FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Michaela Murphy July 7, 2011 773-398-4522 Photos Available at [email protected] www.playwrightsfoundation.org

TOP BAY AREA ACTORS, DIRECTORS AND DRAMATURGS TAPPED FOR 2011 BAY AREA PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL

TheatreWorks’ Meredith McDonough, Marin Theatre Company’s Ryan Rilette & Bay Area Actors, Naomi Newman, Nicol Foster and Dan Hiatt Among the Artists Supporting our Playwrights in Annual New Play Festival

SAN FRANCISCO – The 34th annual Bay Area Playwrights Festival (BAPF) has completed assembly of its artistic teams and is sure to continue its tradition of producing exciting, innovative theatrical experiences.

The Festival lineup includes seven new plays in the making – allowing audiences to witness the creative process as it unfolds – and partake in a rich diversity of voices and topics, ranging from the challenges of welcoming home an Iraqi war veteran to Australian racial identity to life and death on the streets of Oakland. With exceptional directors orchestrating a cast of top Bay Area actors who bring their keen artistic sensibilities to each piece and talented dramaturgs helping the writers further shape their work (a dramaturg’s function is similar to that of a book editor), each play has been carefully staffed to provide playwrights and audiences with an amazing experience in new play development.

As in years past, the Festival has attracted some of the most exciting up-and-coming directing talent who are eager to tackle the exciting new work brought by the emerging playwrights. Dan Dietz’s Home Below Zero will be directed by Meredith McDonough, who, despite being a relative newcomer to Bay Area theater, has made a significant mark since her arrival in 2009. As the Director of New Works for Palo Alto’s acclaimed TheatreWorks, McDonough is very familiar with the challenges and joys inherent in working with brand new plays; she received critical acclaim for her staging of the brand new comedy Auctioning the Ainsleys and the new musical [title of show]. Prior to joining TheatreWorks, McDonough worked with such esteemed organizations as Actors Theatre of Louisville, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and The Public Theatre. McDonough’s recent San Francisco directing endeavor was the first act of The Lily’s Revenge at The Magic Theatre. McDonough is joined as a director by talented colleagues such as Ryan Rilette (Marin Theatre Company Producing Director) who has distinguished himself as a director last season with Tarell McCraney’s In the Red and Brown Water and Fuddy Meers by David Lindsay Abaire, and Desdemona Chiang (Impact Theatre, Barestage Productions) in directing an extraordinarily talented group of actors, including such local luminaries as Naomi Newman and Dan Hiatt and Nicol Foster.

Other directors working on the festival are: M. Graham Smith (Aurora Theatre/Brava Theater), Eric Ting (Long Wharf Theatre), Edris Cooper Anifowoshe (Lorraine Hansberry Theatre) and Marissa Wolf (Crowded Fire Theater).

Ms. Newman, a longtime participant in the Bay Area Playwrights Festival who appears in Kate E. Ryan’s Science is Close, is nothing less than a local legend. Cofounding A Traveling Jewish Theatre (TJT) in 1978, Ms. Newman has had a long and storied career in the Bay Area and around the world, serving as a critically acclaimed and award-winning director, writer and performer. Her solo show Snake Talk toured the U.S. and Europe, and enjoyed three extended runs in the Bay Area, and her work at TJT included more than a dozen acclaimed original pieces that include Berlin, Jerusalem and the Moon, Dance of Exile and See: Under Love. The San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum will soon publish an oral history about her life and career.

Nicol Foster, who appears in Lauren Gunderson’s Rock Creek: Southern Gothic, has deep roots in the San Francisco Bay Area. A graduate of San Francisco State University, Nicol is a native of Oakland. She has recently returned to The Bay from Oregon Shakespeare Festival where she appeared in Idiot's Delight, Playboy of the West Indies and Oo-Bla-Dee..Her Bay Area return engagement was Tarell McCraney’s In the Red & Brown Water.

