PlayGround-NY presents Season 2

MONDAY NIGHT PLAYGROUND

PLANET EARTH ARTS NEW PLAY FESTIVAL
Topic: “GRIEF AND HOPE FOR PLANET EARTH”
March 27th, 2023 7pm ET
Vimeo Live Simulcast & On Demand

ACKNOWLEDGING THE LEGACY OF THE LAND WE INHABIT

PlayGround-NY acknowledges that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Munsee Lanape, the original inhabitants of the territory colonially known as the five burroughs of New York City. As the past and present Indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the Munsee Lanape have never ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place, as well as for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory. We recognize the historic injustice of the forcible removal of the Munsee Lanape people from their ancestral lands, and that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. We wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the Ancestors, Elders and Relatives of the Munsee Lanape Communities and by affirming their sovereign rights as First Peoples. We honor the storytellers of the Lanape and are grateful for our ability to share and uplift Indigenous stories and those of other historically marginalized communities.

To learn about the legacy of the land you inhabit, visit Native-Land.ca | Our home on native land. To read the complete Land Acknowledgment Policy, click here.

PLAYGROUND’S ANTI-RACIST POLICY

PlayGround recognizes the impact of racial oppression within society and the American Theater and that we have been complicit in White Supremacy culture. Our goal is to co-create safety for our community by identifying and interrupting instances of racism and all forms of oppression when we witness them, through specific actions rooted in the principles of anti-racism and accessibility. In its endeavor to address the implications of our history, PlayGround is committed to its compliance with the following fundamental rights:
● The recognition of inherent dignity and worth of each human being.
● The recognition of equality of all human beings.
● Recognition of rights of ethnic, racial, cultural, linguistic and religious groups.
● Equality and non-discrimination.

PlayGround’s Anti-Racist Policy applies to: all members of the PlayGround community, including employees, independent contractors, volunteers, audience members, donors, and general members of the community.

To read the complete Anti-Racist Policy, click here.

Frogs
by Natalie Sacks
Directed by Jully Lee
Maya…………Sarah Guilbault
Yves..…………..Andrew Sellon

7.2 Minutes
by Jacob Marx Rice
Directed by Tessa Corrie
Addison………….Christina Wren
Julian…………………Nick Sholley

Project Selene
by Matthew Park
Directed by Joel Willison
Noriko ‘Nori’ Shirasuna………..Emily Kuroda
Amit Vora………………….…..Nikhaar Kishnani

Repairings
by Leela Velautham
Directed by Kamille Dawkins
Alex………………..MiKayla Boyd
Frank………………..Mark Peters
Steve……………..…….Tyler Kent

Parental Leave
by Maggie Wilson
Directed by Olivia Songer
Kat………….……Carina Lastimosa
Lino………….. Braedyn Youngberg
Rex…………………………..Austin Ku

Carriage
by Rebecca Kane
Directed by Jim Kleinmann
Flo………….…Rebbekah Vega-Romero
J35………………………..….Sheila Collins
Andy…………………..….Alex Moggridge

Stage Manager – Sarah Gasser
Visual Design Consultant – Colin Johnson

This live stream is produced under a SAG-AFTRA New Media Agreement.

PlayGround is a member of Theatre Bay Area and Theatre Communications Group.

PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD

Following tonight’s performance, we invite your participation in this month’s People’s Choice Award. Through the People’s Choice Award, our audience can play a direct impact in furthering the career of a promising new playwright. To vote, make a People’s Choice Award tax-deductible donation on behalf of your favorite play(s)/playwright(s) from the evening. Every donated dollar counts as a vote while directly supporting PlayGround’s award-winning incubator programs.

Cast your vote for your favorite play(s) by making a People’s Choice donation via Zelle (info@playground-ny.org), Venmo (our account ID is @playgroundsf and if they ask for the last four digits of my phone, it’s 8541) or on our website at https://tickets.playground-sf.org/TheatreManager/1/online?donationquick=168 (you can also visit the Monday Night PlayGround page for the People’s Choice donation button). Add a note/memo with your gift to indicate your favorite play(s) or email your selection to boxoffice@playground-sf.org.

