AfroSolo & PlayGround partner on 6th annual PlayGround Solo Fest this February!
AfroSolo Theatre Company, a sanctuary for Black art, culture, intellect, and entertainment, announces their latest partnership with playwright incubator PlayGround as part of PlayGround’s sixth annual PlayGround Solo Performance Festival, a curation of the best in Bay Area solo performance, running January 27 to February 12 presented live at San Francisco’s Potrero Stage and simulcast online. This year’s festival highlights the best in Black solo performance, including works by Diane M. Barnes, Geoffrey Grier and Champagne Hughes, February 3, 5, 10, 11 and 12. Tickets are free with donations gratefully accepted, to help support our artists. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit https://playground-sf.org/solofest or email boxoffice@playground-sf.org.
AfroSolo Theatre Company founder/Artistic Director Thomas Robert Simpson shared, “We are very excited to join forces with PlayGround and the PlayGround Solo Performance Festival to showcase the talented artists being presented this year. As a performer of the first festival, I can attest to its integrity, artistic quality and commitment to supporting emerging and established solo artists in the San Francisco Bay Area.”
Schedule of Performances and Show Synopses
Diane M. Barnes in Not One Of Us
Fri Feb 3 – 7pm PT / Sun Feb 12 – 7pm PT NOT ONE OF US is a comedic/dramatic exploration of class, race, gender and privilege from Yale Medical School to Lagos Nigeria, from practicing medicine to becoming a patient. Presented via Zoom at the 2021 Solo Fest, PlayGround brings Diane back for her in-person Solo Fest debut!
Geoffrey Grier in Resurrection
Sun Feb 5 – 7pm PT / Fri Feb 10 – 7pm PT Geoffrey Grier performs Resurrection, a story of Grier’s rise, fall, and recovery from many vices. He takes us on a very personal journey that is a narrative of resilience from his hometown of Detroit to San Francisco. Grier’s journey goes from the extremes of family love to the depths of addiction. He then invites us to experience his uplifting voyage of recovery and resurrection from the vices. The performance is directed by Dr. Ayodele Nzinga.
Champagne Hughes in (No More) Adjustments
Fri Feb 10 – 7pm PT / Sat Feb 11 – 7pm PT A black woman yearning to find safety in organically expressing herself. Throughout this piece she demonstrates being consumed with anger and grief after years of oppression as a creative. Academic trauma, assault, and lack of support from those she was trained to love and honor leads her to find healing by accessing her divine mother/feminine via song, dance, spoken word and improvisation. In result, she discovers that she no longer has to make adjustments for others all while (r e)establishing the sense of grace, bravery, boldness and leadership she always had within herself.
About the Artists
Diane M. Barnes (she/her): Diane M Barnes, M.D., is an actor, writer and solo performer. A graduate of Stanford and Yale School of Medicine, trained at Stanford and UCSF , Diane is Board Certified in Diagnostic Radiology. After a life changing hemorrhagic stroke, Diane discovered improvisation and storytelling. Author of two acclaimed solo shows developed with David Ford, My Stroke of Luck, detailing her experience of stroke, and Not One of Us, focusing on the intersection of class, race, privilege and gender in medicine, she is currently working on a multigenerational saga of her ancestors, What We Carry. Dianebarnes415.com
Geoffrey Grier (he/them): Using the depth of his experiences, Grier now manages the San Francisco Recovery Theatre, whose mission is to organize the partnership between actors, scripted material, writers, directors, and newcomers (returning citizens and homeless performers). As a recovering addict, Grier believes that the artistic processes of theater and the performing arts give people a chance to lower the masks they wear on the street and successfully communicate from the heart and in the moment.
Champagne Hughes (all pronouns): Champagne Hughes is the Bay Area’s Director of Taboo Topics. For most, she is known for her contributions to the Arts as an administrator, actor, DJ and event producer. Now, Hughes completed her Counseling Psychology Masters (CIIS) with a drama and sex therapy emphasis. Among many other, Hughes’ mission includes developing emotional support programs for artists, establishing best practices for role closer and repair, transforming toxic societal attitudes toward human sexuality through a pleasure centered, intersectional lens. Acting Credits: Central Works, AASC, Altarena, OTP, SF Playhouse. Art Administrative Credits: The Flight Deck, ACT, BRT, Beach Blanket Babylon.
AfroSolo Theatre Company’s mission is to nurture, promote and present African American and African Diasporan art and culture through solo performances and the visual and literary arts. Since 1994, we have presented the annual AfroSolo Arts Festival, a forum for African Americans and the larger African Diaspora, as a way to give voice to the unique experience of being Black. Through art, we bring people of all ethnicities together to explore and share the human spirit that binds us all. For more information, visit https://www.afrosolosf.org.
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 250 early career playwrights, developing and staging over 1,000 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 33 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. This year brings PlayGround-CH into the fold.
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 (4 of the past 5 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.
WHERE: Potrero Stage & Simulcast (on-demand access for one week)
WHAT & WHEN:
PlayGround Solo Performance Festival
Performance Schedule
Friday, February 3, 2023, 7pm
Diane M. Barnes in NOT ONE OF US (with Ric Iverson in RIC IVERSON IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN MILPITAS – THE HIGHLY CONCENTRATED VERSION)
Sunday, February 5, 2023, 7pm
Geoffrey Grier in RESURRECTION (with Tina D’Elia in OVERLOOKED LATINAS)
Friday, February 10, 2023, 7pm
Champagne Hughes in (NO MORE) ADJUSTMENTS
Geoffrey Grier in RESURRECTION
Saturday, February 11, 2023, 7pm
Champagne Hughes in (NO MORE) ADJUSTMENTS (with Rachel Kaftan in BOY VEY)
Sunday, February 12, 2023, 7pm
Diane M. Barnes in NOT ONE OF US (with Daniel Martinez, Jr. in ROUND HOLE)
TICKETS: For tickets and more information, visit https://playground-sf.org/solofest or call (415) 992-6677. NOTE: For in-person attendance, full vaccination with booster is required and KN95 or N95 masks must be worn at all times (PlayGround will provide masks for those who don’t have them). To access the live-stream/on-demand broadcast, log in at https://tickets.playground-sf.org, select the main menu (“home”) and “tickets for upcoming performances” to find your show and then click “watch”. For box office questions, including online access, email boxoffice@playground-sf.org.