PlayGround Announces the Second Annual FREE-PLAY FESTIVAL Aug 11-27

PlayGround closes out the summer season with the second annual FREE-PLAY FESTIVAL, August 11-27, at Potrero Stage and simulcast. The festival features the first-ever workshop of Melina Cohen-Bramwell’s PLEASE DON’T SLOW ME DOWN (Aug 11-13 7pm PDT), and the premieres of Akaina Ghosh’s CHARACTER ASSASSINATION (Aug 18-20 7pm PDT) and Ipsheeta Furtado’s DISTANCED DATES (Aug 25-27 7pm PDT) presented by Network Effects Theater. Admission is free (donations gratefully accepted) but advance reservations are required. For more information or to reserve in-person or online tickets, visit https://playground-sf.org/freeplay.

Lineup & Synopses

PLEASE DON’T SLOW ME DOWN by Melina Cohen-Bramwell
Fri Aug 11, Sat Aug 12, Sun Aug 13 @ 7pm PDT

PLEASE DON’T SLOW ME DOWN follows a bipolar millennial, and the physical embodiment of his cyclical moods, during one last, manic hurrah at the site of the former Chaverim Jewish Day School.

MELINA COHEN-BRAMWELL, he/him, is a writer and lifelong San Francisco Bay Area resident who also happens to be a mixed-race, gender-queer, spoonie. Never a fan of the education system, at age sixteen, Melina dropped out of school and began a career in theater. After years of working as a technician at regional theater companies such as Aurora, Cal Shakes, and Berkeley Rep, Melina “retired” to focus on healing from chronic illness and pursuing writing as a career. His book Bar Fights with Sad Kids will be available for preorder from Finishing Line May-July 2024.

CHARACTER ASSASINATION by Akaina Ghosh, directed by Nikki Meñez, featuring Krystle Piamonte, Natalia Delgado, and Rebecca Pingree

Fri Aug 18, Sat Aug 19, Sun Aug 20 @ 7pm PDT

The novelist’s characters have always been larger than life (she’s a damn good writer after all – one book published and one on the way). But when her latest protagonist commits a murder, reality and fiction blur together. With a dead man in her living room, the writer must partner with her clever, facetious protagonist to deal with the repercussions of her creativity.

AKAINA GHOSH, they/them, is a non-binary theater artist. They are thrilled to be sharing CHARACTER ASSASINATION (PlayGround’s 2022 June Anne Baker Prize Commissioned Play) as part of PlayGround’s Free-Play Festival. They’ve debuted original works at PianoFight, Z-Below, TheatreFIRST, and The Flight Deck. They are a two-time recipient of 3GirlsTheatre’s Innovator’s Series Grant, and they were a semi-finalist in the National Alliance for Musical Theater’s 15-Minute Musical Challenge with selections from their original musical Lilith. They are passionate about reconstructing historically significant narratives through a gender expansive lens and generating new works that center queer voices and perspectives. They are currently pursuing their MFA in Graduate Acting at NYU Tisch. Follow Akaina’s work at akainaghosh.com. 

DISTANCED DATES written and directed by Ipsheeta Furtado
Fri Aug 25, Sat Aug 26, Sun Aug 27 @ 7pm PDT

DISTANCED DATES is a full length play about dating during a global pandemic, presented by Network Effects Theater.

IPSHEETA FURTADO, she/her, is a technology entrepreneur by day and, by night, she writes and performs theatrical art. She’s founded companies, consultancies, and adventure clubs. Her passion for theater started from a young age, memorizing musicals well before seeing them on stage and discovering basement shows in college. Ipsheeta weaves the supernatural into her writing where she highlights counter culture female characters, generational paradigms, and commentary on the technology economy.  Ipsheeta serves on the Board of Directors for the Bay Area’s Shotgun Players, writes with PlaygroundSF’s Writers Pool, and is part of Voices of Our Nations Arts (VONA) Foundation and SF Writers Grotto Rooted & Written alumni. She co-founded The Network Effects Theater in 2023 to prevent passivity in the Bay Area. Ipsheeta holds a B.S. in Engineering Physics from UC Berkeley and prefers tea over coffee.

PLAYGROUND, California’s leading playwright incubator, provides unique development opportunities for the Bay Area’s, Los Angeles’ and now New York’s best new playwrights, 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 250 early career playwrights, developing and staging more than 1000 of their original short plays through the Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series and the PlayGround Festival. PlayGround has also commissioned 90 new full-length plays by 60 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. Most recently, 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-four 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, including recognition at the Humana Festival, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, The Lark’s Playwrights’ Week, 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. Visit https://PlayGround-sf.org for more information.

POTRERO STAGE is a 99-seat state-of-the-art performance space located in the heart of San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood, operated by PlayGround, and serving as home to some of the Bay Area’s leading new play developers and producers, including PlayGround, Crowded Fire, Golden Thread, and Playwrights Foundation, among others. While the venue is closed during the COVID pandemic, Potrero Stage will highlight the best in online programming by PlayGround, Potrero Stage resident companies and other Potrero Stage producers. For more information, visit https://potrerostage.org.