PlayGround Zoom Fest Continues On-Demand!

Posted by on July 3, 2020

Are you missing live theatre?? PlayGround Zoom Fest, the nation’s largest fully-digital new play festival (originally presented via Zoom live-stream May 11-June 19), is now available on-demand through September 1! The Zoom Fest features readings and premiere presentations of more than 25 short and full-length plays as well as a Zoom Town Hall on PlayGround and the American Theatre and it’s all available now FREE on your favorite streaming device! For the complete line-up and links to reserve on-demand streaming access, see below, visit playground-sf.org/zoomfest or call (415) 992-6677.

Zoom Fest Premiere Presentations Available On-Demand

These fully-developed and produced Zoom Fest Premiere Presentations were the highlight of this year’s new works festival. While originally offered as paid admission events, you can now see them for free (we invite you to consider making a donation in lieu of purchasing a ticket at the PlayGround website or via Venmo). Click the link(s) to self-register for on-demand viewing.

BEST OF PLAYGROUND 24
DISBELIEF by Garret Jon Groenveld
THE RENDERING CYCLE by Genevieve Jessee

Zoom Fest Staged Readings & Town Hall Available On-Demand

These short and full-length play staged readings represent the best new work from the past 25 years as well as brand-new works in development receiving their first public reading. In addition, you can attend PlayGround’s Zoom Town Hall, originally live-streamed on June 8 and featuring a who’s who of the American Theatre in conversation on the state of the field, it’s past, present and future. All programs are free (we invite you to consider making a donation in lieu of purchasing a ticket at the PlayGround website or via Venmo). Click the link(s) to self-register for on-demand viewing.

1980 OR WHY I’M VOTING FOR JOHN ANDERSON by Patricia Cotter
ABOMINABLE by Katie May
ANNA CONSIDERS MARS by Ruben Grijalva
BURST by Rachel Bublitz
FIRST PERSON SHOOTER by Aaron Loeb
LOLITA ROADTRIP by Trevor Allen
POLAR BEARS, BLACK BOYS & PRAIRIE FRINGED ORCHIDS by Vincent Terrell Durham
SAFE HOUSE by Geetha Reddy
SAPIENCE by Diana Burbano
SHORTS PROGRAM B
THE NESTING INSTINCT by Tom Bruett
YOUNG PLAYWRIGHTS PROJECT
ZOOM TOWN HALL: “PlayGround & the American Theatre”

ZOOM PREMIERE PRESENTATIONS:

DISBELIEF by Garret Jon Groenveld
Directed by Tracy Ward
Disbelief is a #MeToo retelling of the Cassandra myth – Apollo’s gift of prophecy to Cassandra, from her point of view, examining how women are perceived, controlled, and disbelieved (or dismissed). Groenveld’s scintillating language explores the parallels of belief in a higher power, with belief in a powerful man, versus a woman being able to be believed at all. Featuring: Nora el Samahy, Michael Torres, Rinabeth Apostol, Christian Wilburn, and Aaron Wilton.

THE RENDERING CYCLE by Genevieve Jessee
Directed by Margo Hall
In the spirit of August Wilson’s The Pittsburgh Cycle, The Rendering Cycle explores the African American experience through ten interwoven short plays depicting a saga of inextricable tradition, trauma and joy across continents and characters ranging from present-day United States to West Africa of a millennium past. Featuring: Cathleen Riddley, Champagne Hughes, Armando McClain, and Caitlin Evenson.

BEST OF PLAYGROUND 24
The Best Ten-Minute Plays of 2020

AGENT OF CHANGE by Addie Ulrey, directed by Jim Kleinmann
Through a series of repeat interactions between a stalwart Customer and a Server at a Berkeley restaurant, Agent of Change explores the exhausting logistics of sausage shipping, client service relations, and food waste. Is caring about change enough to spark global reform? Featuring: David Cramer and Blythe de Oliveira Foster.

CHRISTMAS EVITA by Tom Bruett, directed by George Maguire
When volunteering at a nursing home on Christmas, Edgar is faced with the challenging task of serving dinner to the most crotchety member of the community. Though wildly different, the two men bridge the generational divide by connecting around shared love, loss and a mutual appreciation for a certain Andrew Lloyd Weber musical. Featuring: Rudy Guerrero and Joe Higgins.

THE GRAVEDIGGER’S WIFE by Martha Soukup, directed by Rebecca Ennals
Following the advice of great Greek philosophers, Shakespeare’s greatest plays focus on the highest of the high: princes and queens born to greatness by nature of their nobility. But triumph and tragedy strike even the most common of common. Breathing life into the far tangents of Hamlet’s side characters, this prequel asks if it’s only “poor Yorick” we ought to pity. Featuring: Rosie Hallett and Joseph O’Malley.

I’M BACK by Christian Wilburn, directed by Norman Gee
Nobody wants Michael Jordan to play baseball, except Michael Jordan. When the ghost of Michael’s father visits, MJ knows he has a decision to make: stay in baseball or return to basketball. Through this supernatural take on a superstar story, we learn that even Michael Jordan has doubts, fears and the desire to make his parents proud. Featuring: Dane Troy, Michael Asberry, and Michael Barrett Austin.