At the end of next week, we’ll tally up the top vote-getter and automatic semi-finalist for our season-ending Best of PlayGround. It’s a powerful way of showing your support for new writers and their work, while helping PlayGround continue doing what we do!

THANK YOU TO PLAYGROUND MEMBERS!

We would like to thank our 2022-23 Monday Night PlayGround members for their support: Dr. Elaine Baskin & Kenneth R. Krechmer, Christine Benson, Summer Broyhill, Sidney Glass & Eleanor Clement Glass, Joan Cleveland, Kenneth C. Clews, Paulette Donsavage & Deeje Cooley, Sunny Da Silva, Ann Ehrmann, Victoria Evans Erville, Nieves Feied, Ms. Cherielyn Ferguson, Krystyna Finlayson, Mrs. Mary K. H. Foote, Michael Fried, Lara Gilman, Gail Hillebrand & Hugh Barroll, Roxy Jones, Carol Kearns, Ms. Karen Levesque, Ms. Kristy Lin Billuni, Ms. Vidyut Lingamneni, Jonathan Luskin & Leslie Katz, Dr. Sheila McCormick, Susan McKay, Mr. Scott Mullen, Ms. Vicki Oswald, Michelle Ruscetta, John J. Ruskin, Kathryn Ryan, Mr. Justin David Sikes, Nancy W. Smith, Mary Lou Torre, Lisa A Tromovitch, Andrew Trott, Michael E Tuton, Dr. Eidell Wasserman, Janine Wilburn, Mr. Marvin H Williams

A Monday Night PlayGround membership is a tax-deductible donation and directly supports the more than 400 artists involved in a Monday Night PlayGround season. Members are guaranteed tickets and live online access to twenty-four (24) Monday Night PlayGround performances, weekly, October 10, 2022-May 1, 2023, with extended on-demand viewing through our Monday Night PlayGround Member Library. Click here to become a member.

BIOGRAPHIES

PLAYWRIGHTS

REBECCA KANE (Carriage) she/her, writing has appeared in numerous theatres, publications, and festivals in New York City and beyond. Favorite credits include the National Women’s Theatre Festival, numerous shows at The Tank, and a reading through the New York Foundation for the Art’s City Artist Corps grant program.

MATTHEW PARK (The Mermaid’s Proposal), he/they, was born in New York and raised in Seoul, South Korea. His work revolves around the Asian-American experience, and investigates the ramifications of living under a scarcity mentality. His plays include Lessons (Diverse Voices Playwriting Initiative finalist 2023, Bay Area Playwrights Festival semifinalist 2023), Assimilation (Pipeline PlayLab semifinalist 2021), Plague Year (Red Bull Theater’s Short New Play Festival 2020), and Hurricane Regan. His writing has been supported by the Playwrights Realm, New York University and Illinois State University. He is a member of Playground-NY’s inaugural Writers Pool and has been published by Stage Rights. BFA, NYU Tisch

JACOB MARX RICE (7.2 Minutes), he/him, plays have been produced and developed at The Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, The Finborough Theatre in London, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Flea Theater, The New Ohio, Atlantic Theatre Stage 2, and others. His play Chemistry has premiered in seven cities across three continents, and Jacob’s screenplay adaptation is currently in development with Anonymous Content. Recent prizes include the Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, an Ensemble Studio Theater Sloan Commission, the Faculty Award from the NYU/Tisch Department of Dramatic Writing and the Excellence in Playwriting Award at the New York International Fringe Festival. MFA: NYU.

