PlayGround’s 28th Annual Festival of New Works Staged Readings
SAN FRANCISCO – The lineup has been announced for PlayGround’s 28th annual Festival of New Works Staged Readings: Rivals of Mars by Bridgette Dutta Portman (Friday, May 10), Work/Shoot by Matthew Y. Morishige (Monday, May 13), The Passing Storm by Jessica June Rowe (Friday, May 17), and Crazy Jezebels by Bailey Jordan Garcia (Monday, May 20). With themes ranging from the eternal fight against misogyny to the tragedy of ambition, these four plays embody the wide-ranging, provocative, and imaginative future of the American Theatre. All four readings will take place at 7pm PT in-person at Potrero Stage and simulcast online. Admission is free (donations gratefully accepted) with extended on-demand viewing for Festival Sponsors. For tickets, visit https://tickets.playground-sf.org.
The Plays and Playwrights
May 10, 2024 at 7pm PT
Rivals of Mars by Bridgette Dutta Portman
After the first crewed mission to Mars ends in tragedy, the daughter and husband of one of the deceased astronauts plan a risky mission to recover the bodies.
Bridgette Dutta Portman is an award-winning playwright and novelist. More than two dozen of her plays have been produced locally, nationally, and internationally. She is president of the Pear Theatre board of directors and a member of the Pear Playwrights’ Guild, the 2023-24 PlayGround writers pool, and the Dramatists’ Guild. She received the 2023 June Anne Baker Prize from PlayGround, and has been a finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights’ Festival, the Theatre Bay Area TITAN award, the PlayPenn Conference, the Kentucky Women’s Theatre Conference Prize for Women Writers, the New Dramatists playwrights’ residency, and more. She teaches composition and creative writing at UC Berkeley.
May 13, 2024 at 7pm PT
Work/Shoot by Matthew Y. Morishige
Maya Money, Aurora, and Farrah Fenix fight to find what’s real in the “heightened” world of professional wrestling.
Matthew Y. Morishige is an actor, musician, and playwright based in the Bay Area. Matthew has been a member of the Playground Writers’ pool since the ’22-’23 season. This is Matthew’s first full-length as a part of Playground’s Festival Staged Readings. Matthew is committed to amplifying diverse perspectives and is energized by collaboration with artists across many disciplines.
May 17, 2024 at 7pm PT
The Passing Storm by Jessica June Rowe
A man trapped in a deadly storm during his ascent of Mount Everest must wrestle with ghosts of the past—both figurative and literal.
Jessica June Rowe is a writer, playwright, editor, and perpetual daydreamer. Her short plays have been featured on multiple stages in Los Angeles with companies such as Playground-LA and NEO Ensemble Theatre. She is the Flash Fiction Editor of Exposition Review and her own fiction has appeared in Best Microfiction 2022, among others, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net. One of her poems is stamped into a sidewalk in Valencia, CA. She also really loves chai lattes.
May 20, 2024 at 7pm PT
Crazy Jezebels by Bailey Jordan Garcia
In lieu of heaven or hell, the biblical “crazy women” Eve, Jezebel, Lot’s Wife, and Lillith have been committed to a mental health residential treatment program to teach them how to behave properly, but they might have found a potential way out…
Bailey Jordan Garcia is a queer non-binary playwright based in NYC. Their full-length Pedo Punchers was a part of The Blank Theatre’s Living Room series. Also with The Blank, they became a winner of The Young Playwrights Festival with their piece “What to Expect When You’re Expecting Our Lord and Savior” (a play that also won “Best Play” at the Players Theatre Short Play Festival). They have gotten 4 people’s choice awards with PlayGround-NY and -LA, including two “Best Of the Best Ofs”. They’re also in their second year of Playground-One’s residency program where they’ve written their full-length Is this Beauty (which was a finalist for WaterWorks 2024). They’ve also worked with groups such as Atlantic Acting Studio, Bite Sized Theatrics, Boston Theatre Company, Cry Havoc, Ohio University, and over 30 others! They are also the co-founder of Fresh Binder Productions – a theatre company highlighting transgender and non-binary voices. When they aren’t writing or seeing as much theatre as humanly possible, Bailey can usually be found at Bethesda Fountain, cuddling with their 3-legged pup, volunteering at Brave Trails (an LGBT+ summer camp) or talking your ear off about Angels in America. baileyjordangarcia.com
These four plays were selected from submissions of PlayGround’s Best of alumni from across the country. Numerous plays that began as Festival Staged readings have gone on to full productions with PlayGround including both of this year’s Festival Premieres (Apertures of Love in Times of War, May 11-12; and A Thousand Natural Shocks May 18-19). Through these staged readings, PlayGround helps to elevate the Bay Area’s most important new voices for the stage, sharing diverse and inclusive stories that center communities too often excluded from the American Theatre. Past festival readings have included Diane Sampson’s Bernie Madoff-inspired musical Sleeping Cutie (2014), Glickman Award winner Ruben Grijalva’s Anna Considers Mars (2019). and Genevieve Jessee’s The Rendering Cycle (2020).