THE EVOCATION by Leela Velautham, directed by Katja Rivera
In this prequel to the Scottish play, Lady Macbeth is processing the pain from the premature death of her third child and looking for consolation from her husband, who’s preoccupied with his next planned battle. As her pleas for him to stay become increasingly desperate, she is pushed to the point of saying something she immediately regrets – setting in motion one of the greatest tragedies ever written. Featuring: Cathleen Riddley, Lisa Morse, and Aaron Wilton.

LOVE, PRAY, EAT by Melissa Keith, directed by Tessa Corrie
Wanda is distressed by Jackie’s avant-garde views on love. Is there more to life than fulfilling a biological imperative? Wanda wants the traditional love story: to find a partner, have kids, and to decapitate and devour her partner immediately after breeding. In this story about love, lust, and tolerance, is it really survival of the fittest? Featuring: Livia Gomes Demarchi, Amy Lizardo, and Douglas B. Giorgis.

NEW PLAY DEVELOPMENTAL READINGS:

SAPIENCE by Diana Burbano
Directed by Nancy Carlin
Elsa, a doctor of primatology, is on the autism spectrum and has successfully hidden this fact from the world. She is currently working with an orangutan named Wookie, who Elsa hopes to prove is capable of speaking a human language. Elsa’s 12-year-old nephew, A.J., is also on the autism spectrum. He is “Locked in” – completely non-verbal. However, thanks to A.J.’s so called “disability” he and Wookie joyously discover that they can communicate with each other. This explodes Elsa’s carefully constructed, science based worldview and forces her to drop the mask of normality she has worn her whole life. Featuring: Lucinda Serrano, Rosie Hallett, Jed Parsario, Livia Gomes Demarchi, and Michael Ray Wisely.

BURST by Rachel Bublitz
Directed by Estefania Fadul
Sarah Boyd built Tactix from scratch using nothing but fortitude. She now sits poised to save the planet. If only she can persevere through a needling interview, a lawsuit, and the waffling of her CTO. It’s a heavy load. Sarah knows she’s the only one able to bear it. Featuring: Lauren English, Karen Offereins, and Neiry Rojo.

THE NESTING INSTINCT by Tom Bruett
Directed by Jeffrey Lo
A PlayGround-Planet Earth Arts co-commission
Juliana and her brother Mateo have conflicting views about what to do with their inherited childhood home that’s built in a flood zone in Florida. A pair of blue-footed boobies wrestle with the power of the instinctual urge to have a chick on an island that is shrinking by the day. Three stories intertwine in surprising ways to explore parenthood, identity and the steadfast power of home in a world that is changing drastically by the minute. Featuring: Sarita Ocon, Patrick Russell, Bacilio Mendez II, Michael Phillis, Rinabeth Apostol, and Jomar Tagatac.

12^TH ANNUAL HOWARD & LEONARD KLEIN YOUTH PLAYWRIGHTS PROJECT
Featuring short works by the Bay Area’s top high school dramatists
Aren’t You Clever? by Katherine Ioffe, directed by Gabrieal Griego
If Only We Were Humen by Tiffany Liu, directed by Claire Ganem
American Dinner by Leela Kiyawat, directed by Neiry Rojo
Safe Way by Sarah Schecter, directed by Giselle Boustani-Fontenele
Featuring: Maaz Ali, Carolyn Doyle, J Jha, Dean Koya, Brian Levi, Bacilio Mendez II, Akash Patel, Radhika Rao, Leigh Rondon-Davis, Rolf Saxon, Louel Senores, Lucinda Serrano, and Chris Steele.

ZOOM READINGS OF PLAYGROUND HITS:

FIRST PERSON SHOOTER by Aaron Loeb
Directed by Markus Potter
PlayGround commission, premiered 2007, co-production with SF Playhouse
First Person Shooter takes us inside ‘JetPack Games’, a start-up video game company, where the hottest, most violent game on the market has brought instant success to its twenty-something tech geniuses. Their celebration fizzles when their game is blamed for a schoolyard shooting. As the young CEO of Jet Pack deals with an impending lawsuit and the father of one of the victims, he must confront whether he has any responsibilities in the world beyond his computer screen. The play draws on the national debate over the link between violent videogames and school shootings, which first came to the fore after Columbine. Featuring: Will Dao, Ayelet Firstenberg, Dion Graham, Benjamin Ismail, Carrie Paff, and Michael Phillis.

SAFE HOUSE by Geetha Reddy
Directed by Giovanna Sardelli
PlayGround commission; premiered 2010, co-production with SF Playhouse
Enter the isolation chamber of a stay-at-home mother raising a pair of profoundly different twins, June and July. As her world becomes smaller, she goes to extreme measures to survive the threats of the modern world. Featuring: Patrick Jones, Lisa Morse, Louel Senores, Isabel To.

