Written by ADAM ELLIOTT
Directed by EPHRAIM BIRNEY
2003, Washington Heights. Morris, a cash-strapped real estate agent, is showing a decrepit rental to Maeve, an artist’s assistant desperate for a place to live. Amid broken elevators, feuding neighbors, and the ghost of a dead kitten, a routine apartment showing becomes more than they both bargained for. Offbeat and heartfelt, FIRST AND LAST is about the people who enter our lives, if only for a chapter, and the strange way memory edits life down to its most vivid arrivals and departures.
Cast and Creative
Kyla Schoer* as Maeve
Kyla Schoer is an actress, writer, and creator originally from New York City, now based in Los Angeles. A graduate of The Hartt School (BFA, Theatre), her television credits include Black-ish, Gentefied, Angie Tribeca, Scroll Wheel of Time, Very Important Person, and Adversity. Her stage work spans Los Angeles, regional theatre, and Off-Broadway, with performances at The Ahmanson, Hartford Stage, Goodspeed Opera House, Papermill Theatre, and TADA Theatre. She was most recently seen in Molly Smith Metzler's Cry It Out at Little Fish Theatre. Kyla is a proud member of AEA and SAG-AFTRA.
Design & Production Team
producers
RENA CARTER, JEREMY COHEN, ALEX WOLF
scenic designer
JOHN PETE HARDY
lighting designer
JOEY KOO
sound designer
EMI VERHAR
original music
ANDREW M. EDWARDS
production stage manager
LILY VANNER
press & publicity
CELESTE MATTEO
graphics
MATT FERRIN
*Equity Approved Showcase
Open Variations Theater is a New York City nonprofit theater company dedicated to reimagining existing plays through an interdisciplinary lens and promoting new works. Now in its third year, the company has produced an off-off Broadway reimagining of Bekah Brunstetter's Be a Good Little Widow at The Chain Theater, and Hannah Ponturo's 1518: The Dancing Plague, which began development in 2025 and premiered in Los Angeles as a part of the Daredevil Theater Festival in July 2026 before traveling to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August. Beyond the stage, Open Variations served as fiscal sponsor for Gazer, the debut feature from Ryan Sloan and Ariella Mastroianni, which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024.
Birthday Cat is an independent production house based in NYC. Founded by Alex Wolf & Anton Cebalo in March, 2025, Birthday Cat works with directors, writers, playwrights, and artists who have an eye for novelty. We like dramatic storytelling about lives not commonly experienced. The strange and the unsettling. Art that's current, experimentally adrift. Something fitting for the 2020s.
Presenting Partners
INNOVATIVE PROJECTS
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