February 26th Monday Night PlayGround: “FLASHBACK: 1994”

“And I’ll remember/The strength that you gave me/Now that I’m standing on my own/I’ll remember/The way that you saved me/I’ll remember”- Madonna, “I’ll Remember” (1994)

Don your best denim tuxedo and join PlayGround in celebrating its 30th anniversary with a musical Monday Night inspired by the year of PlayGround’s founding, 1994! Join us on Monday, February 26th at 7PM ET live at The Producers Club and simulcast online to be transported back to when the sitcom Friends first aired, MTV still showed music videos, and groups like Boyz II Men, New Kids on the Block and TLC reigned supreme with original short musicals inspired by the prompt “Flashback: 1994” and featuring music debuted that year. PlayGround’s sister companies, PlayGround LA, PlayGround SF, and PlayGround CH will present their own interpretations of the theme on February 12th, February 19th, and March 4th respectively. As part of PlayGround’s commitment to radical accessibility, Monday Night PlayGround is admission-free (donations gratefully accepted). Advance reservations are required.

For the complete schedule or to reserve tickets, visit https://playground-ny.org/monday.

The third season of PlayGround-NYs Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series on fourth Mondays, Oct-Mar, will be held in person at The Producers Club and via live simulcast (October 23, 2023-March 25, 2024). Each month, PlayGround announces a topic and writers have just four-and-a-half days to generate their original ten-page script. Recent topics have included: “Give and Take”, “Keep Moving  Forward,” “Origin Story,” and “The Legacy of the Land We Inhabit.” The top six scripts are matched with directors and a cast of leading local professionals and rehearsed for just ninety minutes on the day of the performance. Following a brief technical rehearsal to add sound and other design elements, the six short plays are performed as script-in-hand staged readings for an in-person and live-stream viewing audience on third Mondays, October through March. Audience members can also experience the thrill of being a producer through the monthly People’s Choice Awards, helping to determine which plays and playwrights go on for consideration in PlayGround’s annual short play showcase, Best of PlayGround. Advance reservations are required. Admission is free but donations are gratefully accepted. Masks are strongly recommended for in-person performance and attendees should be symptom-free and have no recent exposure to individuals with COVID.

Why Free Admission? 

PlayGround has made all programs admission-free in furtherance of our commitment to radical accessibility. If you are able, we hope that you’ll consider donating or purchasing a Monday Night Membership, recognizing that your direct support makes it possible for us to continue providing fair and equitable wages for professional artists while sustaining our radical accessibility efforts for all.

We thank you for your generous support!

PlayGround-NY Company

PlayGround-NY’s 2023-24 Writers Pool, the thirty-six NYC-based writers competitively selected to participate in the monthly series, are: Claire Abramovitz, Anthony Anello, Todd Cerveris, Sean Dunnington, Barry Eitel, Adi Eshman, Madi Fabber, Bailey Jordan Garcia, Dana Leslie Goldstein, Lori Goodman, Melinda Gros, Patience Haggin, Michael Hagins, Bram Hartman, Stanley W. Hathaway, Howard Ho, Wade Lawrence Hollomon, Uma Incrocci, Avery Ingvarson, Rachel Leighson, Bailey C. Lewis, Bryson Lima, Alex Moggridge, Danielle E. Moore, Lyra Nalan, Vicky Pham, Leah Plante-Wiener, Colby Poston, Erin Proctor, Jacob Marx Rice, Rachael Richman, Katie Ryan, Marcus Scott, Matt Sievers, Gaven D. Trinidad, Rebbekah Vega-Romero, and SMJ.

Supporting PlayGround-NY playwrights and the Monday Night series are the members of the PlayGround-NY Company, representing some of the New York’s leading directors, actors, and stage managers. The 2023-24 PlayGround-NY Company includes: Jen Anaya, Sergio Mauritz Ang, Rebecca Aparicio, Julia Brothers, Nathaniel Claridad, Sheila Collins, Julia Crowley, Sarah Guilbault, Neal Gupta, Noor Hamdi, SouJee Han, Monica Ho, Mary Hodges, Tyler Kent, Nikhaar Kishnani, Kalina Ko, Nico Krell, Austin Ku, Jully Lee, MeeWha Lee, Timothy H. Lee, AJ Lily, Ana Margineanu, Alex Moggridge, Norm Muñoz, Wiley Naman Strasser, Graceson Nunez, Attilio Rigotti, Abigail Rosen, Betsy Rosen, Alex Shafer, Nick  Sholley, Olivia Songer, Illana Stein, Rebecca White, and Rebbekah Vega-Romero.

PlayGround-NY is the second regional expansion of the celebrated Bay Area playwright incubator and theatre community hub, PlayGround(SF). PlayGround, a leading national playwright incubator, provides unique development opportunities for the Bay Area’s, Los Angeles’ and now New York’s and Chicago’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 300 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 100 new full-length plays by 70 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. In 2017, 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 Humana Festival, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Glickman Awards (4 of the past 5 winners!), 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.

WHAT: PlayGround presents MONDAY NIGHT PLAYGROUND “FLASHBACK: 1994”, an evening of original short musicals set in and featuring music of 1994!

WHERE: The Producers Club, 358 W 44th St., New York, NY 10036 & Simulcast Online

WHEN: Monday, February 26th, 2024 at 7pm ET

Additional Season Dates:
March 25, 2024 7pm ET in-person at The Producers Club and simulcast via Vimeo Live

TICKETS: Admission is free (donations gratefully accepted) but advance reservations are required. To reserve tickets for in-person or online viewing, visit https://tickets.playground-sf.org.