NATALIE SACKS (Frogs), she/her, is a Brooklyn-based playwright specializing in historical and sci-fi theater. Her play, THE YOUNG LADIES OF THE CLASS OF 1902 OF WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESENT, “AS YOU LIKE IT,” is a finalist for American Shakespeare Center’s (indefinitely postponed) 2021 Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries competition. Other plays include INVASIVE SPECIES (Benchmark Theatre), HEY SEXY: AN ENVIRONMENTAL PARABLE (The Bechdel Group), UNTIL WE GET IT RIGHT (semifinalist, Detroit New Works Festival), SHOOTING IN THE DARK (Queen Mary Theatre Company), 50 METERS (The Rude Mechanicals), THE QUEEN OF IRELAND (Turn to Flesh Productions), LOVING GRANDMA JEAN (The Bechdel Group), and SUSCEPTIBLE TO FIRE (The Dirty Blondes). Natalie is an inaugural member of the Playground-NY Writers Pool.

LEELA VELAUTHAM (Repairings), she/her, has been featured in the Best of Playground SF 24 and 25 and the best of Playground NY, is a two-time semi-finalist of the Bay Area Playwrights Festival and won the University of Oxford’s New Writing Festival in 2011 for her play ‘Schroedinger’s Hat’. A full production of her one-act play “Post-scarcity Possibilities” was staged as part of the 2022 Meganne George Women’s Work Short Play Festival at the New Perspectives Theatre Company. She is currently a member of the New Perspectives Theatre Company’s 2022 Full-Length Lab.

MAGGIE WILSON (Parental Leave), she/her, is a playwright from Cayucos living in Brooklyn. Her commissioned musical Jockamo, which she co-created with blues singer Wayne Harris, played in October 2021 in Berkeley, California at The Marsh’s Festival of New Musical Voices. Her mother-daughter play From The Bath was named a Jane Chambers Finalist (2021), was featured in the Artist Co-op’s Cold Read Festival at HERE Arts in NYC (2021), and was selected for Clamour Theatre’s Clay and Water Playwright Residency in Florida (2023). Maggie is a 22/23 Resident Playwright with PlayGround. More about Maggie at www.MaggieWil5on.co.

ACTORS

MIKAYLA BOYD (Repairings; Alex), she/her is a Chicago-based dancer, actor, writer. She is a junior at the Latin School of Chicago and a Flag Girl on the South Shore Drill Team. Her previous performances include: Voice of Good Hope (City Lit Theatre), American Blues #ENOUGH Showcase 2021, Metamorphoses (Latin School of Chicago), Emma’s Child (City Lit Theatre), Spike Heels (Latin School of Chicago), American Blues #ENOUGH Showcase 2022, American Blues Youth Playwright Showcase ‘21/‘22, On Fred Gray Ave (City Lit Theatre) as well as stage managing the Winter Dance Company Recital and Adv. Acting Company Production of Lawrence and Holloman at her school. She enjoys the arts, studying medicine/indigenous cultures, and plans to attend university in following years.

SHEILA COLLINS (Hannah and Greyson, Witch), she/her, has appeared in numerous stage plays, including these iconic roles: Ruth, in A Raisin in the Sun; Emilia, in Othello; (Duke)Duchess of Birmingham, in Henry VIII; Leonato(a) in Much Ado about Nothing; and Charlotte, in Charlotte’s Web. She’s also appeared in several TV shows: Grey’s Anatomy, Pretty Little Liars and General Hospital, and S.W.A.T., among others, as well as short films, two web series and a feature film. Sheila is always happy to perform in the Playground-NY events.

SARAH GUILBAULT (Frogs; Maya), she/they, is an actor and writer living on Lenape land in Harlem. She is a proud company member of Playground NY and has performed with Playground SF, LA, and Chicago. When not performing they write poetry!

TYLER KENT (Repairings; Steve) he/him, is a longtime collaborator of PlayGround on both coasts. An audiobook narrator and VO artist based in Brooklyn, he is also a regular performer and host at the celebrated piano bar, Marie’s Crisis, in NYC’s West Village. Stage credits include: Berkeley Rep, Kansas City Rep, Metropolitan Playhouse, The Old Globe, Theatreworks Silicon Valley, & The Melbourne Fringe. MFA The Old Globe / USD; BA Whitman College. tylerkent.com

