"Enough to Let the Light In" playwright Paloma Nozicka, left, answers questions alongside Ellis Greer, who read the part of Cynthia, and K.K. Moggie, who read the part of Marc, during Saturday night's question-and-answer session in the Shepherdstown Opera House. Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — The Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) Fall Reading Series returned for its second year, moving from its previous location in Shepherd University’s Marinoff Theater to the Shepherdstown Opera House.

The entirety of the two-night series, including a question-and-answer session with the actors, playwrights and directors involved with each staged reading, was live-streamed online, to accommodate CATF attendees across the country.

“Tonight we start our Fall Reading Series — the second one in the history of CATF,” McKowen said on Friday night, noting the microphone she was using and the microphones lining the front of the stage were to ensure a quality live-stream. “To our friends who are all over the country that are visiting with us tonight for this reading, thank you all for being here! We’re very excited about it.

“This is an opportunity for you to share the development process of a new play with us. That’s part of what we want to do with you, over the course of the year, so you can see how plays change and evolve, and be a part of the process with us,” McKowen said. “It’s an exciting time! After these readings this weekend, we’ll be introducing a couple of more development opportunities at CATF.”

The 2023 Fall Reading Series kicked off with the staged reading of “Loving, Long, Leaving,” by Michael Weller, a playwright familiar to CATF.

CATF Managing Director Jeff Griffin serves up drinks at the Shepherdstown Opera House bar on Saturday night. Tabitha Johnston

“This is a reconsideration of three plays that I wrote, a trilogy of plays, that involved the same two couples. They covered situational things that evolved, very much as they did in this play, but it was three separate plays. I wrote them over a 12-year period,” Weller said on Friday night. “I had been getting a lot of requests from various places around the world to do the plays together, and they wanted to figure out a way to do it. I didn’t pay much attention to it. But when COVID hit, my wife said, ‘Why don’t you look at those plays and see if there’s a way that they work as one thing?”

Following Friday night’s staged reading, Weller indicated he was pleased with how his new play had accomplished his goal, while bringing some deep questions to mind.

“I know many, many couples who tried to solve certain problems by having extra-marital affairs to kind of boost their ego, and then got past that crisis and realized where their real values were. They returned to what mattered to them the most. Most of them were best served by very traditional partnerships, where there was continuity and security and a sense of team play,” Weller said. “I think that transcends the thing I talk about in this play — you’re dealing with people who are living under a sense of failure in their personal life. They’re trying to use extramarital sex to ease their sense of failure, in some sort of way.”

The second and final play in the 2023 Fall Reading Series, “Enough to Let the Light In,” was the first play written by emerging playwright Paloma Nozicka. The play dealt with a number of relatable themes, such as guilt, trust, grief, motherhood and growing apart in a marriage, but with a twist.

“It originally just started as a scene. I was interested in this idea of somebody who is very logical and therapy-forward having a conversation with a very believer-type of person, and how that argument would grow,” Nozicka said, before discussing the reason behind making her main character believe her dead child had come back to life. “I wanted to do something scary — I love horror, I love psychological thrillers — I’d like to see more of that in theaters! It’s very entertaining.”

CATF Artistic Director Peggy McKowen, right, moderates a question-and-answer session with the cast, playwright and director of "Loving, Longing, Leaving" in the Shepherdstown Opera House on Friday night. Tabitha Johnston

Community members flock to the Shepherdstown Opera House on Friday night, for the reading of Michael Weller's "Loving, Longing, Leaving." Tabitha Johnston