Two one-act monologues – a comedy called “Love Insurance” and a melodrama entitled “Bedtime Story” – will be staged at Coastal Carolina University at 3 p.m. on Friday, March 30, in the theater of the Thomas W. and Robin W. Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts. The single-actor plays, written by David Zinman, a Conway writer, are free and open to the public.

Sandi Shackelford and Edgar Dyer will be reading. Shackelford teaches acting in the University's Department of Theatre and is a founding member of the Atlantic Stage Company in Myrtle Beach. In "Love Insurance," she portrays an insurance saleslady trying to market a radical new policy for people whose romance has gone sour.

Dyer, Coastal’s executive vice president, stars in "Bedtime Story" as an elderly man whose grandchildren are bored with stories he reads to them at bedtime. Instead, they ask Grandpa to tell them a real-life tale. They want the lowdown on what it was like to deal with their own dad as a little boy.

The staged readings will be followed by audience discussion after each play.

Zinman, a former reporter for the Associated Press and Long Island Newsday, has been writing dramas since he retired.

His plays have had successful premieres at Louisiana State Unviersity, the University of South Carolina Upstate and at Chautauqua, the summer cultural center in western New York. One of his dramas was a finalist in the Tennessee Williams one-act play competition in New Orleans.

The two monologues are presented as part of CCU’s campuswide l0th annual Celebration of Inquiry. During the three-day event, students, faculty, staff, and people from the community put on a potpourri of events.

They include panel discussions, lectures, performances, exhibits, and poster sessions. All are related to a common theme. This year, the theme is “From Curiosity to Exploration: Linking Knowing and Doing.”