D.W. Gregory’s new comedy A Thing of Beauty is featured in Barter Theatre’s Appalachian Festival of New Plays and Playwrights Feb. 23 – Feb. 26 in Abingdon, VA.

The reading is directed by Derek Davidson and features Tricia Matthews, Kim Morgan Dean, Ashley Campos, Justin Lewis, Michael Poisson.

What is the function of art? It to elevate us or shake us up? The leading citizens of a stuffy seaside resort are forced to wrestle with that question when an anonymous nude takes first prize in the community’s first annual art competition. As local gossips speculate about exactly whose bare butt is depicted in the painting, Mrs. Bouffant, the competition’s sponsor, lobbies the judges to choose a more appropriate winner, unaware that her own secretary is the muse who inspired the offending work. But her quest is upended when  an influential New York art critic arrives on the scene—and takes an undue interest in the prize-winner.