Table Read

MY LADY'S SONG
A limo driver. Two porn stars. A senator with everything to lose.
One night in New York that turns into leverage, betrayal, and war.

ACT ONE
New York. Late-night Eighth Avenue. Strip clubs, neon, and power moving quietly behind tinted glass.
Sal “The Barber” Marino is a former soldier of the streets, a man who did twelve years without talking and now makes a living driving high-end clients through a city he no longer trusts.
One call pulls him back in.
A simple job. Easy money. Drive the girls. Pick up the client. Keep your mouth shut.
But the client is a powerful senator.
The ride is being recorded.
And the job isn’t what it seems.
What starts as routine turns into leverage. a blackmail setup that reaches into politics, unions, and the last remnants of old-school control.
As the night bleeds into morning and the city gives way to the open road, Sal is locked in with Hara; young, sharp, and unpredictable. Two worlds collide. Old code versus new survival.
And then it breaks.
A confrontation. A line crossed.
A slap that lands harder than anything that came before.
That’s the moment everything changes.
Act One ends when business becomes personal... and there’s no going back.

🎭 CAST
SAL – Ronnie Marmo
CHARLIE – Sam McMurray
SENATOR BAXTER / THE JOHN – Joe Mantegna
VINCENT – Dan Lauria
HARA – Gia Mantegna
LOTTA – Ally Dunbar
NARRATOR – Vanessa Richardson
DONNA – Janelle Marmo
CARMELA – Patty McCormack
PORN DIRECTOR – Robert Wuhl
LEO – Zeke Alton
ANTHONY – Alec Leonard

🎬 PRODUCTION
Directed by Mark Knell & Jack Levy
Executive Produced by Shaan Sharma, Jack Levy, and Mark Knell
Table Read is a Manifest Media production.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

🎧 THE G.Y.M.
Welcome to THE G.Y.M.
Not a gym. A situation.

Valerie inherited a neighborhood gym from her mother.
What she actually inherited? Debt, broken equipment, a failing business… and a staff that turns every small problem into a full-blown emergency.

Across the street, a sleek corporate fitness empire is opening with glass walls, perfect lighting, and zero chaos.

Inside The G.Y.M.?
Flooded hot tubs.
Out-of-order bikes.
A spin class that may or may not be a lawsuit waiting to happen.
And a “Grand Re-Opening” that could either save the place… or finally finish it.

This is a workplace comedy where nothing works, nobody communicates, and every attempt to fix things somehow makes them worse.

Think Parks and Recreation meets It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, set inside a failing gym where the stakes are low… until suddenly they’re not.

Recorded live at SXSW /. Podcast Movement, this Austin Film Festival award-winning script by Dani Hanks delivers fast, character-driven comedy with just enough heart to make you root for people who absolutely should not be in charge of anything.
You don’t come here to get fit.
You come here because something is definitely about to go wrong.

🎭 Cast
Allison Dunbar as Valerie
Yasmine Al-Bustami as Kayla
Kensington Tallman as Alexa
Shaan Sharma as Wade
Joe Nemmers as Gary Hughes
Jacob A. Ware as Bryan
Brian Villalobos as Chris
Amy Bailey as Mary
Heather Foster, Narrator
Special appearance by our attorney Scott Hervey as Client Carlin

🎬 From Table Read Podcast
Executive Producers: Jack Levy, Mark Knell, & Shaan Sharma
Produced by Manifest Media Productions
Recorded live at SXSW / Podcast Movement
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