NIKHAAR KISHNANI (Project Selene; Amit Vora), she/her. Off-Off Broadway: Veil’d at Astoria Performing Arts Center. Regional Theatre: Queen at Geva Theatre Centre, A Doll’s House Part 2 at Actors Theatre Louisville. Film: Shortcomings, Post-Term, Him&Her&Him. Television: Brown Nation, Code Switched, Geeta’s Guide To Moving On, Nepotism. Other Theatre: Twelfth Night at DePaul University, The Women Eat Chocolate at DePaul University, Prospero’s Storm at DePaul University, The Children’s Hour at DePaul University, The Qualms at DePaul University, The Rimers of Eldritch at Rutgers University. Additional Credits: Kishnani received her M.F.A. from The Theatre School at DePaul University. She is on house team, Octopus Queen, at Rubbish Comedy Collective.

AUSTIN KU (Parental Leave; Rex), he/him/they, is a Grammy-nominated NYC actor. Recent credits include Shonda Rhimes’ series INVENTING ANNA and Judd Apatow’s film THE BUBBLE (both for Netflix), and the popular virtual concert TAKE ME TO THE WORLD: A SONDHEIM 90TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION. Off-Broadway: SOFT POWER at The Public Theater, PACIFIC OVERTURES and IPHIGENIA IN AULIS at Classic Stage Company and more. International/Broadway Tour of CHINGLISH, and many regional credits. Austin has also been nominated for Barrymore, BroadwayWorld Boston and IRNE Awards, and has received Dean Goodman and StageSceneLA Awards. Training: The Boston Conservatory. Find him at www.Austin-Ku.com and @secretaustinman.

EMILY KURODA (Project Selene, Noriko ‘Nori’ Shirasuna), she/her, is proud to be a member of PlayGround!

CARINA LASTIMOSA (Parental Leave; Kat), she/her, is a San Francisco Bay Area native, currently residing in Chicago. Chicago credits include world premieres of W.o.W. (Theatre Above The Law), Poison and I Build Giants (The Plagiarists). SF/Bay Area credits include Dogeaters (Magic Theatre), Sisters Matsumoto (Center REPertory Company), A Dreamplay (Cutting Ball Theater), Slaughterhouse-Five (Custom Made Theatre Co.), A Kind of Sad Love Story (Bindlestiff Studio) and as a performer/educator for Kaiser’s Educational Theatre. Carina is a recipient of the Theatre Bay Area TITAN Award and a graduate of Indiana University. Carina is represented by Lily’s Talent Agency. www.carinalastimosa.com

ALEX MOGGRIDGE (Carriage; Andy), he/him, is delighted to return to Playground. THEATER Broadway: Betrayal, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz; Regional: Metamorphoses, Treasure Island, Three Sisters, Chinglish (Berkeley Repertory Theatre); Eat Your Heart Out, I Will Be Gone, (Actors Theatre of Louisville/Humana Festival); Clybourne Park, It’s a Wonderful Life, Baskerville(Long Wharf Theatre); Three Sisters(Yale Repertory Theatre); Christmas Carol, Beard of Avon (American Conservatory Theater) and others. PLAYWRITING The Boatman (Flint Repertory Theatre), Simon Dawes Becomes a Planet(Access Theatre, New York) FILM/TELEVISION Batman Begins; “The Defenders,” “Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” “Person of Interest,” “Trauma”.

MARK PETERS (Repairings; Frank), he/him, performed last year as The Count in a new translation of Schnitzler’s La Ronde, staged at IRT in Manhattan. He was King Lear in A Fool’s Lear, an original adaptation of Shakespeare’s play at the same theatre. Other NYC and regional roles: DeGuiche — Cyrano with Gabriel Barre at St. Clement’s; Sharky — The Seafarer, Nantucket; Frank — The Country Girl; Vanya — Uncle Vanya; Doc — Come Back, Little Sheba (musical) oppo­site Donna McKechnie (cast album Amazon); Emile — South Pacific; Perón — Evita (three times); Ahab — Moby-Dick (musical – Katsaros-St. Germain), Boston. Mr. Peters is a professional violist. Numerous camera performances. www.MarkPeters.me

