Salvage Vanguard Theater (SVT) invites you to the MainStage world premiere of Tryouts by Adara Meyers, a Boston-based experimental playwright. Directed by co-Artistic Director Diana Lynn Small, Tryouts casts a satirical gaze on women, femininity, and motherhood, inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Virgin and Child with St. Anne,” and Freud’s debunked maternal psychosexual essay on the painting. Two mothers and three teenage girls maneuver the confines of a prestigious and draconian high school when in a tragicomic turn of events, the mothers throw themselves into the work of forming a pseudo-religious order focused on topiary and the girls confront head-on the primly grim version of adulthood they’ve been taught all too well.

Directed by: Diana Lynn Small

Designed by: Zac Crofford, Jessica Gilzow, Jordan Good, James Hapke, Mercedes McCleary and Diana Lynn Small.

Featuring performers: Luxy Banner, Sarah Chong, Martinique Duchene-Phillips, Clara Hayes, Hannah Kenah and Paige Tautz.

TICKETS:$10, online. Pay-What-You-Wish every night at the door.

Box office opens at 7pm.

Reservations for each performance can be made at salvagevanguard.org/tickets/

Every Friday night is FREE for Teens!

COMMUNITY DIALOGUE: Oct 20^thfollowing Tryouts, join the playwright, Adara Meyers in a community conversation on female representation in experimental art.

Audio Description will be available at the October 18^thperformance, thanks to VSA Texas.

ASL Interpretation will be available at the October 20^thperformance.

ARTReach: In collaboration with Austin Bat Cave, Diana Lynn Small will lead a Tryoutsinspired creative writing workshop for teens at Out Youthwho will then attend Tryoutsas special guests. Made possible by a generous grant from Applied Materials.

SVT Happy Hour @ the DAC: Featuring local food, beverages from Titos Vodka, and specialty Tryoutscocktails, every Thursday night before the show join us for a party. October 11^th, 18^th, and 25^th from 6- 8pm. Follow us on Instagram @salvagevanguard for updates on food, brew, and entertainment.

ABOUT ADARA MEYERS: Her performance works and plays, Picture This, Talk To At Me, and Birds, premiered at Boston Center for the Arts (Sleeping Weazel), and her new music collaboration, Never Not, with composer Leaha Maria Villarreal, was commissioned by Wild Rumpus and later received its California premiere at the L.A. Philharmonic. Other plays and interdisciplinary projects have been developed or produced at Roulette, the Great Plains Theatre Conference, The Factory Theatre (Sleeping Weazel), and Perishable Theatre, among others. She is the recipient of a Rhode Island State Council on the Arts merit award for her play Tryouts and she has been a resident at Sedona Summer Colony. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College and a BA in English from Wheaton College (MA). For more information, please visit www.adarameyers.comand www.sleepingweazel.com.

ABOUT DIANA LYNN SMALL writes, acts, and directs for the stage. She is a Co-Artistic Director of Salvage Vanguard Theaterin Austin, TX with Jenny Larson. Diana earned her MFA in playwriting from the Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin. Diana’s new play House Play was developed at Berkeley Rep’s The Ground Floor in 2017. Mad & a Goat has toured to seven cities since it was developed in 2013. Her play Good Day was selected for the 2015 Great Plains Conference PlayLabs, Kitchen Dog Theatre’s New Works Festival and was a finalist for the 2015 Play Penn Conference.  Diana has worked with paper chairs theatre company in Austin having directed Elizabeth Doss’s play Mast and performing/dramaturging Doss’s play Poor Herman and sharing the world-premiere of her play Hot Bellywith The Syndicate in NYC (The Tank). She is pursuing a Master of Divinity at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.