About the Show

Festival@First 13: Superstitious, features 8 original short plays by Massachusetts playwrights which explore the weird, wacky, and sometimes spooky world of superstition.

A superstition is a widely held belief, typically not based on reason or science, that future events can be influenced by one's behavior in some supernatural way. Why do some people have all the good luck, while others seem like they've been cursed? Are we surrounded by ghosts who haven't found their eternal rest? Do we really have free will, or are our lives dictated by forces beyond ourselves? 

Join Theatre@First for a night of theatre that's sure to be hilarious, uncanny, and maybe a little twisted!

Auditions

Reservations are now open for auditions, Monday June 9 and Tuesday June 10. Auditions are by reservation only. See our Auditions page for more information and to sign up for a time slot!

Performances

Friday, August 15, 2025 at 8pm

Saturday, August 16, 2025 at 8pm

Sunday, August 17, 2025 at 8pm

Thursday, August 21, 2025 at 8pm

Friday, August 22, 2025 at 8pm

Saturday, August 23, 2025 at 2pm (matinee!)

Location

Festival@First 13 will be presented at Unity Somerville, 6 William Street, Somerville.

The performance space is not wheelchair-accessible.

Parking on William St is by permit only. General parking is available on College Ave. Please read signs carefully to avoid ticketing.

A couple brings an unusual—but adorable—case to the Department of Occult Difficulties, looking for help. 

Beth and Mac are both magnets for bad luck, but it never affects them directly. When they have a meet-cute in a restaurant it's the people around them who pay the price.

A mother and daughter head into the graveyard to confront old ghosts, literal and figurative.

For 56 years, a bronze statue of Juliet Capulet has stood in the plaza of the Casa di Giuletta in Verona, Italy, and superstition holds that anyone who rubs her right breast will have good luck in love. Today, for the first time, Juliet is going to say something about it. A visit from Rosalyn, an academic dealing with romantic issues of her own, sparks a (literally) enlivening conversation that explores relationships, abuse, agency, and—ultimately—empowerment and hope.

The show is over. The audience has long since left their seats, the set has been taken down and put into storage, and the theater has gone dark. And yet—one person remains. Beatrice, one of the founders of her local theatre company, sits in the glow of the ghost light, having finished her last performance before retirement. She doesn't feel like she can leave yet, though. When Helena, the stage manager, returns to the theater for something she had forgotten, the two of them end up reliving Beatrice's career, and what she sacrificed to get where she is. Along the way, Helena learns about the true meaning of her theater's ancient ghost light. In this meta-theatrical work that could be an analogy for just about anything if you think about it long enough, Beatrice and Helena learn that sometimes the antidote for fear is simply being together with another person.

A group of teenage friends meet in a secluded parking lot at the suggestion of their leader, Ash, to perform a ritual to summon the spirit of his deceased grandmother. Tension grows as Ash reveals the frivolous reasoning motivating the risky ritual, and his grandmother's spirit tries to lay claim to the physical body of one of their number. They are eventually able to wrestle back the body of their friend, but the manner in which they performed the ritual may prove to have dangerous consequences all the same.

Amy and Olivia want to use a ouijia board to contact the ghost of a girl who died on the grounds of their high school, but another student they don’t know warns them of a few things they hadn’t considered. 

At the liminal moment when one month turns to the next, the forces of good and ill fortune meet in the woods to determine the fates of a village. Each has their own agenda, and their own decisions to make. A courtroom drama meets dark fairy tale, starring a black cat, a white rabbit, and a crow.

If you are interested in joining the Production Team, or being a House Volunteer, please email us!