Joyful Raven Returns with Solo Hit, Breed or Bust, Sept 9-24

PlayGround has announced a limited run of the Hollywood Fringe hit, BREED OR BUST by Joyful Raven, directed by Jael Weisman. Following a one-night performance on August 26 (press night) as part of the inaugural PlayGround Free-Play Festival, Breed or Bust will run September 9-24, Fridays-Saturdays at 7pm PDT, in-person at Potrero Stage and simulcast live. Tickets: $21-$51. For tickets and more information, visit https://playground-sf.org/breedorbust/. 

To breed or not to breed: that is the question award-winning solo show artist Joyful Raven wrestles with in her new solo show. Blending standup and storytelling, Raven recounts her difficult reproductive “choices” and contends with her primal baby making instincts. Should she surrender to the role of weird aunty OR start a GoFundMe to freeze her geriatric eggs? With her breeding window rapidly shrinking, she reflects on her abortions, the father of her abortions and the complexity of modern womanhood. Come for the laughs and stay for the sex education…in case you forgot how babies were made. Through dark humor and unabashedly honest storytelling, Raven offers a unique and nuanced perspective on a woman’s right to choose, an issue that has become painfully relevant due to the recent Supreme Court’s decision on Roe vs. Wade.

Of Joyful Raven’s Breed or Bust, Samantha Simmonds-Ronceros @ Noho Arts, Los Angeles wrote, “She navigates the personal choices and accidents that take all of us to the not-so-great position of what to do when the pee stick turns blue… Raven’s story isn’t political or contrived to fit our own collective and terrible present narrative, it is her own.”

The show is fresh off an award-winning run at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in Los Angeles where it received a Producers Encore Award and was nominated for Best Comedy out of a sea of 200 + shows. It also received a Gold Medal from tv.revolution and was called a “Brillant, Brilliant show…” by Noho Arts in Los Angeles.  Raven is a veteran solo performer; her last show “Tales of a Sexual Tomboy” won Best of the Fringe at the San Francisco International Fringe Festival in 2016,  had an Off-Broadway run on 42nd St in New York City and was dubbed“…one of the funniest shows now on display on Bay Area stages” by the SF Chronicle. She debuted Breed or Bust at PlayGround’s 2022 Solo Performance Festival.

“When we first presented Breed or Bust back in January, I had every hope that the Supreme Court would uphold the precedent of Roe v. Wade, protecting not only Joyful’s, but all women’s right to choose,” said PlayGround Artistic Director Jim Kleinmann. “With the Dobbs decision, I knew that we needed to do more to elevate these stories and I’m so excited to have Joyful return for a limited run with this updated version of Breed or Bust, a show that needs to be seen throughout this country!”

“We knew this day was lurking; we felt it encroaching,” exclaims Raven. “The court is actually coming for abortion! I didn’t know just how timely this play would be when I set out to write it. I only knew that I needed to tell my story. I also knew it was a subversive act, an act of protest. Funny how simply telling your story can be an act of protest? The fact that abortion is still a taboo issue – something we are supposed to be ashamed of – is baffling and I have a strong desire to break the stigma related to these issues.”

Joyful Raven, she/her, whose parents ran a political theater company, grew up on the radical stage where she was forced into political positions and animal leotards long before she was a consenting adult. Due to this unusual childhood, she brings to her work a unique body of experience gained from decades of collaborating with iconic members of the San Francisco Mime Troupe and Dell’ Arte International. Her last solo comedy Tales of a Sexual Tomboy was dubbed  “…one of the funniest shows now on display on Bay Area stages” by the SF Chronicle. Tomboy won Best of the Fringe at the 2016 San Francisco Fringe Festival, was awarded an Encore Performance at the 2017 United Solo Festival in NYC and appeared at the Los Angeles Women’s Theater Festival in 2018.

Her additional theatre credits include lead actor and co-author of four plays for Prize of Hope winning company Human Nature and co-founder of the ensemble-driven theatre company Rococo Risqué, winner of SF Weekly Best Theater Ensemble.  Joyful has also appeared as an actor in many projects on stage and film, including Odyssey Works, an immersive theatre project; The Pursuit of Happiness, with Will Smith; and Spring Awakening, directed by Broadway and West End director Stafford Arima. She studied theater at Sarah Lawrence College in NY and holds an MFA in theater from UC Davis. She is a well respected teacher of solo performance and storytelling in the Bay Area where she holds regular classes at the Berkeley Rep School of Theater.

Jael Weisman, he/him, is a founding member of the Dell’Arte Players Co. and during his tenure there he directed most of their early works, received multiple ‘Drama-logue Awards’ and toured extensively throughout South America and Europe to international acclaim. He later directed many productions at the San Diego Repertory Co. including the American premiere of Peter Barnes Red Noses which received numerous awards including the ‘Best Production Award’ from San Diego Critics Circle. He has had the honor to co-direct and collaborate with such notables as Carlo Mazzone-Clementi and Joe Chaikin and directed the original production of The Dragon Lady’s Revenge, which traveled to NY and was awarded an Obie.

PlayGround, a leading playwright incubator, provides unique development opportunities for the best new playwrights in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York City, and, new this year, Chicago, 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 300 early career playwrights, developing and staging more than 1,000 of their original short plays through the Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series and the PlayGround Festival. PlayGround has also commissioned nearly 100 new full-length plays by 70 of these writers through its Commissioning Initiative and, through the innovative New Play Production Fund, has directly facilitated the premiere of 34 plays at theatres of every size, including three that have gone on to NYC and other major theater communities. In 2017, 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. Over the past twenty-eight 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, with recognition at the Glickman Awards (including 4 of the last 5 winners), Steinberg Awards, Humana Festival, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and The Lark’s Playwrights’ Week, 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.