PlayGround’s 2022-23 New Play Commissions

PlayGround, a leading playwright incubator and theatre community hub helping to uplift historically underrepresented voices for the stage since 1994, has announced four new play commissions for PlayGround’s 29th Season (2022-23). They include three winners of the Best of PlayGround People’s Choice Award – Jennifer Le Blanc (Best of PlayGround 26), Jessica June Rowe (Best of PlayGround-LA 10), and Bailey Jordan Garcia (Best of PlayGround-NY 1) – and recipient of this year’s June Anne Baker Prize, Akaina Ghosh. Each of the playwrights will develop a new full-length work over the coming year in connection with PlayGround’s Resident Playwrights Program and Alumni Commissioning Initiative.

The People’s Choice Award is selected by the Best of PlayGround audience each year, providing the recipient with a paid commission to expand their Best of PlayGround ten-minute play into a new full-length. ​​The 2022 People’s Choice commissions are: Jennifer Le Blanc (“Nutcracker Sweets”), Jessica June Rowe (“The Passing Storm”), and Bailey Jordan Garcia (“This is Beauty”). The June Anne Baker Prize, established by PlayGround supporter John H. Gilman in memory of his late wife, honors the top female or non-binary playwright each year, representing a gifted new comedic or political voice for the stage, and includes a full-length play commission. Past recipients include Glickman Award winners Lauren Yee and Rachel Bublitz, as well as distinguished Bay Area playwrights Geetha Reddy, Katie May, and Genevieve Jessee. The 2022 June Anne Baker Prize was presented to Akaina Ghosh on May 15, 2022.

2022 PEOPLE’S CHOICE COMMISSIONS

PlayGround

Nutcracker Sweets by Jennifer Le Blanc
The Nutcracker and its fantastical characters serve as the backdrop for this tale of a family outing and self-discovery.

Jennifer Le Blanc, she/her, adapted Jane Austen’s Persuasion which received its world-premiere at San Jose Stage Company and Defoe’s Moll Flanders which received its world-premiere at Pacific Repertory Theatre. She wrote We Made Bread, a one-woman show adapted from interviews, for Perspective Theatre Company (formerly Arabian Shakespeare Festival). Jennifer has contributed short plays to Shotz, Perspective Theatre Company’s New Works Festival, and Our Digital Stories. Jennifer received her BA in English Literature from U.C. Berkeley and her MFA in Acting from the National Theatre Conservatory. She is an associate artist with the Perspective Theatre Company and Livermore Shakespeare Festival.

PlayGround-LA

The Passing Storm by Jessica June Rowe
A lost mountaineer is visited by ghosts both real and not-so-real.

Jessica June Rowe is an author, playwright, editor, and perpetual daydreamer. Her short plays have been featured on multiple stages in Los Angeles with companies such as Playground-LA and NEO Ensemble Theatre. She is the Flash Fiction Editor of Exposition Review and her fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, and the Best of the Net. One of her poems is stamped into a sidewalk in Valencia, CA, where she currently lives. She also really loves chai lattes. Find her on Twitter @willwrite4chai.

PlayGround-NY

This Is Beauty by Bailey Jordan Garcia
Two young adults find beauty within a NYC snowstorm, and ultimately within each other.

Bailey Jordan Garcia, they/them, is a NYC-based playwright and actor earning a BFA in Playwriting from The New School next month. In May 2021, their full length The Pedo Punchers Play was a part of The Blank Theatre’s Living Room series. They’re also a winner of The Young Playwrights Festival in 2020. With PlayGround-NY: “The Rebirth of Zora Audley Jones”, “Until the Sun Rises”, “This is Beauty”, “K-I-S-S-I-N-G”. When they aren’t writing, Bailey can usually be found at Bethesda Fountain or cuddling with their 3-legged pup, Mushu. Love to the family, Teddy, and Taylor. baileyjordangarcia.com

2022 JUNE ANNE BAKER PRIZE

It’s All In My Head by Akaina Ghosh
Erika’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, Erika must partner with her clever, facetious Protagonist to deal with the repercussions of her creativity.

Akaina Ghosh, they/them, is a non-binary Bay Area theater artist. 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. This is their fifth season in PlayGround’s Writers Pool, and their second time in Best of PlayGround! Follow Akaina’s work at akainaghosh.com.

PlayGround, California’s leading playwright incubator, provides unique development opportunities for the best new playwrights in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, & New York City, 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 1,000 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-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 Steinberg Awards, Humana Festival, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, 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. Visit https://playground-sf.org for more information.