The Cellar Theater at The Playhouse San Antonio hosted the most recent entry in the Playhouse Potentials series. 'The House of Yes' by Wendy McLeod was read by an all­star cast of local San Antonio actors before a rapt audience of theatergoers interested in seeing which plays may make it to full productions on the Playhouse stage.

"In Wendy MacLeod's obsidian­black comedy, The Pascals, for whom the clock stopped with the Kennedy assassination, are shut in as a Thanksgiving hurricane swirls outside. Arriving ahead of the storm's eye are Jackie­O's twin brother, Marty and his fiancee Lesly. The obsessive Jackie is keen to renew her long­running incestuous affair with Marty, which is fine by the mother, who's still lamenting her husband's desertion, and by puppyish younger brother Anthony who immediately desires Lesly. The resulting battle over Marty becomes something of a class struggle between the Pascals' poetic insanity and Lesly's plebian pragmatism." ­­Steven Mikulan, LA Weekly

The cast of readers included Christopher Lombardo as Marty, Anna Gangai as Mrs. Pascal, Madeleine Garcia as Jackie­O, Tyler Askins as Anthony and Kimberlyn Gumm as Lesly. Laura Michelle Hoadley, The Playhouse’s Business Director and Director of the upcoming ‘The Secret Garden’, served as moderator and read the stage notes for the cast.

Playhouse Potentials is a uniq ue, artistic program which hosts a monthly script reading in the Cellar Theater, The Playhouse’s smaller performance venue for newer and more experimental original works. It was begun in late 2015 by Meredith Bell­Alvarez, the COO/Associate Artistic Director of The Playhouse. What is interesting and exciting about the program is that the script selections for each reading are made from open community submissions, cast with local actors, and read in front of a live audience. The Playhouse looks to the pool of Playhouse Potentials readings for inspiration in selecting future season productions.