Pioneer Theatre Company Announces 2016/2017 Play-by-Play Reading Series

Pioneer Theatre Company announces the titles for the fourth season of its reading series, "Play-by-Play." Play-by-Play provides developmental rehearsal periods for three new plays each season, with the playwright working alongside a professional director and cast for a week-long residency, culminating in three public readings of each play available to theatregoers at a very modest cost.

Play by Play was launched by Artistic Director Karen Azenberg in 2014. Attendance at the readings has grown every year, and six of nine readings sold out last season. In addition, Alabama Story, one of the plays read in the inaugural 2014 season, has gone on to Equity productions in Florida, Wisconsin and Massachusetts since its world premiere at PTC in 2015.

"Play by Play has always had two goals," commented Azenberg, "to help new plays on their way to full productions and an ongoing life in the American theatre, and to develop a taste in our audience for the excitement of seeing new work in an intimate, low-risk and very affordable environment. I'm delighted that in only four years we have achieved both objectives, and I'm very excited about all three plays. The playwrights whose plays we're reading come from all over the map-one's from New York, one's from Tennessee and one's from right here in Utah-and their plays are likewise all over the artistic map in terms of their subject matter and themes."

The three plays for the 2016-17 readings will be:

A Requiem for August Moon by Elyzabeth Wilder (November 11-12, 2016) in which a Ph.D. candidate is attempting to create a mathematical algorithm that can predict hit songs, raising fascinating questions about the intersection between art and science.

i by Jeff Talbott (January 27-28, 2017), a mysterious love story in which a young woman is tentatively opening herself to the possibility of romance, set a couple of days after tomorrow.

The Ice Front (April 14-15, 2017) by Eric Samuelsen, set during the German occupation of Norway at the height of World War II, in which the actors of the Norwegian National Theatre find themselves confronted by a moral dilemma during the rehearsals for a new play.

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