The Lineup for 6TH INNOVATORS SHOWCASE NOV 4-24, 2024
PlayGround has announced the 6th annual Innovators Showcase, a three-week festival of new works by the 2024 Innovator Incubator cohort. The Festival runs November 4-24, 2024 at Potrero Stage and simulcast. The Innovator Incubator was launched in 2019 to foster new innovative theatre companies and productions with a strong commitment to historically marginalized or excluded communities. The annual showcase brings work from these trailblazing companies to the living stage with 2-3 workshop performances at Potrero Stage, all of which are free to attend and can be viewed via simulcast and on-demand. For more information or to reserve tickets, visit https://playground-sf.org/incubator.
The showcase will include:
UNPLANNED, an anthology of shorts about reproductive health
Network Effects Theater Company
Nov 4 at 7pm, Nov 5 at & 7pm
If there’s a night to get together for Reproductive Rights, it’s this November 5th. (And 4th.) Join us as we explore reproductive health through the lens of four short plays written by four writers and expressed through an ensemble local cast. The anthology Unplanned will raise money for organizations serving family planning across the country, and on election night 2024, we’ll broadcast the returns from the Potrero Stage screen. Either way, it’ll be a night best spent together!
ABBY NORMAL, a world premiere musical
House Theater
Nov 9 at 7pm, Nov 10 at 2pm & 7pm
Abby Normal is a Musical about EPILEPSY. Yep you heard that correctly. What a vehicle right? With 70 million people worldwide who suffer from Epilepsy, it is the least researched or understood brain disorder in this country. This musical plans to change that. Abigail battles it out with Seizure to find her community with a brain disorder that at present has no Cure. It will uplift you and enlighten you. The songs will stay with you long after you leave the theater. Book and Lyrics/Sandra Cruze Music and Vocals Mia F. Campagna Arranged by Raul Ferrando.
FOUR SEASONS POLITICAL LANDSCAPING; readings of four plays focusing on politics, civil rights, and governance
Oakland Public Theater
Nov 15 at 7pm, Nov 16 at 2pm
Four Seasons in the Political Landscape is a collection of staged readings of short plays from local writers: Judicial Process by Reg Clay, A Kafkaesque look at ICE officers and judicial tampering; Cinquo de Mayo Compared to What by Richard Talavera, A city council debates ethnic holidays; The Stick and the Ball by Neil Harkins, Global warming, extreme polarization/the so-called “overton window; ” and UNTITLED by Kristi Lin Billun.
DESERT WIND, the story of a Yemenite Jewish couple, caught in the violence, of the Houthi uprising in Yemen.
The American Jewish Theatre
Nov 23 at 7pm, Nov 24 at 2pm & 7pm
In this Houthi takeover, the husband is thrown into prison, while his wife is forced to flee through the endless desert, on foot, because they are Jews. In the delirium of his torture, he reaches out to her, and with her soul, she connects with him. A story that’s never been told, Desert Wind is an in-depth experience of how Jews are treated by radical Islamic regimes.
THE INNOVATOR INCUBATOR 2024-25 COMPANY STATEMENTS:
The American Jewish Theatre
The American Jewish Theatre’s mission is to bring little known, rarely told, stories of Jews, to the world. Based on true stories, these plays serve as a mirror into our lives, and souls , as Jews.. Our vision for this theatre is to reach out, not only to Jews, but to ALL people. The works of The American Jewish Theatre are all a deep dive into our world, and what it is like to be a Jew – and what it isn’t. It is a view of the non-Jewish world, and its effect on Jews – how we live, and how we survive. Our vision is for people to look deep inside, examining their attitudes toward, and perceptions of Jews and Jewish history.
House Theater
House Theater will use our voices and stories to speak for those who cannot. We provide a platform to raise awareness for members of society who have been historically marginalized: women of all colors and races, the LGBT community, and particularly those with disabilities. Whether young, old, impoverished, disenfranchised or invisible, their stories matter. At House Theater we will fight to find them, write them and share them. It is our promise to offer a safe haven where all are welcome to witness, contemplate, question and delve into affairs of the heart. We will present original works that will grapple with issues of society and themes that not only entertain, but resonate with the audience to bring hope, change and acceptance in a world that often does not.
Network Effects Theater Company
“Make passive impossible”
Network Effects Theater Company excavates the themes of today’s tech industry and the networks it creates. By exploring the unconsidered effects of new technology–through its creation, its investors, its culture, and its end users–we can reverse the passivity of a public made numb to its effects.
