Salt Lake Acting Company - New Play Sounding Series

We are pleased to announce our next New Play Sounding Series free reading of Let Down Your Hair by Matthew Ivan Bennett. The reading will take place on Monday, May 1st, 2023 at 7 PM.

Written by SLAC alum Matthew Ivan Bennett (The Caretaker) and directed by Alexandra Harbold* (The Wolves, Death of a Driver) with Bridgette Lehman as Stage Manager. The cast features SLAC alumnus and several newcomers. SLAC alum include: Colleen Baum* (Four Women Talking About the Man Under the Sheet) as Frau Göthel, Alex Smith (NPSS - The Obsolete Unkindness of Ravens) as the Reader, and Ben Young (Climbing With Tigers) as Fable. Newcomers are Caro Ciet as Rapunzel, Amona Faatau as the Prince, and Brenda Hattingh Peatross as Hettie Wiegle. 

Let Down Your Hair is described by the playwright as follows: 

Let Down Your Hair is a modern re-telling of Rapunzel through the lens of sex education in America. In the 1812 edition of the Brothers Grimm tale, the fairy (later changed to an evil human) knew the prince had been visiting the tower after 12-year-old Rapunzel got pregnant.

Despite the fact that we still grapple with early unwanted pregnancies in 2023, most people only know the whitewashed version of this classic. Let Down Your Hair restores the cautionary-tale boldness of the original, using comedy, politics, and a talking cat.

RSVP Here

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

For more information on the New Play Sounding Series, please click here.

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

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