The Lineup For Our First Annual PlayGround Comedy Festival

PlayGround has announced the lineup for its first annual PlayGround Comedy Festival, an eclectic lineup of innovative performances including stand-up, sketch, improv, comedic plays, and more! Performances run March 6-29, 2026 (Thurs-Mon), presented live at San Francisco’s Potrero Stage and simulcast online. The festival features 18 hilarious acts and 60 performances produced by Lee Archer, Torey Bookstein, Joshua Raoul Brody, Diana Brown, Melanie DuPuy, The Fists of Improv, Emil Guillermo, Neil Harkins, Olivia Levine, Tim Orr, Tansu Philip, Loic Pichot, Mantra Radhakrishnan, Radhika Rao, The Red Herrings, Dana Schwartz, Ben Visini, and Jiaxin Zheng.

This year’s festival was competitively selected from open applications, and is a direct extension of PlayGround’s mission and commitment to the discovery of bold new voices for the stage and the development of innovative and timely original content. Tickets are Admission-Free (Suggested Donation: $10-$30). All donations directly support PlayGround and our guest artists. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit playground-sf.org/comedyfestival.

Schedule of Performances and Show Synopses:

A Stab In The Dark, presented by The Red Herrings
Sun, March 15 at 2:30pm; Sun, March 22 at 7pm; Mon, March 23 at 8:30pm
Welcome to an improvised murder mystery. A secluded location. Old rivals, lovers, and schemers. A shocking murder. A web of whispered accusations and dark secrets quickly ensnares the group. Following clues created on the spot, performers and audience piece together the puzzle as it unfolds. The twist? No one, not even the performers, knows who the killer is until the final, stunning accusation is made.

The Bomb by Dana Schwartz
Thurs, March 26 8:30pm; Sat, March 28 at 2:30pm; Sat, March 28 at 7pm; Sun, March 29 at 5:30pm
When the shine on mega-star Alex Rey’s career starts to tarnish, he decides to return to his stand-up roots. But he can’t tell if the laughs he’s getting are real – or just polite. Enter Naomi, a new comic with a quick wit and great impression of Alex. He hires her to test out his material since she isn’t afraid to bomb and he can’t afford to. As Alex wrestles with his fear of failure and Naomi fights to step out of his shadow and find her authentic voice, the two form an unlikely partnership— built on jokes, ego, and the uncomfortable truth behind the laughter.

Culturally Distressed: Live, by Loic Pichot and Miyoko Sakatani
Fri, March 27 at 7pm; Sat, March 28 at 8:30pm; Sun, March 29 at 4pm
Based on their hilarious and heartfelt podcast, Culturally Distressed: Live brings together Loic Pichot, a millennial gay comedian from France, Miyoko Sakatani, a Japanese-American straight boomer, and their friends in a hybrid of stand-up, sketch, and witty banter. Blending sharp humor with cultural insight, the show explores what it means to be culturally distressed in today’s world, from gender identities, age gaps, immigrant parents, queer dating to awkward mispronunciations. Join us for this comedic takedown of our shared culturally distressing moments!

Emil Amok, Anchorman: The News Made Me Do It by Emil Guillermo
Sat, March 14 at 4pm; Sun, March 15 at 7pm; Mon, March 16 at 7pm; Thurs, March 19 7pm
Emil Amok is Emil Guillermo’s liberation from his 50 year media career that begins as a high school intern at KQED, to on air reporter at NBC affiliates in Dallas and San Francisco, to hosting NPR’s “All Things Considered” in Washington. It’s a combination one man standup and improv show about how a newsman returns to comedy before the breaking news of his death. Or the death of journalism, whatever comes first. Along the way he takes aim at race, politics, culture, AI and how journalism and the media have failed us all.

Fancy Seeing You Here, produced by by Jiaxin Zheng
Sat, March 14 at 8:30pm; Sun, March 15 at 8:30pm; Sat, March 21 at 7pm
Fancy Seeing You Here is a one-set longform improv performance about the universal discomfort of running into your ex Starting with an audience suggestion of where this encounter happens, the players spin it into scenes exploring one of life’s most relatable predicaments. Featuring seasoned improvisers George Higgins, Diana Brown, Amber Rubinstein, Faryn Davis Bang, Michael Fleming, Lauren Swanson, Spencer Tomiatsu, and Jiaxin Zheng, this will be a show you won’t want to miss!