Dan Hiatt who also appears in Science is Close, is another long-time resident of the Bay Area who has appeared on all of the area’s most esteemed stages, most recently in To Kill a Mockingbird at Center Rep Titus Andronicus at California Shakespeare Theater. Mr. Hiatt also holds many credits at TheatreWorks (including The 39 Steps—for which the Examiner pronounced him “fantastic”—and Spinning Into Butter), American Conservatory Theatre (Round and Round the Garden, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead), Berkeley Repertory Theatre (Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Dinner with Friends) and many others.

Among the 39 members of BAPF acting company this year are also the exceptional talents of Liam Vincent, Soren Oliver, William Elsman, Reggie White, Cindy Im, Jessica Lynn Carroll, Jackson Davis, Jack Powell and Daveed Diggs.

Collaborating with top talent, BAPF playwrights will have the indispensible resources needed to fully investigate the structure and character development of their new works, and help them to bring their new plays one step closer to completion. Unique to the BAPF are the integration of dramaturgs to each artistic team who serve the playwright in honing the play’s story line, structure and historical accuracy. Joining us this year are Nakissa Etemad, a national professional who has worked extensively across the country with artists such as Arthur Miller, Lynn Nottage and Marcus Gardley (Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi), Jayne Wenger, Sonia Fernandez, Anthony Clarvoe, Doyle Ott and Suehyla El Attar.

This year’s Festival includes five previously unproduced new full-length plays by Clarence Coo, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Dan Dietz, Lauren Gunderson and Amelia Roper, as well as two one-act plays for the Bay Area SHorts (BASH!) program by Chinaka Hodge and Kate E. Ryan.

About the 2011 Bay Area Playwrights Festival Plays, Playwrights and Artistic Teams:

Beautiful Provence (Belle Province) by Clarence Coo

Fifteen-year-old Jimmy flees his Rust Belt life by driving across Quebec with Mr. Green, his high school French teacher. Will the end of the road lead to Jimmy’s sexual and linguistic awakening -- or to something far more tragic? Learning another language has never been this reckless.

Clarence Coo has had work developed and produced by the Kennedy Center, the Mark Taper Forum, East West Players, Round House Theatre, the Inkwell Theatre and the Young Playwrights Festival. His play Removing the Glove has been performed around the country and in Canada, England and South Africa. Bahala Na was produced by Theater Mu at the Mixed Blood Theatre. His work has also been published in Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology by the New Press. Clarence was an Allen Lee Hughes Fellow at Arena Stage and studied under Charles Mee in the graduate playwriting program at Columbia University. He is currently the Program Administrator of Columbia’s MFA Writing Program.

M. Graham Smith (director) has been the producer of The Global Age Project at Aurora Theatre for the last two years. He is the Artistic Director of Precarious Theatre. He has directed at the Walnut Theater in Philadelphia and the HERE American Living Room series in New York City. In San Francisco he has directed at the Yerba Buena Garden’s Festival, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the ACT’s Masters program, Aurora Theatre, The EXIT Theatre, Asian American Theatre Company, PlayGround, BRAVA, Berkeley Playhouse, Golden Thread and New Conservatory Theatre. Most recently he directed the West Coast Premiere of Jerry Springer: The Opera in San Francisco for Ray of Light Theatre. He teaches physical theatre, movement and mask classes at ACT and in Barcelona, Spain.

Jayne Wegner (dramaturg) is a director and dramaturg whose exclusive focus is on original material. She is the past Artistic Director of the Bay Area Playwrights Foundation and Women’s Ensemble of New York. She has developed the emerging work of acclaimed playwrights throughout the country. Recent work includes The Winter Bear, focused on the teen suicide epidemic in the Native communities by Alaskan playwright Anne Hanley (Cyrano’s Playhouse); Men Think They Are Better Than Grass, a dance theater collaboration with Deborah Slater (Z Space); Anne Galjour’s You Can’t Get There From Here (Dartmouth College and Z Space); an adaptation of Ann Lamott’s first novel, Hard Laughter (AlterTheater); and A Most Notorious Woman about the Irish pirate queen, Grace O’Malley (EXIT Theatre).

