PlayGround’s 30th Season Writers Pool, Performance Schedule & More!

PlayGround, California’s leading playwright incubator and theatre community hub, is pleased to share plans for its 30th season with the announcement of  the Season 30 Writers Pool, 36 early-career Bay Area-based playwrights competitively selected from applications received this summer. Over the course of the upcoming 2023-24 season, these writers will generate over 150 original short plays, of which 36 will be developed as part of Monday Night PlayGround, a monthly script-in-hand staged reading series that is at the core of PlayGround’s multi-tiered writer development process. Each month, PlayGround announces a topic and invites members of the yearly Writers Pool to submit original ten-minute plays inspired by the topic and written in just four-and-a-half days. The top six scripts are staged by leading local directors and actors and presented at Freight & Salvage and simulcast, beginning on Monday, October 16 and continuing on third Mondays through March (the November round will take place at Potrero Stage, in connection with the annual Innovators Showcase).

PlayGround concludes its 30th season with the annual Best of PlayGround, May 11-12, 2024, featuring a curated selection with input from audiences and Company members alike of the top six short works from the current season. Additionally, PlayGround’s recently-announced Resident Playwrights and Alumni will receive support over the course of the year in the development of more than a dozen new full-length plays, including four new commissions. The top works will be featured in the PlayGround Festival of New Works, May 2024 at Potrero Stage.

PlayGround now operates programs and companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York City, and Chicago. In recognition of PlayGround’s national presence, PlayGround will host an integrated hybrid in-person/online fundraising gala, the One PlayGround Gala, on Monday, September 18 at Potrero Stage in San Francisco, the Broadwater Plunge in Los Angeles, The Producers Club in NYC, and Theater Wit in Chicago, with live performances, testimonials, and a four-course gourmet dinner. All proceeds will support the Monday Night series and artist compensation. 

In addition to PlayGround, we are also offering streaming access to this year’s PlayGround-LA PlayGround-NY, and PlayGround-Chicago seasons, with all events admission-free. Individual tickets and Monday Night PlayGround memberships go on sale September 1. For more information, visit https://PlayGround-sf.org/Monday.

2023-24 PlayGround Company

PlayGround also recently announced its 2023-24 Company, including the Writers Pool, Resident Playwrights and Artist Company. These 160+ artists will fuel PlayGround’s incubator programs over the next season, fostering the development of more than 150 original short and full-length plays.

The PlayGround 2023-24 Writers Pool includes: Daniel Baxter, Robyn Brooks, Nicole Apostol Bruno, Madeleine Butler, Jediah Craig, Cherielyn Ferguson, Elizabeth Flanagan, Ipsheeta Furtado, KT Frances Hartline, Sam Hurwitt, Tejahra Jacobs, Ruth Kirschner, Steve Koppman, Sarena Kuhn, Greg Lam, Jennifer Le Blanc, Kristy Lin Billuni, Justin P. Lopez, Mikee Loria, Daniel Martinez, Jr, Alanna McFall, Matthew Morishige, Richard Perez, Bridgette Dutta Portman, Xinyuan Pu, Kimberly Ridgeway, George Rose, David Schweidel, Louel Senores, Stan Stone, Lisa Thompson, Mike Tuton, Kaz Valtchev, Michael Waterson, Christian Wilburn, and Maury Zeff

2023-24 Resident Playwrights are: Cass Brayton, Bailey Jordan Garcia*, M.J. Kang, Samuel Kelly Fair Levit*, Daniel Martinez, Jr.*, Matthew Y. Morishige, Molly Olis Krost, Evelyn Jean Pine, Bridgette Dutta Portman*, Alexis Standridge, Leela Velautham, and Jennie Webb
* 2023-24 Commission recipients