Gamesome Frolic: Improvised Comey in the Stylings of the Bard by Diana Brown, Radhika Rao, and Mick Shaffer
Sun, March 8 at 7pm; Sat, March 14 at 7pm; Sun, March 15 at 5:30pm
Shakespeare liked to control every word. Improv begs us to let go! Players Diana, Mick and Radhika delight in this artistic tension and plot to bring all to a merry conclusion. Mick Shaffer, player and musician, also accompanies the action on a Veillette Gryphon 12-string guitar! It’s fancy words, It’s heightened emotions, it’s gorgeous original compositions, it’s Gamesome Frolic!

Give a Little Bit More by Ben Visini
Thurs, March 12 7pm; Sun, March 22 at 8:30pm; Sun, March 29 at 7pm
An introspective, heartfelt, meta musical comedy show that asks how far you’d go to make your dreams come true. In a hail mary attempt to reignite his creative spark, Ben takes advice from a mysterious stranger who pushes him beyond his limits in a show that continually grows in intensity. Inspired by musical theater and Bo Burnham, performed by someone who never got cast in musicals and hates being compared to other depressed comedians with pianos.

I Am Trying to Think of Some Way to Make the Title Shorter Because This One Is Way Too Long I Think We Can All Agree by Lee Archer
Sat, March 7 at 2:30pm; Sun, March 8 at 5:30pm & 8:30pm; Fri, March 13 at 7pm
This spoken word show weaves together true moments from Lee Archer’s life — moments of insight, mystery, and connection. Audience members have described this show as transcendently hilarious, off-beat, lovely, fun, surreal, amazing, and completely brilliant. People at festivals in Vancouver, Montreal, San Francisco, and Chicago have laughed a lot, and you might too. Bring the vibe, or catch the vibe! Either way, this show is for you!! More audience testimonials and trailer at: www.leearcherswebsite.com, and on Instagram (@leearcherssocialmediahandle).

I’m So Glad I Caught The Vomit In My Hand: A Show About Parenting by Torey Bookstein
Fri, March 6 at 7pm; Sat, March 7 at 4pm; Sun, March 8 at 2:30pm; Mon, March 9 at 7pm
Parents suffer many indignities in this world and, GODDAMN, are they funny! If you’re a parent, come laugh through your pain; if you’re not a parent yet, come learn why you may never see your friends who have kids ever again!  Join Torey for this rollicking and ridiculous collection of her biting, original, and hysterically funny songs about Parenting Topics No One Talks About, including: poop, turkey basters, and cheerios stuck in places where cheerios SHOULD NEVER, EVER BE.

Johnny Lonely’s Unhappy Hour by Brian Lohmann and Joshua Raoul Brody
Thurs, March 26 7pm; Fri, March 27 at 8:30pm; Sat, March 28 at 4pm
“Unlucky in love” doesn’t begin to describe Johnny Lonely’s romantic history. But Brian Lohmann’s hilarious original songs — along with select standards and one or two improvised from audience suggestions — do. A mixture of musical sketch comedy and improv.

Munch Ado About Improv, produced by The Fists of Improv
Fri, March 6 at 8:30pm; Sat, March 7 at 7pm; Sat, March 14 at 2:30pm
(18+, Adults Only) An improv show that playfully explores sensuality and kink through interactive, themed games and scenes. Part homage and part kink education, the show blends long-form improv and sketch elements with audience participation. Munch Ado About Improv answers the question: what if Penn and Teller did kinky improv edutainment instead of magic?

The Naked Stage, presented by Improv Playhouse of San Francisco, produced by Tim Orr
Thurs, March 19 8:30pm; Sat, March 21 at 2:30pm and 8:30 pm, and Sun, March 22 at 5:30pm.
Join us for one (or more!) performances of The Naked Stage (a fully improvised one-act play), Each show is completely different! Improv Playhouse of San Francisco is an internationally-acclaimed local improvisational theater group.

Off-Topic Improv
Sat, March 7 at 8:30pm; Sun, March 8 at 4pm; Mon, March 9 at 8:30pm
Join us for classic Living Room”-style Improv Sketch Comedy! We’ll riff on prompt from the audience, deliver anecdote monologues, and perform a series of scenes with on-stage sweeps and edits.