She teaches workshops on the direction and dramaturgy of new plays throughout the country. Jayne is a member of The Dramatists Guild, Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and the League of Professional Theatre Women, and serves as an advisor for the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, Alaska For more information about Jayne, visit her website: www.jaynewenger.com.

Home Below Zero by Dan Dietz

Fresh out of Iraq, Khaled shows up at his best friend's doorstep in America. Problem is, Jeff’s been in a coma since a bomb blew up his Humvee three weeks earlier—and Jeff's father blames Khaled and everyone who looks like him. But Khaled has traveled far with no one else to turn to and the two men are forced to wait it out together. In the long silence an unexpected common language emerges unleashing centuries of rage and resentment...and music. A heavy metal clash between Midwest and Middle East.

Dan Dietz’s plays include tempOdyssey, Americamisfit and The Sandreckoner. His work has been commissioned, developed and presented at such venues as Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Guthrie Theater, the Public Theater, the Kennedy Center, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, the Playwrights’ Center and the Lark Play Development Center. Dietz has been an NEA/TCG Theatre Residency recipient, an NNPN Rolling World Premiere recipient, a Jerome Fellow, and a James A. Michener Fellow. Dietz has twice been a recipient of the Heideman Award. His latest play, Clementine in the Lower Nine, will have its world premiere at TheatreWorks (Palo Alto, CA) in October 2011.

Meredith McDonough (director) is TheatreWorks’ Director of New Works where she’s directed Auctioning the Ainsleys and Opus (Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award). She recently was one of the directors of The Lily’s Revenge for Magic Theatre, and prior to moving to the Bay she spent three seasons as a Resident Director at Actors Theatre of Louisville, directing numerous world premieres in the Humana Festival (where she first met Dan Dietz!). She directed premieres for Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Actors Express, Summer Play Festival, and Keen Company. Favorites include Summer of ’42 (Round House Theatre), Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice (Williamstown Theatre Festival) and Angels in America. She was the New Works Program Director for National Alliance for Musical Theatre and is an Affiliated Artist with New Georges and the Orchard Project and a Drama League Fellow. Her MFA in directing is from UCSD and her BS in Performance Studies is from Northwestern University.

Nakissa Etemad (dramaturg) is a dramaturg, producer and French translator, whose six BAPFs include Atlas of Longing (2010), and 2008’s The Mountaintop by Katori Hall (bound for Broadway this fall). Recent dramaturgy credits include the inaugural world premiere of Marcus Gardley’s every tongue confess for Arena Stage at the Mead Center, and Gardley’s …and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi for PF and Cutting Ball (2010 BATCC Award, Best Production). Her 19-year dramaturgy career includes work with Tom Stoppard (Every Good Boy Deserves Favor; Indian Ink), Arthur Miller (2nd production of Resurrection Blues), Lynn Nottage (Las Meninas, NAPF) and Polly Pen & Laurence Klavan (World Premiere musical Embarrassments). Current projects include Lauren Yee’s A Man, his Wife, and his Hat at AlterTheater, and Des Voix/ Voices from…, a French-American play exchange with French Consulate SF, PF, LMDA, and Z Space. Former Dramaturg & Literary Manager for The Wilma Theater, San Jose Rep and San Diego Rep, Nakissa is Regional VP-Metro Bay Area of LMDA and holds an MFA in Dramaturgy from UCSD.

We Are Proud to Present… by Jackie Sibblies Drury

Past meets present in unintended ways when an egalitarian, racially-mixed theater troupe gathers to present the details of a distant African genocide in Namibia. In an honest attempt to wrestle with these questions, they crash into their own simmering fears and unconscious bigotry and come face to face with the potential for brutality in all of us. Through lecture, poetry and music, this theatrical event pushes the very boundaries of the form with the halting beauty of uncertainty, and explores one of the most complex questions of our times.

Jackie Sibblies Drury is a 2010-12 New York Theater Workshop playwriting fellow, a member of The Civilians’ R&D group, and a MacDowell Colony fellow. Her play We Are Proud to Present a Presentation … will receive its world premiere at Victory Gardens Theater in 2012. The play was a part of their 2010 Ignition Festival, as well as The Magic Theatre’s Virgin Play Series. She graduated from Brown’s MFA playwriting program and is currently working on a play for Trinity Rep set in a post-apocalyptic Rhode Island.

