The First Move Playwrights Lab was created as a response to the needs of local playwrights to find spaces to develop new plays with other artists in monthly meetings over an eight-month period of time. The festival is a culmination of eight months’ worth of new play development by the First Move Playwrights Lab cohort of local playwrights.

Schedule of events

• July 16: The Secret Keepers by Erin Malone Turner - Trudging through their last semester at The Right Path Academy is a group of silly, intense, thoughtful, difficult high school seniors. During their last semester at the run-down boarding school, things get stranger than ever. This Southern gothic/coming-of-age play explores how we are responsible for each other, the messiness of growing up, the price of shouldering burdens alone, & learning how to accept what we’ve never truly had.
• July 17: El Amor in the Time of Corona by Aaron Zilbermann - An undocumented Colombian immigrant navigates love, abuse, exploitation, trauma and family in a new country, a new culture and a new language during the summer of COVID. With the constant threat of deportation looming, she is forced to make uncomfortable decisions and deal with the challenges of raising a teenage daughter in a society whose government labels her basic existence as illegal.
• July 23: Ursa Major by Zoe Kerr - When his best friend goes missing in a national park under mysterious circumstances, a teenage boy must confront his small town’s politics as he pursues the truth of how his best friend went missing and why no one is trying to find him. This play is about complicity, adolescence, and what we owe our communities and ourselves when the absolute worst thing that could happen happens.
• July 24: Red Bird Lane by Terrance Brooks Boykin - A woman struggles for the survival of her business in an urban neighborhood immersed in change, memories, old friendships, and dreams.