Pictured: Siena Marilyn Ledger, Jenny Seidelman and Levi Shrader

AstonRep Theatre Company has announced the lineup, directors, and casts for its 10th annual WRITER’S SERIES, a daylong festival of staged readings featuring three productions by Siena Marilyn Ledger, Jenny Seidelman and Levi Shrader.

The 2018 WRITER’S SERIES Line-Up includes (from the press release):

MAN AND MOON
By Siena Marilyn Ledger
Directed by James Fleming
Featuring Ada Grey and Jaq Seifert

Recently diagnosed with breast cancer, a transitioning man meets a young girl with a deep passion for outer space in the waiting room of a hospital’s Oncology Unit. Together they learn to navigate their own changing bodies and lives as they fit within the context of space and time.

THE CANDIDATE
By Jenny Seidelman
Directed by Dana Anderson
Featuring Maggie Antonijevic, Lynne Baker, Mary Mikva, Phoebe Moore and Mark Tacderas

THE CANDIDATE takes place in the run-up to the 2014 mid-term elections that, in a historic moment, swung the Senate from blue to red. African-American Nicole is working as the Assistant Communications Director for the campaign of Barbara, a white Republican running for Senate. When Nicole and her Latino husband Mateo are unexpectedly recruited to star in a campaign ad for Barbara, Nicole discovers that she is becoming uncertain of her own political leanings. With the campaign on the line, Nicole must decide where she stands – for the sake of her job, her family and her candidate.

SNAKEROOT
By Levi Shrader
Directed by Robert Tobin

Featuring James Hesla, Robin Margolis, Billy Sullivan and Ben Veatch

Orphaned by the 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, Sissy and her dysfunctional brother Howie, have only ever known a life of deprivation and poverty. Barely subsisting on the social security checks Sissy draws every month for heart trouble, she supplements the paltry checks with scant earnings from digging and selling medicinal roots she finds in the mountains near their shack. Now, in 1997, from a chance encounter with an earnest and well-meaning, if misguided, agent from the National Park Services, Sissy learns of the rare and extremely valuable SNAKEROOT, and pins to it her hopes of one day building a real home for herself and her brother. However, the secret passions of the men around her, to win her affections or locate the elusive Mothman, conspire and collide to derail Sissy’s dream of ever having a real home to call her home.

The 10th annual WRITER’S SERIES runs Saturday, December 1st at The Vagabond School of the Arts, 4001 N. Ravenswood Ave. Readings are free but donations will be accepted. No reservations required. For additional information, www.astonrep.com.