Now in its tenth year, At First Sight will feature two new plays by M.F.A. playwright Jayne Deely and Visiting Assistant Professor of playwriting, Diana Grisanti. In the Festival’s culminating weekend it includes scenes by undergraduate writers and a staged reading of a new play by our first-year M.F.A. playwright. Students are joined by the Katy Bigge Kestner Festival Guest Artists, industry professionals who provide their insight and expertise throughout the weekend.

In Diana Grisanti’s Bowling for Beginners, they train, they bowl, they attend class, they climb Jacob’s Ladder, and then they do it all again the next day. Bowling for Beginners is a theatrical exploration of a world inhabited by championship female athletes in a sport with few spectators. But once you understand the game, you'll learn what it takes to win.

Jayne Deely’s Uncle Play, which serves as their thesis, is a vaudevillian journey of love, grief, and community through time. A titanic debate of queerness within multiple generations of the same family that asks ‘how do we both honor the work of those on whose shoulders we stand while also taking ownership of our moment?’ Witness Uncle and Niece, desperate to make the time they have left matter, ask the big questions that the language of theatre was made to answer. 

In second year MFA playwriting candidate Annalise Cain's Crises of Abundance, the Green New Deal is here! We're strengthening ecosystems, we're protecting the coastline, and . . . wait a minute, is everyone in this secluded wetland . . . queer? How will we maintain any professionalism? What do we do with this sapphic paradise? How does one sit in a chair?? Jordan Flores Schwartz, second year MFA dramaturg candidate, directs this workshop presentation.

In first year MFA playwriting candidate David Davila's The Mesquite Tree: an American Tragedy, all a single mother needs is a little bit of masa and some left over meat to make enough tamales to feed her family for an entire month; but Blanca wants more for her granddaughter than to be pregnant at fifteen and stuck in a small house in South Texas with five generations of her abuelas. Can she change her family's destiny before there's another mouth to feed? Lauren Diesch, first year MFA directing candidate, directs this workshop presentation.

At First Sight Festival Events:

THURSDAY, MARCH 3
Panel: Making New Plays Work, a Conversation about Theatre
5:00 p.m. | Studio Theatre

SATURDAY, MARCH 5
Uncle Play by Jayne Deely | 2:00 p.m. | Wells-Metz Theatre
Uncle Play by Jayne Deely | 7:30 p.m. | Wells-Metz Theatre
Undergrad Shorts | 9:30 p.m. | Studio Theatre

TUESDAY, MARCH 8
Bowling for Beginners by Diana Grisanti
7:30 p.m. | Wells-Metz Theatre

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9
Uncle Play by Jayne Deely
7:30 p.m. | Wells-Metz Theatre

THURSDAY, MARCH 10
Bowling for Beginners by Diana Grisanti
7:30 p.m. | Wells-Metz Theatre

FRIDAY, MARCH 11
Crises of Abundance by Annalise Cain
10:00 a.m. | Studio Theatre
The Mesquite Tree: an American Tragedy by David Davila
2:30 p.m. | Studio Theatre
Uncle Play by Jayne Deely
7:30 p.m. | Wells-Metz Theatre

SATURDAY, MARCH 12
Bowling for Beginners by Diana Grisanti
2:00 p.m. | Wells-Metz Theatre
Post-show Panel Discussion | 3:30 p.m. | Wells-Metz Theatre