“Can’t Drink Salt Water” was written by Kendra Mylenchuk Potter, a Missoula actor-playwright and member of the Lummi Nation, a Pacific Northwest tribe.

The reading is at 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 19, in the Montana Theatre of the PAR/TV Center. Tickets are available through a “pick what you pay” model at montanarep.org.

The title is a reference to salmon, a sacred creature to the Lummi people, and the rare physiological changes the fish undergo during their migrations from freshwater to salt water and vice versa, from one world to another.

“What is required of a salmon’s body in order for them to make their way back to their natal stream and then out to the ocean again?” Potter said.

In a time of widespread disagreement, she said that the acknowledgment that we’re all going to deal with death, and the benefits of storytelling as a coping mechanism, are something that is hard to dispute.

“Let’s go to those basic truths: We all got born, we’re all gonna die,” said Potter, who works as both a birth doula and a death doula. “What happens in between? And how can we be with one another in that ‘between time?’”

The story of “Can’t Drink Salt Water” is set in three distinct but connected worlds, Potter said. One is a shelter in Missoula for victims of sex-trafficking run by evangelical Christians. Another is a mother searching for her daughter who’s gone missing. The third centers on a young woman, in a sort of watery liminal space between worlds, an arc that involves elements of magical realism.

The story follows the mother in her search, along with its “anticipatory grief,” and another thread follows a young woman settling in at the shelter.

In the realm of magic realism, the viewers will meet a “Divine Mother” character. Raven, an ancestor and feature of creation stories for many Indigenous cultures, ties together all three settings.

The Rep commissioned the original play in a partnership with the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky. After an open call, scripts were vetted by a committee of local and national Indigenous artists.

The Rep’s artistic director, Michael Legg, said the committee “loved how Kendra planned to weave together the two stories that are at the heart of the play. They were also excited by Kendra’s existing ties to Missoula and Montana and how those ties could strengthen the story and its relationship to our community.”

Potter has acted in film and theater locally and in New York and Los Angeles. She wrote an original work, “The Buffalo Play,” that premiered here in and in New York City in 2019.

Last year, a feature documentary, “Daughter of a Lost Bird,” directed by Brooke Pepion Swaney, screened at Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. It details Potter’s search for the birth mother — she was put up for adoption and raised in Missoula by a loving white family. While following on her search as an adult, the film explains the Indian Child Welfare Act and the history of U.S. policies separating Native children from their families and culture.

The cast for this reading of “Can’t Drink Salt Water” includes visiting and local actors. University of Montana student Shadie Wallette, who was seen in the school’s production of “A Wrinkle in Time,” has a role. The visiting actors include Elva Guerra, who’s appeared on the FX series “Reservation Dogs.”

The entire show is overseen by guest director Pirronne Yousefzadeh of the Playwrights’ Center of Minneapolis. Audiences will see the work on the heels of three days of workshops at UM.

• On Sunday, doors to the PAR/TV Center open at 3:30 p.m. There will be Native art and vendors in the lobby, curated by Dre Castillo.
• At 4 p.m., the show will begin after a performance by the Pete Sisters.
• Carissa Heavy Runner will speak after the reading. Her

• 22, was killed while walking home on Highway 93 on March 31. A Butte woman, Sunny K. White, was charged with vehicular homicide on Oct. 23 and has entered a not-guilty plea in the case.
• The Pete Sisters will perform again afterward and there will be a reception in the lobby with artwork on view.