Members of the PlayGround Company are: Molly Aaronson-Gelb, Angel Adedokun, Patrick Alparone, Linda Amayo-Hassan, Liz Anderson, Rinabeth Apostol, Michael Asberry, Michael Barrett Austin, Mary Baird, April Ballesteros, Tanika Baptiste, Aldo Billingslea, Millie Brooks, Julia Brothers, Nicole Apostol Bruno, Lizzie Calogero, Ron Campbell, Joy Carlin, Nancy Carlin, Ben Chau-Chiu, Tessa Corrie, David Cramer, Will Dao, Anne Darragh, Roshni Datta, Khalia Davis, Natalia Delgado, Dodds Delzell, Livia Gomes Demarchi, Carolyn Doyle, Leticia Duarte, Nora el Samahy, Rebecca Ennals, Gisela Feied, Britney Frazier, Michael French, Claire Ganem, Sarah Gasser, Norman Gee, Douglas B. Giorgis, Linda Giron, Amy Glazer, Cindy Goldfield, BW Gonzalez, Gabriel Grilli, Rudy Guerrero, Rosie Hallett, Katherine Hamilton, Eric Fraisher Hayes, Brian Herndon, Monica Ho, Champagne Hughes, J Jha, Colin Johnson, Jennifer King, Dean Koya, Danielle Levin, Amy Lizardo, Jeffrey Lo, Gwen Loeb, George Maguire, Melanie Marshall, Alicia Mason, Leontyne Mbele-Mbong, Julia McNeal, Sam Misner, Brady Morales-Woolery, Lisa Morse, Khary L. Moye, Molly Noble, Joseph Patrick O’Malley, Karen Offereins, Annette Oliveira, Soren Oliver, Ely Sonny Orquiza, Tony Ortega, Doyle Ott, June Palladino, Carla Pantoja, Louis Parnell, Jed Parsario, Michael Phillis, Krystle Piamonte, Rebecca Pingree, Stephanie Prentice, Ezra Reaves, Virginia Reed, Cathleen Riddley, Kimberly Ridgeway, Katja Rivera, Adrian Roberts, Stacy Ross, Adam Roy, Katie Rubin, Patrick Russell, Miyoko Sakatani, Lindsey Marie Schmeltzer, Louel Senores, Robert Sicular, Jeunee Simon, M. Graham Smith, Ken Sonkin, Lauren Spencer, Teddy Spencer, Chris Steele, Howard Swain, Jomar Tagatac, Emilie Talbot, Danielle Thys, Isabel Anne To, Jon Tracy, Dane Troy, Mark Rafael Truitt, Liam Vincent, Ian Walker, Maryssa Wanlass, Tracy Ward, Reggie D. White, Christian Wilburn, Aaron Wilton, Elena Wright, and Hector Zavala

Auditions

While in-person auditions on August 27 are fully booked, Bay Area performers (union and non-union) are invited to submit updated headshots, resumes and a link to a recorded monologue through PlayGround’s audition page, https://playground-sf.org/audition, reviewed regularly by the casting staff. Select actors will be invited to join the actor pool, from which the Monday Night PlayGround series is cast. Actors cast will receive $75 for the 90-minute rehearsal, brief tech, and 10-minute performance under a SAG-AFTRA New Media Agreement (deferred).

About PlayGround

PlayGround, California’s leading playwright incubator, provides unique development opportunities for the Bay Area’s (and now Los Angeles’) 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 300 early career playwrights, developing and staging over 1,500 of their original short plays through the Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series and the PlayGround Festival. PlayGround has also commissioned/developed 100 new full-length plays and 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. PlayGround began serving the Los Angeles artistic community in 2012 with the launch of PlayGround-LA. In 2021, our first East Coast hub launched as PlayGround-NY, with PlayGround-CH launched in 2022.

Over the past twenty-nine 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 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, the Glickman Awards (6 of the past 10 winners), and Bay Area Playwrights 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.

2023-24 Season Calendar

One PlayGround Gala
September 18, 2023 @ 8:30pm-11pm ET

Monday Night PlayGround
October 16, 2023, 7pm Pacific
November 20, 2023, 7pm Pacific [Note: Performed at Potrero Stage.]
December 18, 2023, 7pm Pacific
January 15, 2024, 7pm Pacific
February 19, 2024, 7pm Pacific
March 18, 2024, 7pm Pacific

Best of PlayGround 28
May 11-12, 2024, 7pm Pacific

All programs will be offered both in-person and online this year and are all admission free. Tickets and Monday Night PlayGround memberships go on sale September 1, 2023.

For more information, visit https://PlayGround-SF.org or follow PlayGround on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/playground.sf/), Twitter (https://twitter.com/playgroundsf) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/playgroundsftheatre/). For information on our sister programs, visit PlayGround-LA, PlayGround-NY and PlayGround-Chicago.