SCRIPT///NOT/FOUND: An Improvised Cyberpunk Adventure, by Diana Brown, Josh Caldwell, Gordon Downs, Mark Gardiner, Matt Haley, Sara Goetz, & Erin Souza
Sun, March 22 at 4 pm; Sat, March 28 at 5:30pm, Sun, March 29 at 2:30pm & 8:30pm
SCRIPT///NOT/FOUND is a fully improvised theatrical experiment in surviving your own obsolescence where every choice rewrites the code. The world has already been built: a corporate-owned cyberpunk city where the rent is too high, the coffee’s synthetic, and human emotion has been reclassified as “nonessential data.” The characters know their backstories, debts, and ex-lovers’ Wi-Fi passwords — but no one knows what will happen next.

Each night, the performers improvise new encounters inside this doomed metropolis, where rebellion is a subscription service and authenticity costs extra. It’s dark. It’s funny. It’s basically Waiting for Godot with better lighting and worse privacy settings.The ensemble creates an intricate world of corporate overlords, synthetic identities, and failing resistance movements — then improvises the daily absurdities of trying to stay real in a place that monetizes dreams. Humor isn’t escape; it’s weaponized empathy. We laugh so we don’t cry (or worse, subscribe). Directed by Diana Brown

Tansu and Kirsten’s Very Best Friendship Show by Tansu Philip and Kirsten Baird
Fri, March 13 at 8:30pm; Sat, March 14 at 5:30pm; Sun, March 15 at 4pm
Longtime best friends and actors Tansu Philip and Kirsten Baird bring twenty-plus years of friendship, banter, and chaos to the stage in this fast-paced duo improv comedy. Starting from a single audience suggestion, they spin spontaneous worlds, larger-than-life characters, and absurd scenarios that could only come from two people who’ve been making each other laugh since 2002. Expect sharp banter, heartfelt moments, and the kind of unspoken chemistry you only get from childhood besties turned performers.

Unstuck by Olivia Levine
Fri, March 20 at 7pm; Sat, March 21 at 4pm; Mon, March 23 at 7pm
Did you worry about stabbing your father in his sleep after watching the film Minority Report with Tom Cruise? Ever been afraid to impregnate your own mother with bathtub water?? Were you scared to use the word ‘delectable’ in a sentence after JonBenet Ramsey said it the night before she was murdered in Getting Away with Murder: The JonBenet Ramsey Story? I’m gonna be real — if so, you might have OCD. Like me! Hi, I’m Olivia Levine and I suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. We’ve all heard about the classic stuff– the hand washing, the touching, the counting. But most of us haven’t heard about other ways it can manifest. Like worrying about accidentally causing violent harm to a loved one, the fear that using a particular word might result in the death of your best friend. Killing people with your vagina germs! The list goes on! UNSTUCK uses standup and storytelling to explore the comedy, the tragedy and the beauty of a very misunderstood and under-represented disorder.

What’s Your Protest Song? An Improvised Musical, by Melanie DuPuy and The Wypspers
Sat, March 7 at 5:30pm; Thurs, March 12 8:30pm; Mon, March 16 at 8:30pm
Tell us your story. What went wrong? What did you need it that moment? And… Boom! What’s Your Protest Song? An Improvised Musical is born. We make up mini-musicals on the spot, inspired by the audience’s suggestions and stories and of course, we will always invite them to sing along!

Women Off-Colour by Alondra Rios, Anelga Hajjar, and Mantra Radhakrishnan
Fri, March 20 at 8:30pm; Sat, March 21 at 5:30pm; Sun, March 22 at 2:30pm
Ethnicities we’ve dated, ethnicities who’ve wronged us, dads (alive and not), older sister trauma, ethnic moms, cycles we want to break, and growing up with curves. These are some of the topics Mantra, Alondra, and Anelga muse on in Women Off Colour. Featuring musical numbers, sketches, and monologues, this show invites women to be offensive, wrong, and unapologetic. Check out our Instagram @womenoffcolour

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. Visit https://playground-sf.org for more information.

Potrero Stage is a 99-seat state-of-the-art performance space located in the heart of San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood, operated by PlayGround and serving as home to some of the Bay Area’s leading new play developers and producers. Originally founded by Thick Description as Thick House in 1999, the theater underwent a significant renovation in 2016 and reopened in 2017 as Potrero Stage: PlayGround Center for New Plays. The venue hosts more than 100 public performances each year for a combined audience of over 6,000, in-person and simulcast. For more information, visit https://potrerostage.org.