ANDREW SELLON (Frogs; Yves), he/him, is best known on TV as Mr. Penn/The Ventriloquist/Scarface on Gotham. Other Film/TV: Begin Again, The Smurfs, The Blacklist, Divorce, The Good Fight, Halston. Favorite stage roles in NY and regionally: Polonius in Hamlet, The Fool in King Lear, Vanya in Vanya and Sonia…, Bazzard in Drood, Charlie in The Foreigner, Clown in The 39 Steps, and all 35 roles in I Am My Own Wife. Audiobooks: Turncoat, The Kevin Show, Rattle Man. Andrew is on the graduate creative writing faculty at Western Colorado University and University College/DU, teaching performance and playwriting. www.andrewsellon.com Instagram/Twitter: @AndrewSellon

NICK SHOLLEY (7.2 Minutes; Julian), he/him, is ten minutes long, in a loop, skiing while there’s snow.

REBBEKAH VEGA-ROMERO (Carriage; Flo), (she/her/ella) is a triracial Latina bruja, performer, and scribe, who resides in her native NYC with her black cat, King Arthur Yoda. Rebbekah has graced stages across America: from Massachusetts (Luisa/The Fantasticks/Cape Playhouse) to Colorado (Martha Cratchit/A Christmas Carol/Denver Center) to Washington (Maria/West Side Story/5th Avenue), as well as in many more productions, readings and workshops. Rebbekah is a 2023 Doreen Montalvo Scholarship honoree. Rebbekah holds a BA in English from Boston University and is a YoungArts award-winning writer. Rebbekah’s poetry has been featured by Sixfold and Ars.Poetica; she is a resident playwright with Playground-NY; she wrote, starred in, and produced the short film “The Question,” a comedy about #DatingWhileMixed. Rebbekah’s solo cabaret show, Ingenuity, recently premiered at Chelsea Table & Stage. Rebbekah hopes her work will inspire other mixed-race girls to share their magic.

CHRISTINA WREN (7.2 Minutes; Addison), she/her, is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She played Carrie Farris in “Man of Steel” and “Batman v Superman,” can currently be seen as J.P. Cutler in “LA Macabre” on Amazon Prime and is a writer/producer creating original content through her company, Two Kids with a Camera. She currently spends most of her days pretending to be dinosaurs with her two little boys.

BRAEDYN YOUNGBERG (Parental Leave; Lino), he/him, is thrilled to be joining PlayGround-Chicago in their mission to develop local playwrights! Regional theatre credits include “Don Armado” (Loves Labors Lost), “Roderigo” (Othello), and “Antonio” (Twelfth Night) with Marin Shakespeare Company, “Orlando, et al” (As You Like It) with SF Shakes, “The Monster” (Young Frankenstein) with Spreckels PAC, and “Brad Majors” (The Rocky Horror Show) with Sixth Street Playhouse. Braedyn has trained locally with The Second City and iO Chicago, as well as regionally with Shakespeare & Company.

DIRECTORS

TESSA CORRIE (7.2 Minutes), she/her, is a Queer and Latinx theater director based in the Bay Area. Her work is grounded in creating space for marginalized and underrepresented communities and narratives. She is a company member, casting associate, and this year’s Women Leaders Directing Fellow at PlayGround SF. Her credits include work at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Center REPertory Company, Palo Alto Players, Hillbarn Theatre, Pear Theatre, Shotgun Players, TheatreFirst, The Playwrights’ Center of San Francisco, More Más Marami Arts, Poltergeist Theatre Project, PianoFight, AmiosWest, and Our Digital Stories.

KAMILLE DAWKINS (Repairings), she/them, is a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Ga where they earned a BFA in both Performing Arts and in Film & Television. Originally from Kingston, Jamaica, Kamille moved to Chicago in 2016 after completing their nine month Emerging Professional Residency at The Milwaukee Repertory Theater. They have since joined the Chicago theatre community as an Actor, Musician, Singer, Writer, Director and Artistic Director of Strawdog Theatre Company.

