Company in the News August 2023

See what PlayGround-SF Writers, Company Members and Alumni are up to this August!

See Nic Sommerfeld in “Out of Site: Sylvester, The Mighty Real”! This show will take place in the Haight where Sylvester first lived and later performed, elevating the hidden history of San Francisco’s very own international disco diva Sylvester who brought an uncompromising vision to his music and gender-non-conforming persona. The show will look at racial equity within the queer liberation movement in San Francisco’s Haight neighborhood of the 60’s and 70’s against the backdrop of the civil rights and anti-war movements, student uprisings, feminism, and gay liberation. Tickets and info available here.

Isabel Anne To will be performing in Killing My Lobster’s next show: The Skin We’re In, sketch comedy exclusively for people who have bodies! The show will take place at CounterPulse, Aug 17 – Sep 2, Thursday – Saturday, all shows at 8pm. KML produces an hour of sketch comedy that explores and celebrates the body from tip to toe. Our own very special little skinbags of meat…Join us–because laughter injects endorphins into your brain, or whatever! Tickets available here.

Brian Herndon is performing in CYMBELINE with SF Shakes, free in the parks until September 24! Info available here.

Oakland Theater Project and Z Space present an encore of Geetha Reddy’s “totally epic” (KQED) 2019 Mahābhārata, featuring OTP Company Member J Jha in a bold, one-person retelling of the ancient text, reimagined and expanded for Z Space’s Stendler Stage in San Francisco. August 10th-August 20th 2023. More information available here.

Rachel Bublitz‘s play FUNNY, LIKE AN ABORTION, originally developed at PlayGround, is getting a World Premiere at Mile Square Theatre in Hoboken, New Jersey, and a Regional Premiere at Cleveland Public Theatre in this coming 2023/24 season. She also has two plays being published; THE SUMMER I HOWLED will be available with YouthPLAYS and BLOOD & SEQUINS will be available with Brooklyn Publishers.

NANAY by Molly Olis Krost is one of twelve honorable mentions for the 46th Bay Area Playwrights Festival. View the list here.

Khalia Davis has joined the creative team of Hippest Trip: The Soul Train Musical at A.C.T. as their Assistant Director. Production goes into previews starting August 25th and runs until October 1st. Tickets and info can be found here.

Catch Gisela Feied in PCPA’s American Mariachi in Solvang, California. Opens August 4th and closes August 27th. Tickets available here. Use the discount code PCPAPAL40 at check out for 40%.

Danielle Levin has a couple upcoming projects: Madeleines at TheatreWorks’s New Works Festival in mid-August and My Name is Asher Lev at The 222 in Healdsburg from October 12-22nd. Tickets to Madeleines available here.

GG Grilli is working with a group of international filmmakers, including artists in the U.S., Brazil, and Kenya, on the short TOGETHER APART. This project was written and shot collaboratively throughout the past few years and is nearing completion! Learn more here.

Kimberly Ridgeway is directing The Birds at Altarena Playhouse (Alameda, CA), August 11 – September 10, 2023, https://www.altarena.org/2023-season-announcement/the-birds. Kimberly is also directing Misery at Palo Alto Players (Palo Alto, CA), January 19 – February 4, 2024, https://paplayers.org/event/misery/ and Unpacking In P’Town at New Conservatory Theatre Center (San Francisco, CA), March 1 – 31, 2024, https://nctcsf.org/event/unpacking-in-ptown/

Louis Parnell is the Associate Director of A CHORUS LINE at the San Francisco Playhouse. It opens June 28 and plays through Sept 9. Tickets and more information available here.

Gwen Loeb has made the (possibly insane) decision to start a new nonprofit! She’s bringing together her years leading environmental & social justice nonprofits with her time working with all of YOU! World Builders Institute is developing entertainment that deepens public understanding of global solutions. In other words: saving the world with stories! Check it out: www.wbistories.org

Robert Sicular, fresh from the PlayGround Festival of New Works, is off to play Sir Toby Belch in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” at Island Stage Left on San Juan Island in Washington. Rehearsals begin June 20th with performances July 20 through August 20th. Come on up! Tickets available here.

Kristy Lin Billuni will facilitate Left Coast Theatre Company’s FREE Playwriting Workshop, 6/4-8/20. LCTC’s mission is to develop and produce new LGBTQ+ works, and one of the best ways to do that is to provide a place where playwrights and playwrights-to-be can have pages read, exchange constructive feedback, and learn different methodologies of feedback.

Norman Gee delightedly returns to Livermore this summer, in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING with Sparc’s Shakespeare in the Vineyard. He just finished the France tour of Word for Word’s production of HOME by George Saunders. Founder of Oakland Public Theater, a PlayGround Incubator company, Norman creates a ‘different kind of Black Theater,” expanding cultural notions to encompass often invisible roles of African-Americans. Look for The www.baldwincentennialproject.com, coming soon!

Jonathan Spector‘s THIS MUCH I KNOW will have its UK premiere at London’s Hampstead Theater in December and EUREKA DAY will have its German-language premiere at Austria’s National Theater (Burgtheater) in Vienna, opening in September and running in rep for 10 months.

Barbara Anderson‘s short play “Sorry” will be presented by Pegasus this fall.