About the New Works Festival
In addition to these readings, the festival will also include the premiere presentations of Anne Yumi Kobori’s Apertures of Love in Times of War and Jacob Marx Rice’s A Thousand Natural Shocks, as well as Best of PlayGround(SF) ’24, featuring the top short works from the 30th season Monday Night staged reading series, an evening of the top short works by Bay Area high school dramatists as part of the 16th annual Young Playwrights Project, as well as productions of two new full-length plays, and an artist roundtable of playwrights and other artists featured in this year’s Festival.
Taken all together, the festival provides theatre-makers and theatregoers with one of the most varied and robust opportunities to discover leading new voices of the American Theatre while providing up-and-coming writers with the exposure, production experience, and networks they need to succeed on the national stage. Both Funny like and Abortion by Rachel Bublitz (2022) and Sapience by Diana Burbano (2021) premiered in the PlayGround Festival of New Works before moving on to National New Play Network Rolling World Premieres. Other festival alumni include: Lauren Yee, Geetha Reddy, Jonathan Spector, and Cleavon Smith, among others.
Why Free?
PlayGround has made all programs admission-free in furtherance of our commitment to radical accessibility. If you are able, we hope that you’ll consider donating with your free ticket reservation, recognizing that your direct support makes it possible for us to continue providing fair and equitable wages for professional artists while sustaining our radical accessibility efforts for all.
PlayGround, a leading national playwright incubator, provides unique development opportunities for the Bay Area’s, Los Angeles’, New York’s, and Chicago’s best new playwrights, including the monthly Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series, annual PlayGround Festival of New Works, full-length play commissions and support for the production of new plays by local playwrights through the New Play Production Fund. To date, PlayGround has supported over 350 early career playwrights, developing and staging more than 1,500 of their original short plays through the Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series and the PlayGround Festival. PlayGround has also commissioned 100 new full-length plays by 60 of these writers through its Commissioning Initiative and, through the innovative New Play Production Fund, has directly facilitated the premiere of 36 plays at theatres of every size, including three that have gone on to NYC and other major theater communities. Most recently, PlayGround renovated and relaunched the former Thick House Theater in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill as Potrero Stage, a state-of-the-art center for new plays, home to PlayGround’s expanding artistic programs and some of the Bay Area’s most distinguished new play developers and producers. Over the past twenty-seven years, PlayGround has served to identify some of the most important new local voices for the theatre. PlayGround’s alumni have gone on to win local, national, and international honors for their short and full-length work, including recognition at the Steinberg Awards, Glickman Awards (including 6 of the last 10), O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and New York International Fringe Festival, among others. PlayGround received the 2009 Paine Knickerbocker Award for outstanding contributions to Bay Area theatre, 3 BATCC Awards for Best Original Script for PlayGround commissions, a 2014 National Theatre Company Grant from the American Theatre Wing (founder of the Tony Awards®), and a 2016 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award.e events with extended on-demand access and in-person priority seating as well as a complimentary Potrero Stage cap and festival poster. Links for online viewing will be sent the day of the performance and can also be accessed through your PlayGround account at https://tickets.playground-sf.org (log in, click “home” for the main menu, then “tickets for upcoming performances”, select the proper show, and choose “watch”). If you have any questions, please contact the Box Office at boxoffice@playground-sf.org. For more information about the PlayGround Festival of New Works, call (415) 992-6677 or visit https://playground-sf.org/festival.