JIM KLEINMANN (Carriage; Co-Founder & Artistic Director), he/him, co-founded PlayGround in 1994, along with playwright Brighde Mullins and director Denise Shama, and has served as Artistic Director since 1996. For PlayGround, he has provided artistic and administrative leadership for the past twenty-four seasons, developing PlayGround’s unique array of new playwright and new play incubator programs, including Monday Night PlayGround, the PlayGround Festival of New Works, the full-length play Commissioning Initiative, and more than one hundred short and full-length plays, including works by Garret Jon Groenveld, Aaron Loeb, Geetha Reddy, Lauren Yee, Katie May, and many others. Recent directing and dramaturgy credits include David Steele’s Vignettes on Love and Ruben Grijalva’s Value Over Replacement. He is a veteran arts administrator with more than thirty years of experience, including stints leading Traveling Jewish Theatre, Smuin Ballet and Berkeley Symphony, and received his MFA from the Yale School of Drama.

JULLY LEE (Frogs), she/her, is an Ovation-nominated actor and the Artistic Director of Cold Tofu, the nation’s first and longest running Asian American improv company. She has also directed with Playground-SF and Playground-LA and over a dozen theatres in Los Angeles. She made her Broadway/New York debut in KPOP the musical and most recently performed in the radio drama “Sea Longing” with The Parsnip Ship in Brooklyn. TV credits include: “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” “Young Sheldon,” “S.W.A.T.,” “This Is Us,” “Jane the Virgin,” “Henry Danger,” “The Kominsky Method.”

OLIVIA SONGER (Parental Leave), she/her, Olivia holds a BFA with honors in Drama from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and an MFA in Theatre Directing from The Lir Academy at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland’s National Academy of Dramatic Arts. Having worked all over the world, her strengths lie in creating across cultures with an ability to seek out and engage atypical audiences. Her work takes on a highly collaborative, non-hierarchical approach. Recent credits include Made by God (World premiere, Irish Repertory Theatre), Venus in Fur (Project Arts Centre), We Are Not Well (NYU Tisch/Clifford Odetts Commission), We Can’t Have Monkeys in the House (The Peacock Stage at The Abbey, National Theatre of Ireland), Disconnected (The New Theatre/Smock Alley Theatre). Selected assisting credits include Ironbound (The Geffen Playhouse, LA), Tribes (The Gate), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Rough Magic/Kilkenny Arts Festival) Unwoman III, (The Rabble, Dublin Fringe Festival) R+J: Star Cross’d Death Match (Three Day Hangover/Drunk Shakespeare.) She has directed developmental readings at Irish Repertory Theatre, Origin Theatre, Dixon Place, The Lab, Hot! Festival and more. She was a member of the 2019-2021 SDCF Observership Program, a Rough Magic SEEDS participant, a Contemporary Artist in Residence at the National Gallery of Ireland and served as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in the East Caribbean.

JOEL WILLISON (Project Selene), Joel (he/him/his) was born in Evanston, Illinois but spent most of his childhood growing up in Kampala, Uganda. As the Artistic Director for Pocket Theatre VR, he focuses his work on collaboration with early career theatre artists, and increasing accessibility to the stage using Virtual Reality. Joel is making his directorial debut with Laments of a Brown Bird Summer written by Cris Eli Blak with Director’s Haven. He is always looking for more opportunities to support theatre in Chicago. Keep up to date with his work at joelwillison.com

PRODUCTION

SARAH GASSER (Stage Manager) joined PlayGround in 2017 and has staged managed for the Monday Night PlayGround series and PlayGround Festival. She stagemanages for companies around the Bay Area, including Brava and Bay Area Children’s Theatre. In her administrative capacities, she assists with PlayGround’s marketing, social media, communications, and website, as well as serving as assistant to the Artistic Director.

