PlayGround offers a series of monthly two-hour playwriting Intensives for emerging professionals, led by PlayGround artistic staff and guest lecturers drawn from the Bay Area's most distinguished playwrights and other theatre professionals. Writers may sign up for individual or multiple classes as each is intended as a stand-alone program. Classes take place on selected Monday nights, 7-9PM, at A.C.T. Studios, 30 Grant Avenue in San Francisco. Registration: $15 for October 4 class only; $35 for all subsequent classes ($40 at the door); $100 for 6-class subscription.
To register for individual classes, click here.
2010-11 Intensives Schedule
Join some of the Bay Area’s best writers, directors and literary managers in PlayGround’s Master Classes to discover your potential as a Playwright.
October 4 - PlayGround Alumni Trevor Allen, Erin Bregman, Garret Jon Groenveld, Daniel Heath and Geetha Reddy, in discussion with Artistic Director Jim Kleinmann
November 1 - SF Playhouse Artistic Director Bill English
December 6 - Magic Theatre Director of New Play Development Jayne
Benjulian
January 3 - Playwright and Filmmaker Philip Kan Gotanda
February 7 - Playwright Peter Sinn Nachtrieb
March 7 - Playwright Aaron Loeb
Suggested Reading: Best of PlayGround series (2001-2010)
To register, click here. To subscribe to the 6-class series and save 45%, click here.
2010-11 Faculty
Trevor Allen received PlayGround's Emerging Playwright Award, Playwriting Fellowship and two alumni commissions. His PlayGround-commissioned Lolita Roadtrip will premiere at San Jose Stage Company in 2011. His recent play The Creature had a successful run last Halloween (Black Box Theatre). Other productions include: Tenders in the Fog (San Jose Stage, Goodman Award for Original Script), Working for the Mouse! (Impact Theatre), 49 Miles (Crowded Fire), Chain Reactions (CAFÉ, The Cutting Ball and Theatre of Yugen,). He is a recipient of a SF Arts Commission playwriting grant, Zoo Logic (Z-Space/Magic Theatre and Crowded Fire), two SF Fringe Festival’s “Best Of” awards and a Djerassi Playwriting residency. He is a Bay Area Playwrights Festival alumni. He holds degrees in Theatre from UCLA and Creative Writing from San Francisco State and is an active member of the Dramatists Guild.
Jayne Benjulian is Director of New Play Development and producer of the Virgin Play series at Magic Theatre. Jayne was Fulbright Lecturer at Université Lyon III, France and a teaching fellow at Emory University. She held teaching appointments in writing and literature at University of San Francisco, San Francisco University High School and Menlo School. Before turning to theater full-time, she was chief speechwriter at Apple and executive producer for an online series. She is a poet, French speaker and student of Russian.
Erin Bregman is the recipient of the 2009 June Ann Baker Prize, a Dilling Yang Fellowship in Dramatic Arts, and is a resident playwright at the Playwrights Foundation. She was also a finalist for the Princess Grace Award, and the Jerome Fellowship. Erin has had work produced or developed with Just Theater, The Lark, the Playwrights Foundation, furyFactory, UCSB New Plays Festival, and PlayGround, and has received commissions from the Magic Theatre/Sloan Foundation, Just Theater, and PlayGround. She is a two-time PlayGround Emerging Playwright Award winner and her PlayGround-commissioned Nightmare Play will receive its premiere at Just Theater in 2011.
Bill English is Artistic Director and co-founder of SF Playhouse. He has spent his life producing works of art. Bill is an accomplished singer, pianist and composer. He has acted in films, television and professional theatre and is a member of all the performing unions. Bill’s work in the theatre has been recognized with numerous awards for acting, directing, sound and set design.
Philip Kan Gotanda is a Sansei (third-generation Japanese American), Bay Area resident, and native of Stockton, California. A playwright and filmmaker whose plays include After the War, A Fist of Roses, Yohen, The Wind Cries Mary, Floating Weeds, Sisters Matsumoto, Fish Head Soup, Ballad of Yachiyo, and Yankee Dawg You Die, Gotanda has seen his works produced locally (A.C.T., Asian American Theatre Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Campo Santo+Intersection for the Arts, Eureka Theatre, Magic Theatre, and San Jose Repertory Theatre), as well as at theater companies across the country, in Great Britain, and Japan. Gotanda is also an independent filmmaker whose works have been seen in film festivals around the world. Throughout his career Gotanda has embodied the heart and spirit of an artist dedicated to telling his own particular world’s stories, in the process creating one of the largest and most varied bodies of Asian-American-themed work.
Garret Jon Groenveld is among the founding writers of PlayGround and a six-time winner of the Emerging Playwrights Award. His play Missives, originally commissioned by PlayGround, appeared in the Bay Area Playwrights Festival in 2004, premiered in San Francisco in 2005 at Theatre Rhino and in New York in 2008 at 59E59 Theatres. He is a Resident Playwright of the Playwrights Foundation and a proud member of the Dramatists Guild.
Daniel Heath Daniel Heath is a three-time Emerging Playwright Award winner (2007, Seagull; 2008, Leo; 2009, Wednesday). He completed commissions from PlayGround in 2009 and 2010; his second commission, Seven Days, will premiere in the SF Playhouse's Sandbox series in fall of 2010. His full-length comedies have been performed by Pianofight Productions in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and his short plays have been performed in San Francisco, New York, and across the country. His new rock musical, The Man of Rock, will be produced by the Climate Theatre in December of 2010.
Aaron Loeb is author of four full-length plays, including Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award winners First Person Shooter and Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party, both of which premiered at SF Playhouse. Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party was named Outstanding Play at the 2009 New York International Fringe Festival and recently received its off-Broadway debut. Aaron has written extensively for PlayGround, with seven appearances in the Best of PlayGround Festival and is the recipient of two full-length commissions from PlayGround. He has BFAs in Dramatic Writing and Dramatic Literature from NYU. Aaron is a member of the Dramatists Guild and a Playwrights Foundation resident playwright.
Peter Sinn Nachtrieb holds degrees in theatre and biology from Brown University and is a graduate of San Francisco State’s playwriting program. His play boom has been produced around the country and was listed by TCG among the top produced plays of 2009-10. His next play, BOB, will premiere at the Humana Festival in 2011. He is a recipient of the ACTA/Steinberg new Play Award (Hunter Gatherers); the PlayGround Emerging Playwright Award (Self Help). A member of New Dramatists and a resident playwright at the Playwrights Foundation, he is currently writing a play, Litter, about dodecatuplets, commissioned by A.C.T. for the 2011 MFA class.
Geetha Reddy is a five-time recipient of PlayGround’s Emerging Playwright Award. In 2005 she was awarded PlayGround’s June Anne Baker Prize and subsequently received two PlayGround Alumni Commissions. Her play Blastosphere, co-written with PlayGround alumnus Aaron Loeb, received its premiere at Central Works in 2009. Her play Safe House was featured in the 2008 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and received its premiere in the inaugural season of SF Playhouse’s Sandbox Series. Her plays have been performed in the Santa Rosa Actor’s Theatre Quickies festival, the Best of the SF Fringe, and on the Writer’s Block, a KQED podcast. Theatre Bay Area named her one of the Bay Area’s top “Up & Coming Playwrights”.