dangers it poses, refusing to leave his shop. While Carl, his spirited friend, begins filling the store with a variety of mysterious chairs. Written 30 years ago, Steven Dietz’s funny, hopeful, and deeply human play about an epidemic in our nation’s history has a lot to say about our current moment and continues to ring true as a commentary on the value of friendship and community during uncertain times.

Shows for Days by Douglas Carter Beane January 7

Love Letters by A R Gurney February 4

It’s May 1973 when a young man wanders into a dilapidated community theater in Reading, PA. The company members welcome him—well, only because they need a set painter that day. The young man then proceeds to soak up all the idealism and the craziness that comes with being part of a struggling theater company with big dreams. When a playwright looks back at his beginnings in the theater and decides to chronicle those experiences in a play, all sorts of things can happen. If you’re Douglas Carter Beane, who grew out of his Reading, PA, community theater days to become one of the stage’s master writers, it’s bound to bring a measure of gimlet-eyed reflection, a large dollop of self-deprecation, and a heaping dose of hilarity.

Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner, both born to wealth and position, are childhood friends whose lifelong correspondence begins with birthday party thank-you notes and summer camp postcards. Romantically attached, they continue to exchange letters through the boarding school and college years—where Andy goes on to excel at Yale and law school, while Melissa flunks out of a series of “good schools.” While Andy is off at war Melissa marries, but her attachment to Andy remains strong and she continues to keep in touch as he marries, becomes a successful attorney, gets involved in politics and, eventually, is elected to the U.S. Senate. Meanwhile, her marriage in tatters, Melissa dabbles in art and gigolos, drinks more than she should, and becomes estranged from her children. Eventually she and Andy do become involved in a brief affair, but it is really too late for both of them. However Andy’s last letter, written to her mother after Melissa’s untimely death, makes it eloquently clear how much they really meant, and gave to, each other over the years—physically apart, perhaps, but spiritually as close as only true lovers can be.

Love, Loss and What I Wore by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron, based on the book by Ilene Beckerman

A play of monologues and ensemble pieces about women, clothes and memory covering all the important subjects—mothers, prom dresses, mothers, buying bras, mothers, hating purses and why we only wear black. Based on the bestselling book by Ilene Beckerman.

The Assembled Parties by Richard Greenberg April 7

THE ASSEMBLED PARTIES welcomes us to the world of the Bascovs, an Upper West Side Jewish family in 1980. In a sprawling Central Park West apartment, former movie star Julie Bascov and her sister-in-law Faye bring their families together for their traditional holiday dinner. But tonight, things are not usual. A houseguest has joined the festivities for the first time and he unwittingly—or perhaps by design—insinuates himself into the family drama. Twenty years later, as 2001 approaches, the Bascovs’ seemingly picture-perfect life may be about to crumble. A stunning play infused with humor, THE ASSEMBLED PARTIES is an incisive portrait of a family grasping for stability at the dawn of a new millennium.

Sideways by Rex Pickett
May 12

Lips Together, Teeth Apart by Terrence Mcnally
June 2

A wine tasting road trip to salute the final days of bachelorhood careens woefully sideways as two friends hit the gas en route to mid-life crises. The comically mismatched pair, who share little more than their history and a heady blend of failed potential and fading youth, soon find themselves drowning in wine and women. Emerging from a haze of Pinot Noir, wistful yearnings, and trepidation about the future, the two inevitably collide with reality

Fire Island provides an unlikely setting for two straight couples who are discovered lounging poolside, staring out to sea. Sally, married to Sam, a New Jersey contractor, has inherited the house from her brother who died of AIDS. Sam’s hyperkinetic sister, Chloe, and her smug, aristocratic husband, John, have come out for the Fourth of July weekend. Amidst the seemingly mundane activities, it becomes apparent that the two men despise each other because John has had an affair with Sally; Sally is panicked and melancholy because she is pregnant and fears miscarriage; and Chloe seems determined to drive them all mad with her incessant babble and enthusiasm for musical comedies. Through monologues unheard by the others, the characters reveal a desperate sense of individual isolation. The only people these four characters find more alien are the gay men partying in the houses on either side of them. As they divert themselves from their own mortality with food, cocktails, The New York Times crossword puzzle, fireworks, charades, and biting jabs at each other and the boys next door, Sally and Sam and John and Chloe find little to celebrate about themselves or their country on its birthday.