Sight Unseen

Donald Margulies is the author of four previous plays that were commissioned and premiered by SCR: Shipwrecked! (2007); the world premiere of Sight Unseen (1991); and the Los Angeles Drama Critics’ Circle Award-winner, Collected Stories (1996), both of which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; and Brooklyn Boy (2004). Dinner with Friends, which originated at Actors Theatre of Louisville, went on after its West Coast premiere at SCR to win numerous awards, including the 2000 Pulitzer… Show more Prize, long runs Off-Broadway and in Paris, and productions all over the United States and around the world. God of Vengeance, adapted from the classic Yiddish drama by Sholem Asch, was presented at the Pacific Playwrights Festival in 1999 and produced at A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle and the Williamstown Theatre Festival.

His other plays include The Model Apartment (OBIE Award), The Loman Family Picnic, Found a Peanut and Luna Park. What’s Wrong With This Picture? was produced on Broadway in 1994; Sight Unseen and Brooklyn Boy received their Broadway premieres in 2004 and 2005, respectively, at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Biltmore Theatre. Currently, he is adapting the novel Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides into an HBO miniseries. Margulies has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The New York Foundation for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He was the recipient of the 2000 Sidney Kingsley Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Theatre by a playwright. In 2005 he was honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters with an Award in Literature and by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture with its Award in Literary Arts. Mr. Margulies is an alumnus of New Dramatists and serves on the council of The Dramatists Guild of America. He is an adjunct professor of English and Theatre Studies at Yale University.

In this OBIE award-winning play, Jonathan Waxman is the art scene’s new visionary, with a waiting list to buy paintings he has yet to paint. In London for his first European show, Waxman is under the gun. He could be spurned, causing the American art world to re-evaluate his work. Or he could be further lionized, causing more demand and greater expectations. Either way, something is missing. On impulse, he escapes to the country to search for the woman who was his first love and early inspiration and maybe to get back in touch with the past—and those feelings that made him an artist in the first place.

Previews: March 11-15, 2012
Opening Night: March 16, 2012
Regular Performances: March 17 – April 1, 2012

Sight Unseen was considered Margulies’ breakthrough play, a commentary on what it takes to get ahead in the art world, and what gets lost on the way to success. But it’s so much more. Flashing back and forth in time, the play unfolds beautifully, and beneath their words, each character reveals moving and complex feelings that can take your breath away. Everyone will be fascinated by the story but also by the intriguing relationships, which evolve in ways that allow playgoers to draw their own conclusions.

Contains brief adult situations. Middle school and above.

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