INTIMATE EXPOSURES Comes to The Reading Theater Project

 The Reading Theater Project has announced the first production of Illuminate, its 2024-25 theater season: Intimate Exposures by D.W. Gregory, a play with music inspired by the work of Reading photographer William I. Goldman.

Featuring original music by Chris Heslop, the production will be directed by Jody Reppert and performed at WCR Center for the Arts. An opening night reception will be held Nov. 8, 2024, and the play will be performed over two weekends: Nov. 8, 9, 15, 16, at 7.30 p.m., and Nov. 10 and 15 at 2 p.m. More information can be found at readingtheaterproject.org or by calling 484-706-9719. 

Goldman was a popular society photographer who worked in Reading from 1876 to 1921. Sometime in the 1890s, he began to photograph women who worked in Sal Shearer's brothel at Eighth and Walnut Street. His secret collection remained hidden for a hundred years until art historian Robert Flynn Johnson discovered his photographs at a California flea market and traced them to Reading with the help of researchers at The Berks History Center. Goldman's remarkable photographs are featured in Working Girls: An American Brothel 1892, Robert Flynn Johnson, editor.

Intimate Exposures imagines how Goldman came to create this collection and the impact it had on him and the women who posed for him. Reading, in 1892, is the state’s most prosperous industrial center. Money flows like water here and society people dominate the headlines. After dark, however, a different world emerges, one where Sal Shearer’s ‘parlor house’ is the prime destination for gentlemen longing to escape the stifling expectations of Victorian high society. Into this world steps Billy Goldman, a respected studio photographer who knows everyone’s secrets. Bored by his affluent clientele, Billy finds new inspiration among the ‘sporting girls’ in Sal’s employ, but he soon gravitates to one in particular, the photogenic and manipulative Edie Price. Together they create forbidden art, and in the process, unlock long-suppressed desires neither can resist. Intimate Exposures is a play about lust, longing, and the power of art to transform every life

The cast features Richard Bradbury as William “Billy” Goldman and Cat Whelan as Edie Price. Karyn Reppert plays Sal Shearer, Walidah McKnight plays Lizzie Bender, Lady Strongman plays Clay Newland, and Isaiah Baker plays Bo. The Production Team includes Sean Sassaman, stage manager, Jewell A. Brown, assistant stage manager, Amanda Boandl, Costume Designer, Kathie Kustudich, props designer, Matt Iovino, set design and construction, Charles Troxel, lighting design, and Ebony Hicks, intimacy consultant. Jimmy Damore is production manager and music director.

Playwright D.W. Gregory is a Lancaster County native with deep roots in Berks—she traces her family’s origins to a Hessian soldier who remained behind after the Revolution. In her plays, Gregory frequently explores political issues through a personal lens and with a comedic twist. The New York Times called her “a playwright with a talent to enlighten and provoke” for her most produced work, RADIUM GIRLS, which has received more than 2,000 productions in the U.S. and abroad.Other works include THE OTHER AMERICAN, which premiered in September at New Jersey Repertory Co., MOLUMBY’S MILLION (Iron Age Theatre), nominated for a Barrymore Award for Outstanding New Play by Philadelphia Theatre Alliance, and A THING OF BEAUTY, winner of the Southeastern Theatre Conference’s Charles M. Getchell new play award.

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