Eric Ting (director) Eric Ting is Associate Artistic Director at Long Wharf Theatre (New Haven, CT). Select directing credits: world premieres Agnes Under the Big Top and The Old Man and the Sea (also co-adapted) as well as The Bluest Eye at LWT, Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy (ART). Upcoming: Jackie Sibblies’ We Are Proud to Present a Presentation…(Victory Gardens) and Macbeth1969 (LWT). Recent developmental work: new plays by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Frances Ya- Chu Cowhig and Anna Moench. Recent workshops: ACT, Marin Theatre, Victory Gardens, LARK, Public Theatre (NYC). Ting is a founding member of the artist collective Intelligent Beasts.

Doyle Ott (dramaturg) recently provided dramaturgy for the Circus Center's The Journey to the West by Jeff Raz. His directing and performance credits include work with the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Playground, Lunatique Fantastique, Foolsfury, Antenna Theatre, Golden Thread and Playwrights Foundation. He has written many plays for children, and is developing a solo piece, Gone:Fishing. He directs the theatre programs at Fairyland in Oakland and has taught at Sonoma State, Stanford, Arizona State and Pacific Union College. Doyle holds a Ph.D. in Theatre from Arizona State and publishes work on circus, theatre and education.

Rock Creek: Southern Gothic by Lauren Gunderson

Rock Creek, South Carolina. Thanksgiving. A newly blended interracial family. Things have got to be perfect according to step-mom Sugar and perfect child Annalyn. But the youngest Hall sibling, Johnnie, isn’t buying this crap and rocks her family with some blaspheming sass, leaving her father and already cracking family to shatter. After months of nothing, Easter morning arrives and so does Johnnie, her impossible stories, some hefty secrets, and mysterious healing powers —but will Sugar stand for that mess? A fresh American drama about the steely fiber of family, coming home, and home cooking.

Lauren Gunderson received her MFA from New York University, her BA from Emory, and is a New York University Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship. Her latest play Silent Sky premiered at South Coast Rep this April, and will run at Marin Theatre Company next year. Emilie: La Marquise Du Chatelet Defends Her Tonight was commissioned and premiered at South Coast Rep in 2009, now published by Samuel French. Fire Work was developed at The O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, and is a 2011 winner for Aurora Theatre’s Global Age Project. Her 2011 three-city rolling world premiere of Exit, Pursued By A Bear started at Synchronicity Theatre this spring, then moves to San Francisco’s Crowded Fire and Seattle’s ArtsWest. Her first musical for The Kennedy Center opens this fall. She is commissioned for two musicals with The Kennedy Center, a musical with Harry Connick, Jr. and John Rando and new plays for South Coast Rep and SF Playhouse. She has developed plays with Second Stage and Primary Stages in NYC, New Rep in Boston, Playwrights Foundation, Crowded Fire, Aurora Theatre, and The Magic Theatre in San Francisco; Kitchen Dog Theatre in Dallas; Synchronicity, Actor Express and Horizon Theatre in Atlanta; JAW/West in Portland; WORDBridge, Brave New Works and others. She received a Sloan Science Script Award (2008) for her screenplay Grand Unification. She teachers and speaks on the intersection of science and theatre and writes for The Huffington Post. www.LaurenGunderson.com

Ryan Rilette (director) is the Producing Director of Marin Theatre Company, where he has directed Fuddy Meers, In the Red & Brown Water, Boom and the world premiere of Magic Forest Farm. Next season, he will direct God of Carnage, the world premiere of Bellwether by Steve Yockey for MTC. He is the President of the National New Play Network, former Producing Artistic Director of Southern Rep Theater in New Orleans and co-founder and former Artistic Director of Rude Mechanicals Theater Company in New York City.

Suehyla El-Attar (dramaturg) is an actor/writer based in Atlanta, GA. She recently won the Mississippi Theatre Association Playwright award and spent 2010 as the resident dramaturg for Working Title Playwrights. For more information, please feel free to visit her web site: www.suehyla.com.

