The Inaugural People’s Choice New Play Commission

“I think I will come up with my own story, if you would like to join me.” – Sasha, Sasha and the Angelier

PlayGround has announced the recipient of its first-ever PlayGround People’s Choice New Play Commission: Christian Wilburn. First offered through PlayGround’s sister company PlayGround-LA beginning in 2018, the inaugural PlayGround People’s Choice New Play Commission gives the PlayGround audience the power to help shape the future of the American Theater by awarding a new play commission to an emerging playwright from PlayGround’s Best of PlayGround short play fest through their votes and donations on behalf of their favorite play of the season. Competitively selected by a panel of experts from each year’s Monday Night PlayGround offerings, the Best of PlayGround serves as the culminating showcase of the best short plays from each year’s PlayGround Writers Pool. This year’s selected play, Sasha and the Angelier by Christian Wilburn, will be adapted under a paid commission into a new full-length play for future PlayGround Festival development and consideration!

Originally written for the December 21, 2020 Monday Night PlayGround theme of “Illuminate” and premiered in the 2nd Annual PlayGround Zoom Fest, this ten-minute script follows a chronically-ill young girl named Sasha as she discusses her dreams and desires with an imaginary character from her fiction novel, helping her to reimagine her relationship with the world in which she feels trapped. This is Christian’s first PlayGround new play commission, and the first ever SF People’s Choice Commission.

Christian Wilburn is a San Francisco playwright, author and actor. He graduated Magna Cum Laude in Theatre Arts from Santa Clara University, and is currently pursuing an MFA from the University of San Francisco. He’s a two-time Best of PlayGround finalist for his short plays (I’m Back and this year’s Sasha and the Angelier) and performed in last year’s Zoom Fest premiere, Disbelief by Garret Jon Groenveld. He is entering his second year as a PlayGround Resident Playwright.

ABOUT PLAYGROUND

PlayGround, California’s leading playwright incubator, provides unique development opportunities for the Bay Area’s (and now Los Angeles’) 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 200 early career playwrights, developing and staging more than 950 of their original short plays through the Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series and the PlayGround Festival. PlayGround has also commissioned 85 new full-length plays by 55 of these writers through its Commissioning Initiative and, through the innovative New Play Production Fund, has directly facilitated the premiere of 30 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-seven 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.