Best of PlayGround 25 – The Twenty-Fifth Annual Short Play Fest!

PlayGround is thrilled to announce the selected playwrights for our 25th annual ten-minute play festival, BEST OF PLAYGROUND 25, streaming live via Zoom, Saturday May 29 and Sunday May 30 at 7pm PT. The writers are: Akaina Ghosh, Anne Yumi Kobori, Bacilio Mendez II, Chris Steele, Eteya Trinidad, Leela Velautham, and Christian Wilburn. This year’s Best of PlayGround is a celebration of the 7 best plays from the 2020-21 Monday Night PlayGround season, and indicative of the incredible talent and diversity of our writers pool. 5 of the 7 selected writers are first-time Best of PlayGround finalists (four of these having just completed their first season with PlayGround!), and all seven highlight the best of what PlayGround has to offer in this highly anticipated annual program. Competitively selected by PlayGround’s artistic staff and company artists from more than 175 submissions, the “Best of” highlights the most artistically dynamic short plays from this year’s season and spotlights the preeminent rising voices of Bay Area theatre and beyond. Since 1997, PlayGround has recognized 93 of the Bay Area’s most promising new writers through the annual Best of PlayGround, including Lauren Yee, Aaron Loeb, Geetha Reddy and Jonathan Spector, among others. This year’s satisfying evening of bite-sized theater live streams May 29 & 30 as part of the second annual PlayGround Zoom Fest (May 10-30). Admission is free (donations gratefully accepted) but advance reservations are required. For tickets and more information, visit https://playground-sf.org/bestof.

20th June Anne Baker Prize Winner!

Also just announced is the winner of this year’s June Anne Baker Prize, recognizing a distinguished female playwright representing a gifted new comedic and/or political voice. The 2021 award, PlayGround’s twentieth June Anne Baker Prize, goes to Eteya Trinidad. Over the next year, Ms. Trinidad will develop a new full-length play under commission and as part of the 2021-22 Resident Playwrights Program. Past June Anne Baker Prize winners are a who’s who of top Bay Area playwrights, including Lauren Yee, Geetha Reddy, Evelyn Jean Pine, Patricia Cotter, and Rachel Bublitz, among others.

Lineup & Synopses (alphabetically by playwright): 

Blended Histories by Akaina Ghosh, directed by Jim Kleinmann
Brother and sister try to recall the story of their estranged parents at their mother’s funeral. But sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction.

The Art of Suffrage by Anne Yumi Kobori, directed by Jeffrey Lo
In the Manzanar Relocation Center, two Japanese-American teenagers struggle to reconcile their past, present and future. 

Pivot by Bacilio Mendez II, directed by Claire Ganem
When cancel-culture backfires and causes their latest post to go viral, two wannabe influencers may finally achieve their dream of celebrity… but at what cost?

Zagriate by Chris Steele, directed by Sean Owens
In a seedy queer bar, strangers connect and an unlikely origin story unfolds, blending Greek mythology and trans personal history.

La Planchada by Eteya Trinidad, directed by Tessa Corrie
A man in an El Paso COVID ward struggles for breath while his niece, though more than a thousand miles away, may hold the secret to his survival. 

Curry and Crumpets by Leela Velautham, directed by Katherine Hamilton
A simple homework assignment becomes infinitely more challenging when a student finds two sides of her own identity fighting for supremacy.

Sasha and the Angelier by Christian Wilburn, directed by Norman Gee
A young girl finds a new friend and temporary reprieve from a debilitating illness through her latest adventure novel.

About the Playwrights: 

Akainia Ghosh (Blended Histories), they/them, is a non-binary playwright, director, and performer. They received 3Girls Theatre’s “Innovator’s Series” grant for two consecutive years, debuting full-length original works at Z-Below and The Rathskeller Club. In 2019 they completed a Writing Fellowship with SF’s renowned sketch comedy company, Killing My Lobster. This is their fourth season in PlayGround’s Writer’s Pool!

Anne Yumi Kobori (The Art of Suffrage), she/her/hers, is a Japanese-American theatre artist. Her full-length plays Seeds and Every Day Alice, and her adaptation of The Seagull, have premiered with Utopia Theatre Project. The Scourge of Verona, her comedic short, won the Audience Favorite Award in Silicon Valley Shakespeare’s 48Hr Playfest. Currently, she is a co-writer for Braided, in development with Theatre of Yugen. www.anneyumikobori.com

Bacilio Mendez II (Pivot), he/him, is a proud member of Actors’ Equity and SAG-AFTRA. A 2019-20 Monday Night PlayGround initiate, as an actor, Bacilio is excited to now be a member of the Writers Pool. Cross your fingers for Bacilio; he’s waiting on CA Bar Exam results.