LOLITA ROADTRIP by Trevor Allen
Directed by Kent Nicholson
PlayGround commission; premiered 2011, co-production with San Jose Stage
This darkly comic play follows Julia (a rebellious Stanford graduate student researching her thesis) and Danny (a hitchhiking teenaged runaway she picks up) as together they retrace novelist and lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov’s actual 1941 roadtrip from New York to Stanford. A series of cross country adventures ensues, as they confront their own dark pasts and discover what really causes a chrysalis to transform into a butterfly. Featuring: Chloe Bronzan, Stacy Ross, Rolf Saxon, and Christian Wilburn.

ABOMINABLE by Katie May
Directed by Peter J. Kuo
PlayGround commission; premiered 2016, PlayGround Festival with Symmetry Theatre
This is the story of Beverly Onion, the world’s loneliest mortician’s assistant (and Star Wars fan), who finds herself the unsuspecting subject of a wager between the forces of Fate and Luck. Her darkly comic heroes journey takes her from the basement of Hortaman’s funeral home, to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, to the mountains of Nepal (with plenty of Star Wars Jokes and strange characters along the way), as she seeks to understand her deep connection to the mythical Abominable Snowman. A play for the lonely hearts, the awkward monsters, and the unabashed geeks inside us all. Featuring: Aldo Billingslea, Julia Brothers, Lyndsy Kail, Lisa Morse, Jomar Tagatac, and Steven Westdahl.

1980 OR WHY I’M VOTING FOR JOHN ANDERSON by Patricia Cotter
Directed by M. Graham Smith
PlayGround commission; premiered 2017, Jackalope Theatre Company
It’s 1980 and an unknown congressman from Illinois, John Anderson, just might have a chance to be President of the United States. In the candidate’s Boston campaign office, four idealistic young campaign workers struggle to spread the hope that their long-shot candidate might bring to the country and to their lives, while staving off that era’s Unthinkable Presidency. 1980 (Or Why I’m Voting for John Anderson) pits youthful optimism against the status quo, in a world premiere comedy about class, race, and the politics of change. Featuring: Martha Brigham, Michael Curry, Ash Malloy, and Makena Miller.

ANNA CONSIDERS MARS by Ruben Grijalva
Directed by Kent Nicholson
PlayGround-Planet Earth Arts co-commission; premiered 2019, PlayGround Festival
Anna Considers Mars takes us to the not-so-distant future, where human habitability on Earth is critically threatened by climate change, obfuscated by the proliferation of vivid augmented reality. Anna competes for a slot in the first Mars colonization effort, where humankind hopes to start over with a new generation of Adams and Eves. Featuring: Wilma Bonet, Christian Haines, Melissa Ortiz, Katie Rubin, Rolf Saxon, and Aaron Wilton.

EVENING OF SHORT PLAYS – PROGRAM B
I’d Like to Buy a Vowel by Cass Brayton, directed by Ely Sonny Orquiza
Monarchs in Space by Nicole Jost, directed by Margaret E. Hall
Hella Love Oakland by Robin Lynn Rodriguez, directed by Raelle Myrick-Hodges
Miss Finknagle Succumbs to Chaos by Kirk Shimano, directed by Jully Lee
Dear Santa by Nic A. Sommerfeld, directed by Paris McCarthy
All Thumbs by Aaron Loeb, directed by Frieda de Lackner
Featuring: Angel Adedokun, Michael Barrett Austin, Chelsea Bearce, Carolyn Doyle, D’Arcy Drollinger, Richard Gallagher, Cindy Goldfield, Cindy Im, Benjamin Ismail, Lyndsy Kail, Emily Keyishian, Rosemarie Kingfisher, Dean Koya, Austin Ku, David Moore, Sara Moore, Regina Morones, Jenny Nguyen Nelson, Joseph O’Malley, Krystle Piamonte, Rebecca Pingree, Stephanie Prentice, Neiry Rojo, Stacy Ross, Reggie D. White, and Elena Wright.

SPECIAL EVENTS:

ZOOM TOWN HALL
“PLAYGROUND & THE AMERICAN THEATRE – PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE”
Visionary voices of the American theatre lead discussions in a Zoom Town Hall about the state of the arts and new play development, exploring the past, present, and future. Featuring: Rinabeth Apostol, Michael Asberry, Diana Burbano, Ruben Grijalva, Lily Janiak, Jim Kleinmann, Aaron Loeb, Rondrell McCormick, Kent Nicholson, Geetha Reddy, Leigh Rondon-Davis, Cleavon Smith, Chris Steele, Annie Stuart, Christian Wilburn, and Lauren Yee.

PlayGround, the Bay Area’s leading playwright incubator, provides unique development opportunities for the Bay Area’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 local playwrights in the development and staging of more than 950 original short plays and 80 new full-length plays, with 5 more commissions currently in development. PlayGround also operates Potrero Stage, a state-of-the-art 99-seat black box theatre in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood, home to some of the Bay Area’s leading new play developers and producers, including PlayGround, Crowded Fire, Golden Thread, and Playwrights Foundation. For more information, visit https://playground-sf.org.