PlayGround PlayGround Comedy Festival – Performance Schedule

Friday, March 6, 2026
7:00pm: I’m So Glad I Caught The Vomit In My Hand: A Show About Parenting
8:30pm: Munch Ado About Improv (18+, Adult Content)

Saturday, March 7, 2026
2:30pm: I Am Trying to Think of Some Way to Make the Title Shorter Because This One Is Way Too Long I Think We Can All Agree
4:00pm: I’m So Glad I Caught The Vomit In My Hand: A Show About Parenting
5:30pm: What’s Your Protest Song? An Improvised Musical
7:00pm: Munch Ado About Improv (18+, Adult Content)
8:30pm: Off-Topic Improv

Sunday, March 8, 2026
2:30pm: I’m So Glad I Caught The Vomit In My Hand: A Show About Parenting
4:00pm: Off-Topic Improv
5:30pm: I Am Trying to Think of Some Way to Make the Title Shorter Because This One Is Way Too Long I Think We Can All Agree
7:00pm: Gamesome Frolic- Improvised Comedy in the Stylings of the Bard
8:30pm: I Am Trying to Think of Some Way to Make the Title Shorter Because This One Is Way Too Long I Think We Can All Agree

Monday, March 9, 2026
7:00pm: I’m So Glad I Caught The Vomit In My Hand: A Show About Parenting
8:30pm: Off-Topic Improv

Thursday, March 12, 2026
7:00pm: Give a Little Bit More
8:30pm: What’s Your Protest Song? An Improvised Musical

Friday, March 13, 2026
7:00pm: I Am Trying to Think of Some Way to Make the Title Shorter Because This One Is Way Too Long I Think We Can All Agree
8:30pm: Tansu and Kirsten’s Very Best Friendship Show

Saturday, March 14, 2026
2:30pm: Munch Ado About Improv (18+, Adult Content)
4:00pm: Emil Amok, Anchorman: The News Made Me Do It
5:30pm: Tansu and Kirsten’s Very Best Friendship Show
7:00pm: Gamesome Frolic- Improvised Comedy in the Stylings of the Bard
8:30pm: Fancy Seeing You Here

Sunday, March 15, 2026
2:30pm: A Stab In The Dark
4:00pm: Tansu and Kirsten’s Very Best Friendship Show
5:30pm: Gamesome Frolic: Improvised Comedy in the Stylings of the Bard
7:00pm: Emil Amok, Anchorman: The News Made Me Do It
8:30pm: Fancy Seeing You Here

Monday, March 16, 2026
7:00pm: Emil Amok, Anchorman: The News Made Me Do it
8:30pm: What’s Your Protest Song? An Improvised Musical

Thursday, March 19, 2026
7:00pm: Emil Amok, Anchorman: The News Made Me Do It
8:30pm: Improv Playhouse of San Francisco

Friday, March 20, 2026
7:00pm: Unstuck
8:30pm: Women Off-Colour

Saturday, March 21, 2026
2:30pm: Naked Stage, Improv Playhouse of San Francisco
4:00pm: Unstuck
5:30pm: Women Off-Colour
7:00pm: Fancy Seeing You Here
8:30pm: Naked Stage, Improv Playhouse of San Francisco

Sunday, March 22, 2026
2:30pm: Women Off-Colour
4:00pm: The Last Download
5:30pm: Naked Stage, Improv Playhouse of San Francisco
7:00pm: A Stab In The Dark
8:30pm: Give a Little Bit More

Monday, March 23, 2026
7:00pm: Unstuck
8:30pm: A Stab In The Dark

Thursday, March 26, 2026
7:00pm: Johnny Lonely’s Unhappy Hour
8:30pm: The Bomb

Friday, March 27, 2026
7:00pm: Culturally Distressed: Live
8:30pm: Johnny Lonely’s Unhappy Hour

Saturday, March 28, 2026
2:30pm: The Bomb
4:00pm: Johnny Lonely’s Unhappy Hour
5:30pm: The Last Download
7:00pm: The Bomb
8:30pm: Culturally Distressed: Live

Sunday, March 29, 2026
2:30pm: The Last Download
4:00pm: Culturally Distressed: Live
5:30pm: The Bomb
7:00pm: Give a Little Bit More
8:30pm: The Last Download

TICKETS: Admission is free (donations gratefully accepted and directly support the artists). For tickets and more information, visit playground-sf.org/comedyfestival or call (415) 992-6677.