Innovator Incubator
The PlayGround Innovator Incubator is a multi-year intensive incubation program to support new theatrical production companies and their pursuit of theatrical innovation. In July, PlayGround will present the Innovators Showcase, a multi-week new works showcase, featuring world premiere productions, workshops, and staged readings highlighting the work of Innovator Incubator participants. To date, 16 companies have been launched through the Innovator Incubator, helping to employ more than 400 local theatre artists and fostering the development of more than 30 new works for the stage.
2025-26 INNOVATOR INCUBATOR APPLICATION
Last year’s initiative supported four production companies and provided more than $50,000 in tools and resources including fiscal sponsorship, one-on-one mentoring, free and discounted performance and rehearsal space, and co-marketing.
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SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS:
Applicants must:
– Be a rising theatre company with 0-3 years of producing history with a Leadership Team consisting of at least three members. Leadership team need not be full-time nor paid, just committed to the success of the company.
– In the San Francisco Bay Area and Greater Los Angeles Area, all rising theatre companies are invited to apply.
– In New York City and the Greater Chicago Area, theatre companies must have at least one PlayGround-affiliated artist (Company Member, Writers Pool Member, Writers Pool Alum, Monday Night PlayGround Actor/Director, Board Member) on their leadership team in order to apply.
– Have at least one theatrical project in mind to produce or develop as a part of the July 2026 Innovator Incubator Showcase at Potrero Stage in San Francisco OR at another venue of the applicant’s choice. If not taking place at Potrero Stage, the applicant will be responsible for securing their own presentation venue. This performance can be a reading, workshop, development production or other sort of public presentation as determined by the individual Incubator company.
– Commitment to taking full advantage of the opportunities for peer learning and 1-on-1 mentorship to advance the development and growth of your new company, including monthly subject-specific workshops (marketing, public relations, financial management, production management, crowd-funding and grant writing, etc.), access to PlayGround professional staff, etc. (August, 2025-July, 2026).
2025-26 INNOVATORS SHOWCASE
July 6-26, 2026
Potrero Stage & Simulcast
Admission: Free
Showcase participants TBD
2024 INNOVATOR INCUBATOR PARTICIPANTS
Congrats to our Innovator Incubator Class of 2024. Read below to learn about the selected companies, leadership teams, missions, upcoming projects, and how you can follow them and support their work. All Innovator Incubator projects are fiscally sponsored by PlayGround (Federal ID 94-3336399) and contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
The American Jewish Theatre
Analog Theatre
The Chikahan Company
House Theater
Latinx Mafia
Network Effects Theater Company
Oakland Public Theater
Poltergeist Theatre Project
THE AMERICAN JEWISH THEATRE
Leadership Team: Stephanie Liss, RebbeSoul/Bruce Burger, Elisheva Herrera
The American Jewish Theatre’s mission is to bring little known, rarely told, stories of Jews, to the world. Based on true stories, these plays serve as a mirror into the lives, and souls, of Jews. Our target audience is global, because the plays we are developing and producing are all global in scope. Our vision for this theatre is to reach out, not only to Jews, but to ALL people. The works of The American Jewish Theatre are all a deep dive into our world, and what it is like to be a Jew – and what it isn’t. It is a view of the non-Jewish world, and its effect on Jews – how we live, and how we survive. Our vision is for people to look deep inside, examining their attitudes toward and perceptions of Jews and Jewish history.
ANALOG THEATRE
Leadership Team: Jed Parsario, Rebecca Pingree, Elissa Beth Stebbins
Analog is an experimental theater company, specializing in tangible, physical, old-school theater techniques. Our main producing activity is our Mask Monday series: on select Monday nights we take over a San Francisco brewery, engage a lineup of local original guest artists, and present a work-in-progress variety show, free to the public, hosted by mask characters inspired by the tradition of commedia dell’arte. Our mission is to create multidisciplinary, devised performances that celebrate old-school, low-tech theatre magic. We invite our audiences to join us in collective acts of imagination using mask, mime, puppetry, clowning, live music, improvisation and more. We create platforms that invest in our richly diverse community of Bay Area artists by providing paid opportunities to develop their experimental works-in-progress, and we organize events that welcome the public to witness the growth of theatrical art and artists in real time.