Oakland Public Theater
Oakland Public Theater creates a ‘different kind of Black Theater’, expanding notions of culture to encompass often the invisible roles of African-Americans & others. OPT gives old stories a multicultural face: a Strindberg ancestral fantasy shifted to Africa; a Filipina immigrant trapped in the secretive world of Ibsen; actual people of color in Shakespeare’s foreign lands (& referencing the long history of Africans in England). OPT also features new works, celebrating things like complex families, intellectual love affairs, heroism, tragedy, engaging histories -from OUR perspective, and yet often surprisingly familiar. The goal is to make established theater more accessible to a wider range of community, while sharing with traditional audiences some insight into both the nuance and universality of our diverse community members. Oakland Public Theater will use the Baldwin Centennial Project to revive the organization, develop staff & kickstart the company’s next era.
ABOUT THE INNOVATOR INCUBATOR
PlayGround’s multi-year intensive incubation program provides access and opportunity for emerging theatre companies, by offering financial support, fiscal sponsorship, free space and mentorship to bolster the diverse voices of the participating companies. To date, more than 14 companies have been launched through the Innovator Incubator, helping to employ more than 400 local theatre artists and fostering the development of over 30 new works for the stage. Last year’s initiative supported nine production companies and provided more than $50,000 in tools and resources — including fiscal sponsorship, one-on-one mentoring, free and discounted performance and rehearsal space, and co-marketing.
These chosen companies will work to refine their organizational structure, learn the strategies of fundraising and budgeting, and hone their mission and vision statements to enter the wider Bay Area and Los Angeles theatre scenes prepared to continue on as full fledged production organizations.
Past participants of the Innovator Incubator include: Juneteenth Theatre Justice Project, Theatre Cultura, Native Writers’ Theater, Epic Party Theatre, The Forum Collective, Kunoichi Productions, The Moonrisers, and Queer Cat Productions.
ABOUT PLAYGROUND
Founded in 1994 by Jim Kleinmann, Brighde Mullins and Denise Shama, PlayGround has grown into one of this nation’s leading playwright incubators and theatre community hubs, with a core commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, helping to uplift and center artists from historically underrepresented communities. Over three decades, PlayGround has supported more than 300 early-career playwrights, developing and staging over 1,500 of their original short plays through PlayGround’s signature programs, Monday Night PlayGround and the PlayGround Festival of New Works. PlayGround has also commissioned 100 new full-length plays by 60 of these writers through its Commissioning Initiative and has directly facilitated the premiere of 36 of those works through its innovative New Play Production Fund. Over the past 29 years, PlayGround has developed a unique model for identifying and nurturing some of this country’s best new writers, while helping them to build a significant body of original work and lasting connections with the artistic collaborators they need to know to ensure their success. PlayGround expanded to Los Angeles in 2012, to NYC in 2021, and to Chicago in 2022.
In 2015, PlayGround signed a long-term lease to operate the former Thick House Theater (San Francisco), where PlayGround has produced its festival since 2008. Following a successful $300,000 renovation, PlayGround reopened the theatre in February 2017 as Potrero Stage: PlayGround Center for New Plays. In addition to supporting PlayGround’s expanding new play programs (including the PlayGround Solo Performance Festival launched in 2018, as well as Free-Play Festival and “Twisted” Holiday Show, both launched in 2022), the theatre serves as home for some of the Bay Area’s leading new play developers and producers. In 2019, PlayGround launched the Innovator Incubator, fostering theatrical innovation and next generation innovative theatre companies. The program culminates in the annual Innovators Showcase, which takes place each November, featuring over half-a-dozen new works, from developmental readings to full premieres, by the year’s Innovator Incubator cohort. PlayGround has fostered 13 new companies through this program.
Following the closure of theaters due to the pandemic in 2020, PlayGround was one of the first theatres in the country to shift all of its programming online, with the launch of the PlayGround Zoom Fest and a unique partnership with the performers union, SAG-AFTRA. With the return of in-person performance, PlayGround recommitted to radical accessibility with admission-free programming and online simulcast and on-demand streaming of all performances.
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, Glickman Awards (including 6 of the last 10), Humana Festival, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, 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.
In addition to its company of playwrights, PlayGround maintains a company of leading local directors, actors, designers and technicians whose work is regularly seen on the top professional stages in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago and at regional theatres across the country. PlayGround has actively positioned itself as a hub, bringing together hundreds of individuals and organizations representing the best in local theatre. For more information about PlayGround, visit https://playground-sf.org.
For more information visit https://playground-sf.org/incubator/ or call (415) 992-6677.