Hong Kong Dinosaur by Amelia Roper

Before Cindy Ling found Australia’s biggest dinosaur, a Chinese girl met an Australian boy in the Hong Kong Public Library. Before the library, there was a war to end all wars. Before the war, there was tea in the west. Before tea in the west, there was tea in the east. And before that? Plankton. Hong Kong Dinosaur. A history of love, hate, tea and plankton.

Amelia Roper is an award-winning Australian playwright now studying at the Yale School of Drama. Her work has been produced and developed in Australia, the USA, Russia and the UK. Plays include She Rode Horses Like the Stock Exchange — Yale New Play Lab and Moscow Playwright & Director Center. Big Sky Town — St Martins National Playwriting Award, two sold-out productions and a regional tour. Hong Kong Dinosaur — first commissioned by the Melbourne Theatre Company, developed for a NYC showcase with mentor Will Eno, presented at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Camberwell House — three productions in Australia, one in London, Aspen, New York City (with Theater Masters) and Boston with the Boston Playwrights’ Theater. Roper’s first play, Flywire, won a Monash National Playwriting Award. Publications: Big Sky Town is published in Australia by Full Dress Publishing and Camberwell House will soon be published in an anthology. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America & kindly supported by the Ian Potter Foundation. Visit www.ameliaroper.com for more.

Desdemona Chiang (director) is a stage director based in San Francisco and Seattle. She is Associate Artistic Director of Impact Theatre in Berkeley and Co-Founder/Associate Artist of Azeotrope, a Seattle-based artist consortium. She has directed at Impact Theatre, Crowded Fire Theatre Company, Playwrights Foundation, Washington Ensemble Theatre, Balagan Theatre, SIS Productions and Cornish College of the Arts. Assistant Directing/Dramaturgy: Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Playmakers Rep, ACT Seattle, Arizona Theatre Company. Ms. Chiang is the recipient of the 2011 Drama League New York Directing Fellowship. She is an Associate member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), and an alumna of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab and Directors Lab West. BA, Integrative Biology and Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies: University of California at Berkeley. MFA Directing: University of Washington School of Drama. She will be directing the Bay Area’s rolling world production of Exit, Pursued by Bear by Lauren Gunderson at Crowded Fire next season.

Anthony Clarvoe (dramaturg) is a veteran playwright and Bay Area native who recently, very happily, returned home to San Francisco. His plays, including the award winning Pick Up Ax, The Living, Let's Play Two, The Brothers Karamazov, Ambition Facing West, Ctrl+Alt+Delete and The Art Of Sacrifice, are published by Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. While living and working in the Bay Area he received the Will Glickman, Bay Area Drama Critics’ Circle and Dramalogue Awards, and an American Theatre Critics Awards Citation for Pick Up Ax, as well as the Stavis Award from the National Theatre Council as the promising playwright of the year. Since then he's been roaming the country, writing plays and raising a family. He has received a dozen commissions from South Coast Repertory, the Mark Taper Forum, Playwrights' Horizons and others; fellowships from the Guggenheim, McKnight, Jerome and Irvine Foundations, National Endowment for the Arts, TCG/Pew Charitable Trusts and Kennedy Center/Fund for New American Plays; the Berrilla Kerr Award in recognition of his contributions to the American theater; and critics' awards from LA to New England. His play Show and Tell recently played to rave reviews in San Francisco in a production by the newly formed Symmetry Theatre Company.

BASH! Playwrights:

700th & Int’l by Chinaka Hodge

Friends for life: Sterling and Tuka. Every day they run the full length of Int’l Blvd, dodging traffic and stray bullets to train for track titles and a dream future. But one day Tuka just keeps running as Int’l Blvd miraculously stretches farther and farther in front of her, leaving Sterling and the life she once knew behind. Just how she got there and why Sterling isn’t with her are the keys she must discover.

