PlayGround & Planet Earth Arts Resume New Play Festival March 20!

“Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror up to where you’re bravely working.” – Rumi. Playwright incubator PlayGround in partnership with Planet Earth Arts has announced the prompt for the sixth and final Monday Night PlayGround staged reading event of its 29th season and the 7th annual Planet Earth Arts New Play Festival, following a two-year hiatus during the pandemic. Thirty-six San Francisco Bay Area writers have just four-and-a-half days to generate their original scripts inspired by the prompt “Grief and Hope for Planet Earth” as they vie for one of six slots in the next round of this year’s Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series, presented live at Freight & Salvage and simulcast online on March 20th at 7pm PT. PlayGround’s sister companies, PlayGround LA, PlayGround NY and – new this year! – PlayGround Chicago will present their own interpretations of the theme on March 13, March 27, and April 3, respectively. All PlayGround programs in all four regions are being performed under SAG-AFTRA New Media agreements, providing union wages and protections for all performers. Monday Night PlayGround is admission-free (donations gratefully accepted) and advance reservations are required. For the complete schedule or to reserve tickets, visit https://playground-sf.org/monday.

PlayGround’s celebrated Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series on third Mondays are held in-person this year at Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage (the November 21 performance was held at Potrero Stage). Each month, PlayGround announces a topic and writers have just four-and-a-half days to generate their original ten-page script. The top six scripts are matched with directors and a cast of leading local professionals and rehearsed for just ninety minutes on the day of the performance. The six short plays are performed as script-in-hand staged readings for an in-person and live-stream viewing audience. Audience members can also experience the thrill of being a producer through the monthly People’s Choice Awards, helping to determine which plays and playwrights go on for consideration in PlayGround’s annual short play showcase, Best of PlayGround. Advance reservations are required. Admission is free but donations are gratefully accepted and directly support artist compensation. Proof of vaccination and masks are required for in-person performance at Potrero Stage.

PlayGround’s 2022-23 Writers Pool, the thirty-six Bay Area-based writers competitively selected to participate in the monthly series, are: Monique Hafen Adams, Barbara Anderson, Esther Banegas Gatica, Nicole Bruno, Madeleine Butler, Jediah Craig, Cherielyn Ferguson, Ipsheeta Furtado, Sam Hurwitt, Tejahra Jacobs, Lisa Kang, Ruth Kirschner, Anne Yumi Kobori, Steve Koppman, Jennifer Le Blanc, Kristy Lin Billuni, Justin P. Lopez, David MacFadden-Elliott, Daniel Martinez, Bacilio Mendez II, Matthew Morishige, Vicky Pham, Bridgette Portman, Alexis Roblan, Anthony Sampson Semandiris, David Schweidel, Susan Sher, Marissa Skudlarek, Alexis Standridge, Max Tachis, Lisa Thompson, Eteya Trinidad, Michael Tuton, Kaz Valtchev, Michael Waterson, Christian Wilburn, Maggie Wilson+, Maury Zeff

