The five women gather every summer over the decades at a beach house at North Carolina's Outer Banks, checking in on one another through the years after their shared experience of being on their swim team in college.
Those five women’s lives are explored in “The Sweet Delilah Swim Club,” and Presser Arts Center will audition women for the five roles of the comedy production at 6 p.m. March 3 and 4. The production, presented in a readers theater style, will be performed in a dinner theater at 7 p.m. April 26. Readers theater allows actors to tell the story using scripts and supplying their voices and characterizations for the roles.

The five characters offer a distinct personality, according to the Presser Arts Center’s audition call on its website, and women ages mid-30s and up are encouraged to audition for:

– Sheree Hollinger, the perennial team captain who is energetic, hyper-organized, a “health nut and an All-American mom.”
– Dinah Grayson, a “wise-cracking cynic” with a dry sense of humor who is a lawyer at the largest and most prestigious law firm in Atlanta but has not had success in the romance department.
– Lexie Richards, a “delightfully vain,” youth-obsessed event planner who “keeps her cosmetic surgeon on speed dial” and has many stories to share from her romantic life.
– Jeri Neal McFeeley, a perky and naive individual who has been a nun but will eventually make a significant life change.
– Vernadette Simms, a “hard luck case” who is a school teacher who has limited financial means and a difficult home life. She is self-deprecating and deals with life with gallows humor.

Lois Brace, executive/artistic director for the Presser Arts Center, said this production will be the first time PAC has performed a dinner theater, although she said there were a couple of dinner theaters at the Barbary Coast, now The Ballroom at Homestead Hearth, in the early 1990s.

“This one will be in the Black Box, so it will be the first time the Presser facility has hosted a dinner theater,” she said.

PAC board member and play director Rob Dalton said it’s exciting to conduct a dinner theater and “something we’ve been wanting to do for a while.”
“A long while, yeah, and we have the capacity to do it,” Brace said.

In choosing “The Sweet Delilah Swim Club,” Dalton said he was looking for something that was different and “something that would entertain the audience, if you will.”

The premise centers on how the five women made a pact they would meet every summer at a beach house, Dalton said. The first scene takes place 22 years after they were in college, and then each act thereafter takes place years after the previous act. The play closes 23 years after the third act, and the time frame spans from the women’s early 40s to their early 70s.

“It’s a place where the five ladies meet, and they’re getting away from husbands, boyfriends, kids, and they just talk - a lot,” said Dalton, who is the casting director. “It’s all dialogue driven. Each character has distinctive characteristics.”

He described it as “Steel Magnolias” meets “Designing Women.” In readers theater, blocking and memorizing are not required, but an actor has to possess good reading fluency, be able to interpret a character and deliver a performance through voice inflection and other methods.

“There are a lot of surprises, a lot of twists and turns, a lot of one-liners,” Dalton said, describing the story. The humor is adult but not risque, Brace said.
Also at PAC, a free Show Me Screenwriters Workshop - a first-time event for the Presser - will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. March 1. Registration is required. Lecturers will be writer and director Evan Brace, Hollywood creative executive Emilio Mazariegos and Emmy-winning screenwriter and author Julian Vaca.

The PAC website said the workshop desires to appeal to screenwriters from all backgrounds, rural and urban, and is aimed for people starting out and those wanting to refine the craft. The workshop will help people sharpen their storytelling skills and “discover the unique power of your Midwest voice” and focus on stories coming from the heartland. To register, access www.presserpac.com/film.