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THE CHIKAHAN COMPANY
Leadership Team: Alan S. Quismorio, Krystle Piamonte, Ely Sonny Orquiza
Exploring Filipinx history, politics, psychology, and diaspora through the craft of theatre and the performing arts, ChikaCo strives to develop the unique voices of and uplift the robust Filipinx narratives and artistries, and advocate its influence to the American theatre. They aim to reclaim and to reveal the multifaceted experiences of the Filipinx community in the San Francisco Bay Area. The vision is to amplify the complex and dynamic narratives that have long been pushed to the margins and to actively challenge the stereotypes about our kababayan (people), our kuwento (story), and our kasaysayan (history).
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HOUSE THEATER
Leadership Team: Sandra Cruze, Kevin Michael Moran, Saer Black, William Warren
House Theater will use our voices and stories to speak for those who cannot. We will provide a platform to raise awareness for members of society who have been historically marginalized: women of all colors and races, the LGBT community, and particularly those with disabilities. Whether young, old, impoverished, disenfranchised or invisible, their stories matter. At House Theater we will fight to find them, write them and share them. It is our promise to offer a safe haven where all are welcome to witness, contemplate, question and delve into affairs of the heart. We will present original works that will grapple with issues of society and themes that not only entertain, but resonate with the audience to bring hope, change and acceptance in a world that often does not.
LATINX MAFIA
Leadership Team: Hector Zavala
The Latinx Mafia was founded to empower and support Latinx teatristas by reclaiming, demystifying and recreating Latinx representation in theatre/media. They aim to ensure that Latinx representation in theatre and media radically and accurately embraces historically marginalized communities including but not limited to: the LGBTQ+ community, indigenous and Afro-Latinx people, differently-able folx, migrants regardless of immigration status, and the many linguistic backgrounds in Latin America.
NETWORK EFFECTS THEATER COMPANY
Leadership Team: Ipsheeta Furtado, Mike Tuton
“Make passive impossible”
Network Effects Theater Company excavates the themes of today’s tech industry. By exploring the unconsidered effects of new technology–through its creation, its investors, its culture, and its end users–we can reverse the passivity of a public made numb to its effects.
OAKLAND PUBLIC THEATER
Leadership Team: Norman Gee, Natalie Rich, Richard Talavera, Jake Fong
Oakland Public Theater creates a ‘different kind of Black Theater’, expanding notions of culture to encompass often the invisible roles of African-Americans & others. OPT gives old stories a multicultural face: a Strindberg ancestral fantasy shifted to Africa; a Filipina immigrant trapped in the secretive world of Ibsen; actual people of color in Shakespeare’s foreign lands (& referencing the long history of Africans in England). OPT also features new works, celebrating things like complex families, intellectual love affairs, heroism, tragedy, engaging histories -from OUR perspective, and yet often surprisingly familiar. The goal is to make established theater more accessible to a wider range of community, while sharing with traditional audiences some insight into both the nuance and universality of our diverse community members. Oakland Public Theater will use the Baldwin Centennial Project to revive the organization, develop staff & kickstart the company’s next era.
POLTERGEIST THEATRE PROJECT
Leadership Team: Britt Lauer, Brooke Jennings, Caroline Portante, Chris Steele AKA Polly Amber Ross, Giselle Boustani-Fontenele, Jesse Annette Koehn, Lavale-William Davis AKA Coco Buttah, Linda Maria Girón, Ling Lee, Mey Lee, Sgt. Die Wies
“Theatre that follows you home.”
Poltergeist’s mission is to reclaim Queer narratives through performance processes that dismantle toxic cultural norms, viscerally immerse audiences, and celebrate the innovation and liberation of Queer folx. Honoring San Francisco’s strong tradition of revolutionary art that ignites the flame of cultural and societal progress, Poltergeist creates radically queer, feminist, intrinsically participatory theater. Whether highlighting work by new artists or subverting and re-framing a problematic public domain play to create a brand new adaptation, Poltergeist seeks to normalize and centralize Other narratives. Focusing on the tenets of inclusivity, representation, and accessibility, Poltergeist seeks to remind this city of its deep roots in queer art.
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