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, 19 companies have been launched through the Innovator Incubator, helping to employ more than 500 local theatre artists and fostering the development of more than 34 new works for the stage.
2025 INNOVATOR INCUBATOR PARTICIPANTS
Congrats to our Innovator Incubator Class of 2025. 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
blue monkey works
The Chikahan Company
Dynamism Movement
The Forum Collective
House Theater
Monumental Artists
Network Effects Theater Company
Oakland Public Theater
Poltergeist Theatre Project
Revelry Theatre Group
Strong Branch Productions
THE AMERICAN JEWISH THEATRE
Leadership Team: Stephanie Liss, RebbeSoul/Bruce Burger
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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blue monkey works
Leadership Team: Michelle Haner, Steve Morgan Haskell, Jan Stur
blue monkey works explores life on earth through investigation, collaboration, and creation. We serve a global community of adventurous individuals through shared reflection, alternative approach, and innovative work. We seek to include, inspire, provoke, empower and entertain.
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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DYNAMISM MOVEMENT
Leadership Team: Benni Baker
Dynamism Movement’s mission is to engage audiences in the contemplation of the interplay of opposing forces engaged in a dynamic struggle through dance, theatre, spoken word and technology. Dynamism Movement is dedicated to inspiring multicultural communities through theatre, movement, performance art and technology. Our work is based on the principle of dualism as a catalyst for social engagement, collectively moving towards equality and justice for all. Dynamism Movement envisions a world based on the ideals of intellectual and spiritual growth and recognition of our interdependence.
THE FORUM COLLECTIVE
Leadership Team: Julius Rea
The Forum Collective creates spaces in which artists and audiences can contextualize the issues and questions raised by the project in terms of their real-world impacts. The Forum Collective blends live performance, gallery curation and journalistic reporting to contextualize current events and emotionally engage with audiences. This unique mix of structure and intention leads to work that speaks for, to, and with audiences.
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.
MONUMENTAL ARTISTS
Leadership Team: Ali MacLean
Monumental Artists aims to amplify the voices of disabled creatives, particularly those who are affected by mental illness and neurodivergence, by creating a collective of playwrights and promoting their stories through fellowships, commissions, and productions.
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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REVELRY THEATRE GROUP
Leadership Team: Jesse Baxter, Cassidy Cagney
Revelry Theatre Group is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit dedicated to reimagining Shakespeare and classical stories in bold, accessible ways—bringing timeless tales to unconventional spaces to inspire connection, curiosity, and community. Revelry Theatre Group envisions a community where arts and culture are a joyful part of everyday life—where classical theatre becomes recreational and inclusive, inviting everyone to gather, play, and find meaning together through timeless stories. It envisions a community where arts and culture are a joyful, regular part of life—where immersive experiences, accessible barroom performances, and boldly staged classical and new works invite people from all walks of life to engage with theatre not as a luxury, but as a recreational, educational, and vital part of their shared humanity.
STRONG BRANCH PRODUCTIONS
Leadership Team: Grace Griego, Alex Kingsley, Riley Lamarre
Our mission is to experiment with anarchistic arts, striving to provide our community with accessible arts and education, both digitally and in person. We hope to shift the norms of artistic practice to more accessible, non-hierarchical systems. We want to make theater available to all, regardless of socioeconomic status.