TABLE READ: My Lady’s Song
Written by Dan Lauria
New York. Late-night Eighth Avenue. Strip clubs, limos, politicians, porn stars, and ghosts of the old neighborhood.
My Lady’s Song drops you straight into the smoky, blood-soaked underbelly of a city that doesn’t forgive and never forgets.
Sal “The Barber” Marino is an aging ex-soldier of the streets — a limo driver who once did twelve years without talking. Now he drives high-end clients and keeps his head down. But when a powerful senator, a pair of porn stars, and a blackmail tape collide during sensitive union negotiations, Sal is pulled back into a world he thought he left behind.
This is not a nostalgia piece.
This is loyalty versus survival.
Old code versus new money.
Family versus leverage.
Set against a soundtrack style of Billie Holiday, Etta James, Dinah Washington, and Bessie Smith, My Lady’s Song moves like Goodfellas at midnight and feels like The Sopranos when the jokes stop being funny.
What starts as a simple drive to Los Angeles turns into a reckoning — with betrayal, with memory, and with the cost of keeping your mouth shut.
Nobody in podcasting is bringing this level of writing, performance, and cinematic scope.
This is prestige drama.
Performed. Not narrated.
Hollywood caliber. Start to finish.
___________________________________
🎭 FULL CAST
SAL – Ronnie Marmo
An ex-con soldier turned limo driver. Hardened. Loyal. Dangerous when pushed.
CHARLIE – Sam McMurray
La Salle Limo manager. Old-school operator with a sharp tongue.
SENATOR BAXTER / THE JOHN – Joe Mantegna
Powerful, polished, and utterly ruthless. Politics meets leverage.
VINCENT – Dan Lauria
Union boss. Businessman. Architect of control.
HARA – Gia Mantegna
Young, defiant, smarter than everyone assumes.
LOTTA – Ally Dunbar
Savvy operator. Knows how to play both sides of the camera.
NARRATOR – Vanessa Richardson
A true-crime icon brings gravitas and noir elegance to the storytelling spine.
DONNA – Janelle Marmo
CARMELA – Patty McCormack
PORN DIRECTOR – Robert Wuhl
LEO – Zeke Alton
ANTHONY – Alec Leonard
With additional performances from:
Janelle Marmo
Ally Dunbar
Gia Mantegna
Zeke Alton
Alec Leonard
This cast could walk onto a soundstage tomorrow and shoot this for theatrical release. It’s that level.
____________________________________________________________________
Directed by Mark Knell & Jack Levy
Executive Produced by Shaan Sharma, Jack Levy, and Mark Knell
Table Read is a Manifest Media production.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The cage breaks open. Caravaggio breaks with it.
Chained in a torture chamber beneath the fortress, Caravaggio faces the Grand Master one last time. Faith against flesh. Obedience against desire. What follows is an escape down a fortress wall, a boat in the dark, and a fugitive painter running not toward freedom but toward the only thing he has left.
Act Three is the fall. Brutal. Beautiful. Inevitable.
Sicily. Caravaggio paints like a man on fire. In Syracuse, a burial. In Messina, a nativity. Each canvas more desperate than the last. Each one a confession he cannot say out loud. The genius is still there. The man holding the brush is disappearing.
Back in Rome, the news arrives. Lena. The woman whose face launched his greatest work. Gone. Caravaggio learns what it costs to leave someone behind in a city that devours the unprotected.
Cardinal Del Monte makes his final play. A pardon. A real one. Signed by the Pope himself. But the pardon needs a delivery and Caravaggio needs to stay alive long enough to receive it.
Naples. A prison cell. Malaria. Chains. The Grand Master finds him one last time. Two men who could never say what they meant finally say it. It is too late for both of them.
Then a swamp. Bandits. A boiling sun. A beach. A boy. Two nuns. And the Tyrrhenian coast, where the greatest painter of his generation reaches for the light one final time.
The pardon arrives. The man does not.
Act Three is reckoning. Loss. Grace. The moment the fuse runs out.
What you see in the art, you will find in the artist. What you see in the artist, you will find in the man.
Cast
Dennis Kleinman · Narrator
Craig Parker · Caravaggio
Dan Lauria · Cardinal Del Monte
Bruce Davison · Alof de Wignacourt
Shaan Sharma · Stefano della Croce
Catherine Lidstone · Lena
Sarah Elmaleh · Maria
Brendan Bradley · Annibale Carracci
Noah James · Ranuccio Tomassoni
Josh Sterling · Ottavio Tomassoni
Zeke Alton · Giovan Tomassoni
Nick Monteleone · Mancini
Matt Curtin · Toppa
Bjorn Johnson · Pope Paul V
Ray Abruzzo · Pope Clement VIII
Written by Richard Vetere
Executive Produced by Jack Levy, Shaan Sharma, and Mark Knell
Table Read is a Manifest Media production.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Malta. A fortress carved from rock, surrounded by sea, ruled by warrior monks who pray at dawn and kill by noon.
Caravaggio arrives to paint a portrait. He stays because he has no choice. The Grand Master offers sanctuary, admiration, and something neither man is prepared to name. The Captain at Arms offers suspicion, jealousy, and a locked door every night.
Act Two is the cage. Beautiful. Suffocating. Holy.
Caravaggio paints the Grand Master's portrait and captures more than armor and scars. He captures a man's loneliness. The Knights throw a feast in his honor. He dances on tables. He is knighted with a gold sword. He is watched from every window.
Back in Rome, Cardinal Del Monte fights for a papal pardon while the Tomassoni brothers hire bounty hunters. The Pope dies. A new Pope rises. The Church still cannot decide what Caravaggio is worth.
On the beach, the Turks attack. Knights are nailed to crosses and set on fire, floated into the harbor at dawn. Caravaggio picks up a sword for the first time. He gives water to a dying boy. The boy is killed in front of him.
Flashbacks pull him back to Rome. To Lena. To the night Ranuccio came for him with a blade. To the moment that changed everything.
He paints The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist on a chapel wall and signs his name in the blood flowing from the saint's neck. The only painting he ever signed.
Then he paints a Cupid so grotesque it seals his fate.
Act Two is devotion. Desire. Betrayal. The moment a man realizes that the sanctuary he was promised is just a prison with better art on the walls.
The fuse is burning.
Cast
Dennis Kleinman · Narrator
Craig Parker · Caravaggio
Dan Lauria · Cardinal Del Monte
Bruce Davison · Alof de Wignacourt
Shaan Sharma · Stefano della Croce
Catherine Lidstone · Lena
Sarah Elmaleh · Maria
Brendan Bradley · Annibale Carracci
Noah James · Ranuccio Tomassoni
Josh Sterling · Ottavio Tomassoni
Zeke Alton · Giovan Tomassoni
Nick Monteleone · Mancini
Matt Curtin · Toppa
Bjorn Johnson · Pope Paul V
Ray Abruzzo · Pope Clement VIII

Written by
Richard Vetere

Executive Produced by
Jack Levy, Shaan Sharma, and Mark Knell

Table Read is a Manifest Media production.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.