Chinaka Hodge is an award-winning spoken-word poet, performer and playwright. Originally from Oakland, California, Chinaka graduated from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study in May of 2006 and was honored to be the student speaker at the 174th Commencement exercise. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Writing for Film and TV at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. Her first play, Mirrors in Every Corner was commissioned by and premiered at Campo Santo + Intersection for the Arts in 2010 to rave critical reviews, and was the recipient of a prestigious Rockefeller MAP Fund award. Her first book, For Girls With Hips, released in May 2006, is in its fourth publication. Chinaka was a member of the U.S. Artist Delegation to the World Social Forum in Narobi, Kenya in early 2007. She was named Best Poet by the East Bay Express in 2008. She co-wrote =Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s Scourge which opened in 2005 in San Francisco. She was the Assistant Director of Suzan Lori Parks’ 365 Plays, 365 Days at its San Francisco debut in November 2006. She also co-wrote The One Drop Rule: A War Piece, which debuted in Fall 2008.

Edris Cooper Anifowoshe (director) is an award-winning director, actor and writer. She has directed at Trinity Rep, Magic Theatre, TheatreWorks, WaterTower, Mark Taper Forum, Southern Rep and Alabama Shakespeare, among others. She has performed in regional theatre and independent companies throughout the country. Internationally, Edris has performed in Ibadan, Nigeria and Berlin, Germany, and was presented scholarship on performance in Mexico, the UK and the Netherlands. She has worked as a script doctor in Hollywood and is co-director of the soon-to-be- released psychedelic trance comedy, The Green Goddess.

Sonia Fernandez (dramaturg)—see below.

Science is Close by Kate E. Ryan

Broken dreams, missed connections, frayed familial ties. If this is the stuff of life, eighty-something Dot is ready for her own to be over. But then, from out of nowhere, a mysterious, attractive stranger offers her the possibility of future life – and love. Should she accept? The second of a trilogy about the character Dot, Science is Close explores her existential journey at the end of life.

Kate E. Ryan’s plays include Design Your Kitchen, Dot, Him, Mark Smith and an adaptation of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis. Recently moved to the Bay Area from New York City, where her work was produced or developed by companies including 13P, Clubbed Thumb, The Drama League, The Flea Theater, The Ontological, Soho Rep, Target Margin and The Vineyard. Member of 13P, Artistic Associate with Clubbed Thumb, Artistic Advisory Board Member at the Bushwick Starr. Formerly, she was the Co-Chair of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab (2008-2010) and Co-Curator of the performance series Little Theater at Tonic (2002-2005, OBIE award).

Marissa Wolf (director) Artistic Director of Crowded Fire Theater, Wolf’s recent directing credits include the West Coast Premiere of Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven by Young Jean Lee and DRIP by Christina Anderson. She has directed at The Magic, Cutting Ball Theatre, Vanguardian Productions and Playwrights Foundation. Wolf previously held the Bret C. Harte Directing Internship at Berkeley Rep for two years, where she assisted renowned directors, including Tony Taccone, Les Waters, Lisa Peterson, Frank Galati and Mary Zimmerman. Marissa has her degree in drama from Vassar College, and received additional training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

Sonia Fernandez (dramaturg) is a dramaturg, translator, arts administrator and scholar. She has worked with various San Diego and Bay Area theater companies including Moxie Theater, Playwrights Foundation, Brava, Cutting Ball, Magic, PlayGround and Crowded Fire. Recent production projects: dramaturgy for Or, by Liz Duffy Adams at Moxie, The Secretaries at Crowded Fire and co-producing Cutting Ball’s Vanguardia Festival of Experimental Latino Plays. Current/Upcoming: dramaturgy for UCSD’s production of The Dybbuk as well as Christopher Chen’s The Hundred Flowers Project for Crowded Fire. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Theatre at University of California, San Diego.

About the Thick House

Art Space Development Corporation (ArtsDeco) presents contemporary new theater that reflects and engages the San Francisco Bay Area's racially and culturally diverse audience community. We believe that when art is relevant and accessible it can transform the world, so our work rises naturally out of connecting to our local community, to popular culture, and to events of the day. To that end, we operate our venue, the Thick House, as a performing arts/community center—presenting world-class professional theater, hosting neighborhood events, collaborating on community projects, and partnering with local businesses.

