Sponsored in conjunction with The New School for Drama, the SAG Foundation Salon Reading Series is an innovative series that celebrates new screenplays and offers union members an opportunity to engage with a working writer and director in an intimate setting. The Salon encourages and empowers actors to create their own work in a safe environment.

Synopsis for SECOND COMING

Smalltown Texas pastor Johnny Wade has amassed legions of followers through his intelligent, modern and enthusiastic style of preaching by the time television producer Ethan Gale visits his church. Now Johnny might become the next televangelist superstar - but first he'll have to convince Ethan a past filled with heroin addiction, surreal personal conversations with God and darker, more dangerous secrets have no impact on his ability to preach. And Ethan, drawn to this insatiably magnetic figure, will discover more than he ever imagined. Set in the modern world of saints, charlatans and the people who profit from them, Second Coming lowers the lens on the business and humanity of mass-media religion.

CAST (in alphabetical order)
Leah Curney, Amadeo Fusca, Brittney Lee Hamilton, Eric Loscheider, Robert O’Gorman, Rafael Poueriet and Zach Wegner.

Stage Directions by Adam Segaller.

Discussion Moderated by Stephen Cedars, Director

BIOS

Writer

Derek Anderson is a New York-based screenwriter, and a graduate of NYU Tisch's Dramatic Writing MFA. His short films have screened in New England, New York and China, and his short stories have been published in California and England. He authored several videos for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in 2008, which will stand beside the artwork until 2033. He was a script consultant on two projects in 2014, 99 Homes (Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon, Laura Dern), which premiered to rave reviews at the Venice Film Festival, and Lemonade War (Patton Oswalt, Mo Collins, Werner Herzog), which was created as part of Morgan Spurlock's We the Economy series of short films. Most recently he completed a horror/drama screenplay titled Mine, which he hopes to film in 2015.

Director

Stephen Cedars is a writer, director and teacher originally from south Louisiana. His work has been seen through the NY Fringe Festival, Theater Masters, Incubator Arts Project, Brick Theatre, Downtown Urban Theatre Festival, chashama, and through several years of community programming in south Williamsburg. Additionally, his plays have been produced by Grain of Sand Theatre (Washington, DC), Renaissance Guild (San Antonio), Valley Repertory (Enfield, CT), and Working Theatre Collective (Portland, OR), and have been published by Original Works and IndieTheatreNow. Amongst his awards are the 2013 Theater Masters Visionary Playwright Award and Commission, a Residency with America-in-Play, and the John Golden Playwriting Prize. He has taught myriad subjects in the liberal arts to kids grade 2 through 12, and is a creative writing instructor with Writopia Labs. He earned his MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU, which he attended as a Rita and Burton Goldberg Fellow.