CSM announces New Works Initiative winner ‘The Adivina is Never Wrong’
OMAHA, Neb. – College of Saint Mary (CSM) is pleased to announce the winner of its New Works Initiative call for original one-act play scripts: “The Adivina is Never Wrong” by Teri Hegarty.
“The script was a breath of fresh air,” said Sarah Klocke, director of theatre and communications at CSM. “It’s lively, fun and full of heart.”
“The Adivina is Never Wrong,” tells the story of Rosa, who lives on an ostrich ranch and dreams of going to college to study meteorology. But that’s not what her mother and great-grandmother want for her. Greatly influenced by a fortune teller’s prediction from years before, Rosa’s family seems to have limited her life choices. Or have they? The audience will watch as this wise and resilient young woman overcomes her fears to forge her own path and take hold of the wheel of fate.
Hegarty will participate in a panel discussion focused on the creation of new scripts and the process of bringing those scripts to life on stage at Noon CST on Thursday, March 24 via Zoom. To register, go to CSM.edu/NewWorks. A staged reading of “The Adivina is Never Wrong” will be performed by the CSM community at 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 31, in CSM’s Warde Conference Center. This event is free and open to the public; masks are required. A digital release of a pre-recorded staged reading will be available at CSM.edu.
The winning script also will appear in the 2022 edition of the St. Mary’s Review. A committee of students, faculty and staff reviewed 22 submitted scripts. Playwrights were encouraged to focus on code-switching, utilizing more than one language. Hegarty has incorporated non-English-speaking characters into her writing before, but “The Adivina is Never Wrong” is her first true foray into code-switching.
“Creating a play with characters who switch between two languages was a challenge I couldn’t resist,” she said. “It actually reminded me of my own family. My mother and aunt used to speak Polish – my grandparents’ native language – whenever they were discussing something they didn’t want me or my sister to know about.”
Hegarty is a Massachusetts-based playwright whose work is both eclectic and unconventional. In addition to “The Adivina is Never Wrong,” Hegarty’s other plays include: “Between a Rock and a Charred Place, which was selected for the 2021 Crafton Hills College New Works Festival; “Pep Talk,” published in “Molecule,” spring 2021 issue 4; “The Silver Bullet” a finalist for the 2020 Red Bull Theatre Short New Play Festival; and “No Exit: A Drive-thru Existential Experience, finalist in the 2020 ARTemis Arts Widsom Anthology. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Inc.