Chris Steele (Zagriate), they/them, is a queer trans nonbinary performance artist, writer, and activist. Their work centers on highlighting queer narratives throughout history and combating bigotry and white supremacy. As an actor, they have performed with companies across the Bay including We Players, NCTC, Cutting Ball, SF Shakespeare Festival, and the SF Playwrights Festival. As a writer they premiered adaptations of Miss Julie and Troilus and Cressida with their queer collective: Poltergeist Theatre Project. Chris is a co-founder of Poltergeist Theatre Project: a new queer theater collective, on instagram @poltergeist_theatre_project, and their award-winning drag personas Polly Amber Ross and Peter Pansexual can be found on instagram @pollyandpeter, where they’ve been creating politically subversive video performance art throughout the Covid pandemic.

Eteya Trinidad (La Planchada), she/her, is a playwright, stage manager, and theater artist. Her full-length play, La Sirena, was recognized as a finalist for the 2019 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and received a staged reading at Ross Valley Players that same year. She wrote and directed her first play, La Mestiza’s Colors, with the College Players at the University of San Francisco in 2017. Since then, her work has been seen at PlayGround, San Francisco Olympians Festival, Amios West, 3Girls Theatre, and Theatre is the Cure, among others. This is her first year with the PlayGround Writers Pool.

Leela Velauthum (Curry and Crumpets), she/her, is originally from the UK and a graduate student at UC Berkeley studying towards a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology. She was featured in the Best of PlayGround 2020 and won the 2011 University of Oxford’s New Writing Festival with her play Schroedinger’s Hat. She is also a current member of the 2020-21 PlayGround Playwright Residency Program.

Christian Wilburn (Sasha and the Angelier), he/him, discovered his love for storytelling as a young boy growing up in San Francisco. At twenty-four, and still in San Francisco, Christian views writing as his most authentic form of communication. He writes fiction, plays, screenplays, poems and twitter threads about the Golden State Warriors. Last year was his first year in the Playground Writer’s Pool, where he was selected for in Best of Playground 24. On top of the Writer’s Pool, Christian is a member of the Playground Playwright’s Residency Program and is pursuing his MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco.

About PlayGround

Founded in 1994 by Jim Kleinmann, Brighde Mullins and Denise Shama, PlayGround has grown into the Bay Area’s leading playwright incubator and theatre community hub, with a deep commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, helping to uplift and center artists from historically underrepresented communities. Over the past 27 years, PlayGround has supported more than 200 early-career playwrights, developing and staging over 950 of their original short plays through PlayGround’s signature programs, Monday Night PlayGround and the PlayGround Festival of New Works. PlayGround has also commissioned 85 new full-length plays by 55 of these writers through its Commissioning Initiative and has directly facilitated the premiere of 30 of those works through its innovative New Play Production Fund. In 2017, PlayGround launched its state-of-the-art performance venue, Potrero Stage: PlayGround Center for New Plays, followed shortly after by an expansion of presented and produced programming, including the PlayGround Solo Performance Festival and, most recently, the PlayGround Innovator Incubator. PlayGround expanded to Los Angeles in 2012 and will add programs in NYC in 2021.

PlayGround was one of the first theatres in the country to shift its programming online following the closure of theaters due to the pandemic last spring. PlayGround produced the nation’s largest online new works festival, the PlayGround Zoom Fest, in May/June 2020, featuring 25 unique events and engaging more than 140 actors on SAG-AFRA New Media Agreements. As part of the inaugural Zoom Fest, PlayGround helped launch the Juneteenth Theatre Justice Project, whose initial presentation involved more than 60 theatre partners nationwide and reached over 10,000 households. The second annual PlayGround Zoom Fest will take place May 10-30 via Zoom live stream and on-demand. For the complete PlayGround Zoom Fest schedule and lineup, visit https://playground-sf.org/zoomfest.

WHAT: PlayGround presents Best of PlayGround 25, the twenty-fifth annual short play festival featuring the best new work from the past season, live via Zoom for two nights only, May 29 and May 30 at 7pm PT. This year’s selections include: Blended Histories by Akaina Ghosh, The Art of Suffrage by Anne Yumi Kobori, Pivot by Bacilio Mendez II, Zagriate by Chris Steele, La Planchada by Eteya Trinidad, Curry and Crumpets by Leela Velautham, and Sasha and the Angelier by Christian Wilburn. Presented as part of the second annual PlayGround Zoom Fest (https://playground-sf.org/zoomfest).

WHERE: via Zoom live stream

WHEN: May 29 & May 30 at 7pm PT

TICKETS: Admission is free (donations gratefully accepted) but advance reservations are required. Ticket purchasers will receive a private link to the live stream on the day of the event. For more information about Best of PlayGround 25, call (415) 992-6677 or visit https://playground-sf.org/bestof.