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New This Season!
SECOND LOOK FESTIVAL: 5 Days - 7 Plays
Wednesday, June 25 - Sunday, 29, 2025
The Studio will present staged readings of selected First Look plays by our Studio playwrights, reimagined and reworked based on your reaction and feedback. Each day we'll present what our playwrights have done to hone and improve their stories. As always, participation is FREE (or pay what you can). After the readings you can tell us what you think and feel about the changes.
2024-2025 Season
September 16, 2024: The Toast by Tim Ashby
Directed by: Tim Ashby
Featuring: Israel Campos, Lauren Isherwood, Paige Duhon, Tommy Noga, Rachel Weiss & Debra Rich
Narrator: Linda Warren Petersen
The morning of a toast to Lane’s engagement to a woman winds up tearing at his family’s open wounds. He has about as much patience for his younger sister’s protracted recovery from her near downfall as she has for his seeming escape into matrimony. The homeless man she brings to the celebration only complicates matters. Their mother and older sister, each in their own way, see the man differently. Is he a savior or sacrifice? Only the morning will tell.
October 21, 2024: Substinance by Sally Jane Kerschen-Sheppard
Directed by Kirt Shinemen
Featuring: Larah Pawlowski, Dave Susman, Shannon Noelle Green, Benjamin Rojek, Israel Alexander, Lauren Isherwood, Roy Major, Linda Peterson Warren
In the midst of a world-wide economic apocalypse, three siblings reunite at their family farm in Texas believing it will be their best chance for survival. As they are forced to live and work together, the family's reaction to their self-isolation causes old conflicts to come to the surface, and their internal struggles clash with the need to protect themselves from the outside world.
November 18, 2024: The Favorite by Gary Santorella
Directed by Bill Phillips
Featuring: Linda Peterson Warren, Issac Salazar, Ruben Davalos, David Sussman, Shari Watts, William Mosley, Bill Kane, Mark Gluckman
A horserace. A seemingly singular event. But for two trainers, two brothers, and a long-married husband and wife its outcome has very different meanings. For Tacker and Dan, it is the fleeting vindication of long held beliefs. For Felipe and Sonny, it is the long-awaited final act. And for Harry and Martha, it is both the ending and a new beginning.
December 16, 2024: The Summer of Jackson and Jess by Aaron Seever
Directed by: Aaron Seever
Featuring: Lauren Isherwood, Keith Chandler, Hilary (Tink) Hirsch. Walt Pedano, Becky Jo Harris, Adrianna Licitra, Scott Sims, Ben Rojek, Al Benneian, Patti Moran
Jackson is spiraling. Raised by his grandmother (Grams), the only woman he has ever loved and trusted, he is now losing her to dementia. His roommate Jess, is just a friend with benefits....right? Ghosts from Jackson and Jess' past haunt them, and upheaval ensues as Jackson's increasingly erratic behavior lands him in a twelve-step program. It is here where he meets Clint, a man who just might be able to get through to him before it is too late.
January 20, 2025: H&G by Kirt Shineman
Directed by Grady Gund
When Gail goes in for surgery, Hunter visits her. His hidden agenda is to find documents about their mother. During his search, Hunter’s past and present collapse. He recalls their struggle from childhood to maturity as they clashed with the thrill of expectation and the disillusioning knowledge of the truth as foundlings.
February 24, 2025: Glen Oaks by John Perovich
Directed by: Richard Powers Hardt
Featuring: Melody Knudson, Rachel Weiss, Jessica Fishell,
Hector Coris, Vicki Ronan
A poetic, meditative exploration of love, life, and the complexities of relationships. The play follows a married couple as they face the bittersweet reality of growing apart while deciding if they should stay together. Their daughter, meanwhile, navigates her own journey of love as she falls for Charley, the granddaughter of the town historian, whose connections to the town’s past intertwines with the present. As each character grapples with letting go of old ties and embracing new ones, Glen Oaks itself—rich with history, secrets, and beauty—becomes a silent witness to their emotional transformations. Through expressionistic and dreamlike moments, the play delves into themes of memory, belonging, brutality, and the ever-shifting nature of love.
March 31, 2025: Mercy by Amy Hartman
Directed by: Kathleen Butler
Featuring: Judy Lebeau, Debra Rich, Zhara Negrete, Javier M Santiago, Maureen Dias-Watson
Mercy is a Dark Comedy that deals with the hard journey of Sin, Forgiveness and Identity. Lucy is a nun who teaches Catholic high school in East L.A. Mercy is a kid who shoots another kid in a mandatory gang initiation. Lucy steals the child shooter to save her; fleeing to Pittsburgh to her estranged mother, only to discover a central truth of who she really is.
April 7, 2025: In Vino Veritas by Debra Gettleman
Directed by: Tommy Noga
Featuring: Lauren Isherwood, Nathaniel Tilden, Keith Chandler, Shannon Noelle Green, Anne Vogel, Amy Hartman, Javier Santiago, Tom Noga, Delores Goldsmith
If cult-film-classic “Sideways’ collided with the iconic television series, “Sex in the City,” you’d end up with “In Vino Veritas.” Debra Rich Gettleman’s hip off-beat comedy invites you to draw the line between health enthusiasm and potentially dangerous compulsion. When successful playwright, Lizzie, and her Chicago Lawyer husband, Phillip, face-off to explore the difference between being a connoisseur and being an addict, the stakes soar as the couple takes a hard look at themselves, their colleagues, and each other. Smart, fast, and funny, this play questions the social expectations that shape our modern landscape.
