The 2016 Wagner New Play Festival at UC San Diego features world premiere productions by our talented MFA playwrights, and directed, acted, stage-managed and designed by our nationally-acclaimed MFA companies. The plays produced in the Wagner New Plays Festival represent some of the most original and groundbreaking new voices in American theatre. DAMASCUS Wednesday, May 11 @ 7:30pm Thursday, May 12 @ 7:30pm Saturday, May 14th @ 7:00pm Theodore and Adele Shank Theatre There’s an explosion at the Minneapolis airport. Everyone is on high alert. With all the planes grounded, a stranded teenager pleads with a Somali-American Super Shuttle driver to drive him to Chicago so he can get home. As the two men cross the Midwest in the dead of winter, they discover that not everything is what it seems. DAMASCUS investigates the seductiveness of extremism, the fine line between caution and paranoia, and the assumptions we make about homeland and security. GO. PLEASE. GO. Fri, May 13 @ 7:30pm Sat, May 14 @ 2pm Theodore and Adele Shank Theatre A couple decides: This isn’t working. He says he’ll leave, and then he doesn’t. He stays and stays and stays. Through seventy years of marriages, bar mitzvahs, baptisms, and funerals, he stays. People get drunk. People get sober. People plan vacations. People die. Somebody wins the lottery. A baby grows up. Everybody dances. GO. PLEASE. GO. asks what it means to love somebody for a lifetime, and what a lifetime even means. HOW TO USE A KNIFE Fri, May 13 @ 7:30pm Sat, May 14 @ 7pm Mandell Weiss Forum Chef George spends his nights trying to stay sober while yelling at a pair of trash-talking line cooks and a pot-smoking busboy. The only person in the kitchen he likes is the dishwasher, an East African immigrant named Steve. But when immigration authorities show up asking about Steve’s actions in the aftermath of the Rwandan Genocide, George is forced to question everything he thought he knew about his friend. Set in the kitchen of a Manhattan restaurant, HOW TO USE A KNIFE explores the legacy of genocide and the repercussions of crimes committed in the past on the present. A DOUBLE BILL! Sin Eaters + Other People Thursday, May 12 @ 7:30pm Friday, May 13 @ 7:30pm Saturday, May 14 @ 2pm Arthur Wagner Theatre Sin Eaters Mary is a “content moderator,” one of the unseen people who scrub our social media feeds of violent, sexual, and otherwise disturbing imagery. As she goes deeper and deeper into the dark rabbit hole of unfiltered human depravity that is the internet, she finds a graphic video that makes her question her relationship, her sanity, and her own capacity for violence. By plunging us into a job where technology meets drudgery, SIN EATERS examines how our daily toil transforms our perceptions of ourselves and those around us. Other People Zoe is having lots of sex with lots of people. Her ex is moving on, her mom keeps popping in at the most inconvenient moments, and she’s developing a mystery rash. Can you really have sex with no strings? Does your Mom’s Old World advice about men apply? Is that guy a serial killer or just lonely? OTHER PEOPLE asks what it means to find romance in a world where everyone is on Tinder, polyamory is the new normal, and the rules are only invisible until you break them.