ABOUT US

Mission

PlayGround is a leading playwright incubator and theatre community hub, with a core commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. PlayGround’s mission is to support the development of significant new local voices for the theatre, helping to launch these writers onto the national scene.

History

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 core commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, helping to uplift and center artists from historically underrepresented communities. Over the past 28 years, PlayGround has supported more than 300 early-career playwrights, developing and staging over 1,000 of their original short plays through PlayGround’s signature programs, Monday Night PlayGround and the PlayGround Festival of New Works. PlayGround has also commissioned 90 new full-length plays by 60 of these writers through its Commissioning Initiative and has directly facilitated the premiere of 34 of those works through its innovative New Play Production Fund. Over the past 28 years, PlayGround has developed a unique model for identifying and nurturing the Bay Area’s best new writers, while helping them to build a significant body of original work and lasting connections with the artistic collaborators they need to know to ensure their success. PlayGround expanded to Los Angeles in 2012, to NYC in 2021, and to Chicago in 2022.

In 2015, PlayGround signed a long-term lease to operate the former Thick House Theater, where PlayGround has produced its festival since 2008. Following a successful $300,000 renovation which included new theatrical lighting, seating, signage, and upgrades to the lobby, box office and restrooms, PlayGround reopened the theatre in February 2017 as Potrero Stage: PlayGround Center for New Plays. In addition to supporting PlayGround’s expanding new play programs (including the PlayGround Solo Performance Festival launched in 2018), the theatre serves as home for some of the Bay Area’s other leading new play developers and producers, including Crowded Fire, Golden Thread, and Playwrights Foundation, as well as up-and-coming companies such as Ferocious Lotus and Bread & Butter Theatre, among others. In 2019, PlayGround launched the Innovator Incubator, fostering theatrical innovation and next generation innovative theatre companies. The program culminates in the annual Innovators Showcase, which takes place each November/December, featuring over half-a-dozen new works, from developmental readings to full premieres, by the year’s Innovator Incubator cohort.

Following the closure of theaters due to the pandemic in 2020, PlayGround was one of the first theatres in the country to shift all of its programming online, with the launch of the PlayGround Zoom Fest and a unique partnership with the performers union, SAG-AFTRA. With the return of in-person performance, PlayGround has recommitted to radical accessibility with admission-free programming and online simulcast and on-demand streaming of all performances. PlayGround’s radical accessibility initiative is sponsored in part by First Republic Bank.

PlayGround’s alumni have gone on to win local, national, and international honors for their short and full-length work, including recognition at the Steinberg Awards, Humana Festival, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, New York International Fringe Festival, and 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.

In addition to its company of playwrights, PlayGround maintains a company of leading Bay Area directors, actors, designers and technicians whose work is regularly seen on the Bay Area’s top professional stages. PlayGround has actively positioned itself as a hub, bringing together hundreds of individuals and organizations representing the best in Bay Area theatre.