May 12, 2025: The Fortune Teller by Diana Grillo
Directed by Richard Powers Hardt
Set in the mystical world of fortunetelling, a young woman Ava, traumatized from youth after witnessing an abusive husband beating his wife, is fearful of finding love. She turns to the fortuneteller to find some comfort and guidance, but instead, she is left confused and fearful. The stimulating play explores the complicated relationships of family and how trauma shapes our lives and expectations. What will Ava do in the end?
June 9, 2025: Pheromones by Micki Shelton
Directed by Susan Back
Luca is working on his doctor’s thesis while teaching at a college in Northern Arizona. Lured by the area’s world-renowned geology, Sam follows him. Both find themselves deeply intrenched in the study of pheromones—the scent that draws one organism to another. Into their lives comes a native park ranger named Ben, the tantalizing life of lobsters, and a contentious debate about how human beings detect scents.
2023-2024 Season
August 28, 2023: TENT & TABERNACLE by Joe Bardin
What do we owe our heritage and what does it owe us? In this comedy about our emotional vulnerability, physical healing, and human connection, Ike has to go beyond his programmed masculinity and the culture that created it to keep Yuliana, who must decide if she still wants him after years of waiting for him to open up.
November 20, 2023: BIRDIE'S 70th BIRTHDAY BASH by John Perovich
Birdie is throwing herself a 70th birthday bash. To celebrate the milestone, she has invited her group of estranged friends together for a raucous weekend. Plans are set in motion, but not even the precise and controlling Birdie can predict the challenges that arise when the celebration veers off the rails. Birdie’s 70th Birthday Bash is a celebration of life, community, and facing life’s unpredictable, bewildering, and magical moments.
January 1, 2024: THE WHITE SWAN COMPACT by Clark DesSoye
Directed by Amy Hartman
Narration (stage directions): Judith Eisenberg
Featuring: Dolores Goldsmith, Cherylandria Banks, Muyiwa Shawn Adeola, Isabelle Bandt, Lynnette Burnett, Kyle Milhouse, Patti Moran, Tom Koelbel, Mark Gluckman
As the neighborhood around her changes, Sophia must decide: will she allow her grown children to take charge of her life or can she find a way to adapt and maintain her independence. A widow for twenty years, she built a new life for herself once, but at 88 she might not have the strength to make the changes in herself to once again feel at home in the city she has loved for half a century.
January 15, 2024: HOURGLASS by Kirt Shineman
Directed by Janis Webb
Featuring: Nicholas Gearing, Pamela Fields, Shana Bousard, Martha Welty, Tommy Francesco
When Allen’s feisty sixty-eight-year-old great-grandmother, Della, suffers a debilitating stroke, his parents send him to spend the summer supervising her convalescence in a dilapidated nursing home. Watching soap operas with a stroke victim is not a teenager’s idea of a summer vacation. Yet, over the summer, Allen discovers the responsibility of connection, the blossom of love, and the joy of overcoming fears. What starts as a comedy about two people who resent being in the same room together develops into drama as family secrets are revealed and old wounds are healed.
February 5, 2024: RECONCILED DIFFERENCES by Richard Warren
Directed by Martha Welty
Narrator: Linda Warren
Featuring: Steven Mastroieni, Shana Bousard, Brittany Brown, Dominik Rebilas & Toni Kallen
As Martin and Ginnie plan to celebrate their 20th year together, away from her rebellious daughter Judy; a person from Ginnie's past appears forcing them all to confront their beliefs, reassess their relationships and come to terms with their desires. A satiric comedy about contemporary sensibilities.
March 4, 2024: THE TEST by Diana Grillo
The Test begins with our oldest ritual, dating. Jimmy, a man/boy living in the past high school glory days of his youth, creates a test for his dates. He uses The Hideout, a local bar owned by his long-time friend and accomplice, Tim. This is where we meet Ann, his latest subject. One night, at the Hideout, the Test and Jimmy’s deceit is unveiled to Ann; she is left feeling humiliated and angry. When Jimmy discovers he’s been exposed, he becomes vindictive and violent.
April 22, 2024: TRIUMVIRATE by Kate Hawkes Video
A career military man and his younger wife must come to terms with the death of their only child due to injuries sustained in combat, as they also navigate their relationship. The path to forgiveness and purpose crosses lines of reality and demands facing hard truths to survive the grief and find meaning in their experience.
June 17, 2024: CORDELIA by Sally Jane Kerschen-Sheppard
Lear, a former governor of an unnamed state, has turned over a new leaf. He has a new, younger wife, new children, and is (surprisingly) a very involved and devoted father and husband to his new family. His daughter from his first marriage, Cordelia, works as his aide, and still tries to gain her father's attention and approval. However, Lear is in the process of rebranding and rehabilitating his image, and he is desperate to distance himself from his past. Cordelia is nothing but a reminder of his past. As Cordelia struggles to understand her relationship with her father, she also must discover how to forge her own identity outside her father's long shadow.
