Dena Igusti's FIRST SIGHT: A QUEER INDONESIAN LOVE STORY Opens at SheNYC Festival

A multigenerational and multinational tale of love and loss, First Sight: A Queer Indonesian Love Story, written by Dena Igusti and directed by Sara Rahman, will take stage July 30th and 31st at The Connelly Theater as part of 2023's SheNYC Festival.

Based in 1994 Jakarta, Sari is an aspiring singer hoping to achieve her dreams of stardom through her karaoke performances at her best friend Fina's parties. One of her song numbers leads to a chance encounter with Lisa, a determined journalist, and the two become a hot item in Jakarta's lesbian party scene. But when Sari is forced to flee from the after effects of Suharto's U.S-backed dictatorship, the two must adapt their love to conform to the pressures of survival and migration. Based on Indonesian lesbians who had to conform to cis-heteronormative nuclear family dynamics during the late 1990s and early 2000s migration to Queens, New York City, First Sight is a look at the long-censored Indonesian lesbian zine movement, generational differences on what it means to be out, and what it means to love when everything else gets in the way.

The cast includes Victoria Pommalath, Natassha Amalia, B. Bastian, Aida Mohamed, Mirsen Lausten, and Marion Aguas. The team features Patricia Kusumaningtyas (Stage Manager & Intimacy Coordinator), Bethany Yeap (Set Designer), A. Prince Edwards (Graphics, Marketing, & Set Photography), and Gracia Zhao (Sound Designer).

"My first experience playing a Southeast Asian character started with First Sight. I am so humbled to be able to direct a piece that is so close to my heart having played Diah since the very beginning of its development." says director Sara Rahman. "My take on the play comes from my own experiences with grief, love, and "living in the memory of who I was." Additionally, working with a fully Southeast Asian cast has been an expected delight and collaborating again with Dena and my absolutely stellar crew has really opened my heart to what directing is to me - not just telling the story, but sharing the experience. I hope First Sight makes you laugh, cry, rage, and remember."

"First Sight is a love letter to the Queens Indonesian daughters I've known and loved who are constantly forced to contend with what could have been," says Dena Igusti. "How gorgeous they are, how they remain true to themselves even as they've watched parts of their lives erode in real time. I'm more than fortunate enough to work with Sarah and a team who know this story all too well, whether by working on earlier iterations of First Sight or by sharing similar experiences. Grief is something you can never prepare for. You have to take it for what it is: a faded laughter, a big love gone too soon, flickering karaoke machine lights in a beige room."

Dena Igusti is an Indonesian Muslim poet, playwright, producer, and FGC survivor & activist born and raised in Queens, New York. They are the author of CUT WOMAN (Game Over Books, 2020), which has been listed as a 2020 Harvard Bookstore Staff Pick and a Entropy Mag's Best Of 2020-2021, and I NEED THIS TO NOT SWALLOW ME ALIVE (Gingerbug Press, 2021). They are the co-playwright of the wish: a manual for a last-ditch effort to save abortion in the united states through theater, created with the support of New Georges and made possible by the Clubbed Thumb Constitution Commission, funded by Heidi Schreck and the producers of What The Constitution Means to Me. They are the founder of Dearest Mearest.

Their work has been featured in BOAAT Press, Peregrine Journal, and several other publications. Their work has been produced and performed at LA Times, The Brooklyn Museum, The Apollo Theater, the 2018 Teen Vogue Summit, Sahiyo Voices, Scarlet Udaan, Players Theatre (SHARUM, 2019), Prelude Festival (Cut Woman, 2020), Center At West Park (CON DOUGH, 2021), The Tank (First Sight 2021 at LimeFest), and several other venues internationally. They have received commissions from The Miranda Family Fund (2023), Motor Theater Company (2023), New Ohio Theatre (Now In Process 2022), Center at West Park (2021), Converse, and more.

They are a 2023 Asian American Writers' Workshop Open City Fellow, 2023 Culture Push Fellow, 2023 More Arts Engaging Artist Fellow, 2022 NeXt Doc Fellow, 2022 Lime Arts Unfinished Resident Playwright and Synesthesia Resident Artist, 2022 Sundress Arts Resident, 2022 Best of the Net Nominee, 2021 Baldwin For The Arts Resident, 2021 Hook Arts Media Digital Connections Fellow, 2021 Rogue Theater Festival Playwright-in-Residence, 2021 City Artist Corps, 2021 LMCC Governor's Island Resident, 2021 Broadway For Racial Justice Inaugural Casting Directive Fellow, 2020 Seventh Wave Editorial Resident, 2020 Ars Nova Emerging Leaders Fellow, 2020 Spotify Sound Up cohort member, 2019 Player's Theatre Resident Playwright, and 2018 NYC Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador. They are a Miranda Family Fund Commissioned Playwright, Converse All Stars Artist and UN #TOGETHERBAND Global Ambassador.

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