Supporting PlayGround playwrights and the Monday Night series are the members of the PlayGround Company, representing some of the Bay Area’s leading directors, actors, designers, and stage managers. The 2022-23 PlayGround Company includes: Molly Aaronson-Gelb, Angel Adedokun, Patrick Alparone, Liz Anderson, Rinabeth Apostol, Michael Asberry, Michael Barrett Austin, Mary Baird, Aldo Billingslea, Millie Brooks, Julia Brothers, Nicole Apostol Bruno, Lizzie Calogero, Ron Campbell, Joy Carlin, Nancy Carlin, Tessa Corrie, David Cramer, Will Dao, Anne Darragh, Dodds Delzell, Livia Gomes Demarchi, Carolyn Doyle, Nora el Samahy, Rebecca Ennals, Gisela Feied, Britney Frazier, Michael French, Claire Ganem, Sarah Gasser, Norman Gee, Douglas B. Giorgis, Amy Glazer, Cindy Goldfield, BW Gonzalez, Gabriel Grilli, Christian Haines, Rosie Hallett, Eric Fraisher Hayes, Brian Herndon, Monica Ho, Laura Humphrey, J Jha, Colin Johnson, Jennifer King, Dean Koya, Danielle Levin, Amy Lizardo, Jeffrey Lo, Gwen Loeb, George Maguire, Melanie Marshall, Alicia Mason, Leontyne Mbele-Mbong, Julia McNeal, Bacilio Mendez II, Sam Misner, Brady Morales-Woolery, Lisa Morse, Khary L. Moye, Molly Noble, Joseph Patrick O’Malley, Karen Offereins, Annete Oliveira, Soren Oliver, Ely Sonny Orquiza, Melissa Ortiz, Doyle Ott, June Palladino, Carla Pantoja, Louis Parnell, Jed Parsario, Michael Phillis, Krystle Piamonte, Rebecca Pingree, Stephanie Prentice, Ezra Reaves, Virginia Reed, Cathleen Riddley, Katja Rivera, Adrian Roberts, Stacy Ross, Adam Roy, Katie Rubin, Patrick Russell, Lindsey Marie Schmeltzer, Louel Senores, Robert Sicular, Jeunee Simon, M. Graham Smith, Ken Sonkin, Lauren Spencer, Teddy Spencer, Chris Steele, Howard Swain, Jomar Tagatac, Emilie Talbot, Danielle Thys, Isabel Anne To, Jon Tracy, Dane Troy, Mark Rafael Truitt, Liam Vincent, Ian Walker, Maryssa Wanlass, Tracy Ward , Reggie D. White, Aaron Wilton, Elena Wright

Planet Earth Arts was founded in 2014 out of our conviction that environmental and racial/social justice are the most urgent issues of our time, and our belief that the arts, in collaboration with the sciences and humanities, must play a leading role in transforming the human presence on our planet from a destructive role to one that is mutually beneficial to the entire community of life. We collaborate with actors, playwrights, directors, photographers, choreographers, dancers, musicians, writers and visual artists. Planet Earth Arts supports them by commissioning, presenting and showcasing their powerful transformative work – confronting and illuminating climate change, mass extinctions, threats to oceans, habitat loss, sea rise and the struggles for environmental justice. That same year we launched the Planet Earth Arts New Play Festival at Berkeley Rep and at Stanford University, in collaboration with PlayGround and the National Center for New Plays at Stanford, to inspire playwrights to create bold new works for the stage that explore issues of planetary sustainability as well as environmental and social justice. For the past nine years Planet Earth Arts has worked with more than 75 playwrights from PlayGround’s Writers Pool in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. The Planet Earth Arts New Play Festival has generated a living library of more than 200 short plays. PlayGround and Planet Earth Arts have co-commissioned 12 new original full-length or one-act plays – several of which have had World Premiere Productions in San Francisco at Potrero Stage: PlayGround Center for New Plays. Each year at least one or two Planet Earth Arts plays have been included in the Best of PlayGround. We are thrilled to resume collaborating with PlayGround on the 2023 Planet Earth Arts New Play Festival and look forward to supporting the new visions and voices of the Chicago and New York Writer Pools.

PlayGround, California’s leading playwright incubator, provides unique development opportunities for the Bay Area’s, Los Angeles’ and now New York’s and Chicago’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 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 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, including recognition at the Humana Festival, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Glickman Awards (5 of the past 6 winners!), 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.

WHAT: PlayGround & Planet Earth Arts Announce Topic for the sixth and final Monday Night PlayGround of Season 29: “GRIEF AND HOPE FOR PLANET EARTH”, marking the 7th annual Planet Earth Arts New Play Festival!

WHERE: Freight & Salvage, 2020 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA 94704

WHEN: Monday, March 20th, 2022 at 7pm PST

TICKETS: Admission is free (donations gratefully accepted) but advance reservations are recommended. To reserve tickets for in-person or online viewing, visit https://tickets.playground-sf.org.

COVID PROTOCOLS: Proof of vaccination and masks are required for all in-person attendees. For the complete safety protocols, visit https://potrerostage.org/health-safety-protocols.