My First Time features four actors in hysterical and heartbreaking stories about first sexual experiences written by real people. In 1998, a decade before blogging began, a website was created that allowed people to anonymously share their own true stories about their First Times. The website became an instant phenomenon as over 40,000 stories poured in from around the globe that were silly, sweet, absurd, funny, heterosexual, homosexual, shy, sexy and everything in between. And now, these true stories and all of the unique characters in them are brought to life by four actors in this acclaimed 90 minute play from Ken Davenport.

Each year we take three works of art and ask writers to fashion a play, and musicians to compose a piece as they are moved or inspired by the artwork. We blind-read the submissions, select the best and produce them. The art is exhibited, the music shared, we perform the plays on the KNOW Theatre stage, and ask the audience for feedback. It is our annual mixed media event that draws inquisitive art and theatre lovers to KNOW.

Tickets are $15 for one night, $40 for unlimited attendance. All shows are at 8pm at KNOW Theatre.

Prizes are awarded for Artistic Merit ($200), Audience Favorite ($100), and Best of Festival ($300).

The play begins with a conversation between two lovers, Tommy and Donna, who broke up some time earlier, but who are obviously still attracted to each other. Donna is enraged because Tommy, a would-be artist, is now having an affair with her younger sister, but Tommy, stretched out on his recliner, is seemingly unmoved by her harangue. So, Donna visits her father, a once successful artist who stopped painting at the death of his wife, whom he had bullied and betrayed despite his professed love for her. Combative and complex (but also very funny) the father sits and drinks and eventually gives in to his daughter's demand that he force Tommy to marry her or beat him up. Finally, the father and Tommy confront each other, with results that are sometimes menacing, sometimes antic, with a lively discussion about art and women eventually leading to a sort of tenuous truce—and a grudging recognition of the responsibility that love, in its various guises, imposes.

This winner of the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Drama uses a card game as a metaphor for life. Martin is playing solitaire on the porch of a seedy nursing home. Enter Dorsey, a proper, self-righteous fellow resident. They discover they both dislike the home and enjoy gin rummy, so they begin to play and to reveal intimate details of their lives. Dorsey wins every time, and their secrets become weapons used against one another. Martin longs for a victory to counter a lifetime of defeats, but it doesn’t happen. He leaves the stage a broken man, and Dorsey realizes their self-righteous rigidity has led to an embittered, lonely, old age.

Thomas, a beleaguered playwright-director, is desperate to find an actress to play Vanda, the female lead in his adaptation of the classic sadomasochistic tale Venus in Fur. Into his empty audition room walks a vulgar and equally desperate actress – oddly enough, named Vanda. Though utterly wrong for the sophisticated part, Vanda exhibits a strange command of the material, piquing Thomas’ interest with her seductive talents and secretive manner. As the two work through the script, they blur the line between play and reality, entering into an increasingly serious game of submission and domination that only one of them can win. A mysterious, funny, and erotic exploration of gender roles and sexuality, in which desire twists and turns in on itself, Venus in Fur is also a witty, unsettling look at the art of acting – onstage and off.