MICHAEL FRIED (Planet Earth Arts Co-Founder & Artistic Director) has worked for more than 40 years as a director, producer, arts educator and transformational non-profit leader in theater, the arts, film/media, education and as a social justice activist. Michael was a founding member and spent thirteen years as the Producing Director of New York’s acclaimed Roundabout Theatre Company. His production of Athol Fugard’s The Blood Knot launched Danny Glover’s powerful career and his production of John Osborne’s Look Back In Anger, with Malcolm McDowell, inaugurated the Showtime on Broadway cable TV series. While building this premier arts institution he produced more than 100 major productions and worked with playwrights Samuel Beckett, Athol Fugard, Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter, John Osborne and Tennessee Williams. Michael also produced the Dance Umbrella at the Roundabout. In 1990 Michael Fried founded Public Interest TV Films. He has produced numerous documentaries on a wide array of subjects and he has served as the Executive Producer for several nationally broadcast PBS films. In 2001, with the support of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, Michael started a pioneering mentoring and training program for gifted ‘disabled’ students and individuals who dreamt of working in film and media. He was the co-founder of California’s first Disability Media Center recognized by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Michael wants to thank Planet Earth Arts Project Coordinator, Rua Necaise and Carol Dweck, David Goldman and the National Center for New Plays at Stanford, for making this year’s New Play Festival possible.

PLANET EARTH ARTS was founded in 2014 by Michael Fried and Vinit Allen, with the support of Founding Curators Cynthia Frisch, Gary Malkin and Neal Rogin, out of our conviction that environmental and racial/social justice are the most urgent issues of our time, and our belief that the arts, in collaboration with the sciences and humanities, must play a leading role in transforming the human presence on our planet from a destructive role to one that is mutually beneficial to the entire community of life. We collaborate with actors, playwrights, directors, photographers, choreographers, dancers, musicians, writers and visual artists. Planet Earth Arts supports them by commissioning, presenting and showcasing their powerful transformative work – confronting and illuminating climate change, mass extinctions, threats to oceans, habitat loss, sea rise and the struggles for environmental justice. That same year we launched the Planet Earth Arts New Play Festival at Berkeley Rep and at Stanford University, in collaboration with PlayGround and the National Center for New Plays at Stanford, to inspire playwrights to create bold new works for the stage that explore issues of planetary sustainability as well as environmental and social justice. For the past nine years Planet Earth Arts has worked with more than 75 playwrights from PlayGround’s Writers Pool in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. The Planet Earth Arts New Play Festival has generated a living library of more than 200 short plays. PlayGround and Planet Earth Arts have co-commissioned 12 new original full-length or one-act plays – several of which have had World Premiere Productions in San Francisco at Potrero Stage: PlayGround Center for New Plays. Each year at least one or two Planet Earth Arts plays have been included in the Best of PlayGround. We are thrilled to resume collaborating with PlayGround   on the 2023 Planet Earth Arts New Play Festival and look forward to supporting the new visions and voices of the Chicago and New York Writer Pools.

PLAYGROUND-NY is the second regional expansion of the celebrated Bay Area playwright incubator and theatre community hub, PlayGround(SF). PlayGround, California’s leading playwright incubator, provides unique development opportunities for the Bay Area’s, Los Angeles’ and now New York’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 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-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 Humana Festival, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, The Lark’s Playwrights’ Week, 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.

CONTRIBUTORS

PlayGround is deeply grateful for the generous contributions of the many individuals, foundations, gifts of $125 or more committed between October 1, 2021 & October 24, 2022.

GOVERNMENT, CORPORATE, & FOUNDATION DONORS

Alameda County Arts Commission • Amazon • American Rescue Plan Act & CARES Act • Art Space Development Corporation • Berkeley Civic Arts • The Bernard Osher Foundation • Bill Graham Supporting Foundation of the Jewish Community Federation & Endowment Fund • California Arts Council • California Nonprofit Performing Arts Grant Program • Creative Capacity Fund • First Republic Bank • The Fleishhacker Foundation • Goldman Sachs • Google • Grants For The Arts • Koret Foundation • Lenore & Howard Klein Foundation • The Leo J. & Celia Carlin Fund • Negley Flinn Charitable Foundation • NIAC • