TRAGEDY: a tragedy provides in-depth coverage of a crack news team confronted with a crisis of major proportions. By turns comic, incisive and deeply moving, it brings us face-to-face with the night-to-night uncertainty we all encounter in life. Director Jess Viator takes the helm of this provocative look at our media's crisis routines and the faces behind the microphones. This production will be produced pending agreement with the playwright's representatives.

About The Director: Jess Viator received her BA in theatre performance and directing from Franklin Pierce College in 2002. She performed at the Kennedy Center in ...But the Rain is Full of Ghosts, a 2003 national winner of the American College Theater Festival. Previous directing experience includes The Sex Lives of Superheroes at Franklin Pierce, Charlotte's Web at The New London Barn Players, and The Wind in the Willows at Ipswich High School. This past fall, she was the Assistant Director of The War of the Worlds, part of The Post-Meridian Radio Players production The Big Broadcast of October 30th, 1938 at the Somerville Theatre. Jess has previously appeared on stage with Theatre@First in Festival@First: Nothing Serious and Never After.

About The Playwright: Theatre@First is excited to present the work of local playwright, Will Eno, who was born in Lowell in 1965 and has made a name for himself in London and New York as "a Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation". His works include The Flu Season, Kid Blanco, King: a problem play, THOM PAIN (based on nothing) and an adaptation of Ibsen's Peer Gynt. In 2004, Eno was awarded the first-ever Marian Seldes/Garson Kanin Fellowship by the Theater Hall of Fame. He is also a Helen Merrill Playwriting Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, and a Fellow of the Edward F. Albee Foundation, Inc.. According to Albee: "Will Eno is one of the finest young playwrights I've come across in a number of years."

Bare Bones: Staged Readings at Theatre@First is an exciting new program allowing casts and audiences to explore a wider variety of plays in the spare, intense setting of a directed reading