About Playwrights Foundation

As the only independent play development center on the West Coast, PF’s aim is to facilitate the complete integrity of expression and unrestrained development of the playwright as an artist, and in so doing to contribute to the American Theatre, especially through the development of diverse voices and visions. PF’s programs are driven entirely by the needs of the playwright, whom we regard as “the creative wellspring of theater.” Our cornerstone program is the Bay Area Playwrights Festival (BAPF), which is presented each summer and since 1976 has offered creative development opportunities for some of the most prominent names in contemporary theater; Festival alumni have gone on to win every major award in theater, including the Tony, the Obie, the Whiting, the Steinberg, the Princess Grace, and the Pulitzer. PF’s other programs include: the Producing Partners Initiative/ Commissioning Program (PPI/CP), intertwining activities that bring theatre producers and BAPF alumni and finalists together for the creation and production of new work; the INKubator Lab, which deepens PF’s connections with BAPF alumni and commissioning partners by fully supporting work in need of further development in order to reach full production; the New Play Institute, a school for playwriting, with a faculty of acclaimed working playwrights and theatre artists; the Rough Readings, a series that showcases the newest work of up-and-coming playwrights; the Mentorship Program, which offers internships to student playwrights in production, literary management, and theater administration; the Sister City Playwrights Exchange, a program that sends playwrights to regions outside their home city for opportunities and visibility; and the Resident Playwrights Initiative, a three-year residency program that provides an artistic home for select mid-career, rising, or exceptional emerging Bay Area writers. Together, these programs constitute a continuum of services and resources for playwrights, helping them to gain skills and forge the connections needed to advance professionally.

Today, through PF’s fully-developed roster of programs, we have the right mix of services to support new play development through the entire playwriting process, from inception to world premiere: 1) Playwrights are discovered through our open access submission process and inclusion in the BAPF; 2) Writers we become familiar with can work on the first draft of a work in Rough Readings; and,3) Also may further develop work in INK labs with creative collaborators; furthermore, 4) Commissioned works can take advantage of PPI/CP services for the initiation and/or development of work; 5) And producing partners can shepherd the work to full production with PF support; and finally, 6) Resident writers can benefit from extended services and a community of support.

FESTIVAL CALENDAR LISTING BELOW

Festival Calendar

All 2011 Bay Area Playwrights Festival performances take place at the Thick House, 1695 18th Street. Tickets are $15 each in advance, $20 at the door (multi-use passes start at $40, prices go up on July 10). Tickets are on sale now via www.playwrightsfoundation.org

Friday, July 22 8:00 pm: Home Below Zero by Dan Dietz

Saturday, July 23 12:00 pm: We Are Proud to Present a Presentation… by Jackie Sibblies Drury 4:00 pm: Hong Kong Dinosaur by Amelia Roper 8:00 pm: Beautiful Province (Belle Province) by Clarence Coo

Sunday, July 24 10:00 am: Playwrights Panel (free of charge; please rsvp to [email protected]) 12:00 pm: Bay Area SHorts (BASH!) 700th & Int’l by Chinaka Hodge Science is Close by Kate E. Ryan 4:00 pm: Rock Creek: Southern Gothic by Lauren Gunderson

Thursday, July 28 7:00 pm: Bay Area SHorts (BASH!) 700th & Int’l by Chinaka Hodge Science is Close by Kate E. Ryan

Friday, July 29 2:00 pm: New Play Symposium (free of charge; please rsvp to [email protected]) 8:00 pm: Hong Kong Dinosaur by Amelia Roper

Saturday, July 30 12:00 pm: Beautiful Province (Belle Province) by Clarence Coo 4:00 pm: We Are Proud to Present a Presentation… by Jackie Sibblies Drury 8:00 pm: Rock Creek: Southern Gothic by Lauren Gunderson

Sunday, July 31 12:00 pm: Emerging Theater-Maker Showcase (free of charge; please rsvp to [email protected]) 4:00 pm: Home Below Zero by Dan Dietz