STAG’S LEAP by Sharon Olds at Salt Lake Acting Company at Salt Lake Acting Company

From its humble beginnings in a Unitarian Church in 1969, SLAC has gone on to become the region's premier theatre for contemporary plays. In 1978, SLAC moved to the Glass Factory Theatre, which it called home for five years before returning to a church. Today SLAC's home is the historic 19th Ward House of Worship, originally built in 1896 by early settlers with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in the Marmalade Hill District of Salt Lake City. The 14,000-square-foot facility, which SLAC leases from the City, contains rehearsal space, dressing rooms, offices, lounge and kitchen. Fully-renovated, it includes two flexible theatres: the 113-seat Chapel Theatre, and the 160-seat Upstairs Theatre, which converts into a 206-seat cabaret space for the theatre's annual summer parody, SLAC's Summer Show.

Since 1970, SLAC has produced and presented Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwrights, and has commissioned, developed and produced an impressive body of world premiere plays, many of which have gone on to further productions throughout the world. SLAC Founder Ed Gryska said of the theatre's beginnings, "We were throwing stuff out there that the audience had never heard of; they didn't know what it was, and we educated them. We did the traditional stuff, but we'd always try to do a new play, something very different to balance that out, and I think that got the audiences in. And the audiences grew. I think that SLAC was always growing and becoming more and more important to this community, and it still is."