Liam Vincent Joins PlayGround as Director of Growth

Stacy Ross and Liam Vincent in Tim Bauer's A FUTURIST SUPERSAGA IN SIX ACTS, presented in the Best of PlayGround Festival (2010). Photo: mellophoto.com.

PlayGround, the Bay Area’s leading playwright incubator and theatre community hub, is pleased to announce that longtime Company Member Liam Vincent will be joining the PlayGround staff effective April 1 in the newly-created position of Director of Growth. Working with PlayGround Artistic Director & Co-Founder Jim Kleinmann and the PlayGround Board of Directors, he will be focusing on building new partnerships and expanding PlayGround’s reach to new audiences and artists.

Liam has been a professional San Francisco-based actor for the past 25 years and a proud PlayGround company member since 1999.  Locally, he has worked  at American Conservatory Theater, Cal Shakes, Marin Theatre Company, Magic Theatre, SF Playhouse, Aurora Theatre Company, TheatreWorks, and San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, among many others.  Regional credits include productions at Huntington Theatre Company, Alliance Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, Santa Cruz Shakespeare, Pasadena Playhouse, and Portland Center Stage. A regular presence of Bay Area theatre fundraisers and curtain speeches over the years, Liam has served as master of ceremonies and host for Cal Shakes galas and helped plan events for American Conservatory Theater and San Francisco Shakes, among others. Since 2018, he has worked with the public transportation advocacy nonprofit, Seamless Bay Area, to help fuel the organization’s growth and visibility. Most recently, he served as the first creative hire for DriveTime, co-hosting and writing for the interactive trivia app DriveTime (now Drive.fm), and helping grow the company by 500% during his tenure. He was instrumental in helping the company achieve its Series A fundraising goal of $11 million in September 2019. DriveTime won a Webby Award in 2020 for Best Voice App. 

While the past year has been an extraordinarily difficult one for the arts, PlayGround has adapted and thrived under the adept leadership of Artistic Director Jim Kleinmann and Associate Artistic Director Annie Stuart and in partnership with its resilient staff, board and artistic company. PlayGround led the nation last spring when it quickly shifted programming online at the beginning of the pandemic, continuing to develop and produce new plays, employ hundreds of artists, and reach thousands of audience members throughout the Bay Area and across the country. And in October 2021, PlayGround will expand its award-winning incubator programs even further with the launch of PlayGround-NY. In his new position of Director of Growth, Liam Vincent will play a key role in maximizing the opportunities ahead and helping drive continued growth on behalf of artists and audiences as PlayGround and the arts emerge from the impacts of the pandemic.

“After working at an entertainment tech startup for the past few years, I feel privileged to return to my home – the theatre – and work for an organization that was instrumental in helping me launch my own acting career. A thriving arts community is essential for San Francisco, and one of the things I love most about this City. As we look to recover and reopen, I’m eager to play a part in helping theatre come back stronger and more inclusive than ever,” Vincent commented.

Kleinmann added, “As an artist, Liam has already helped shape some of the defining moments for PlayGround these past twenty-two years through his work in numerous Monday Night and PlayGround Festival performances. I’m thrilled to expand our collaboration through this new position and look forward to working together to help ensure PlayGround has the resources needed to propel artistic innovation for years to come.” 

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 more information, visit https://playground-sf.org.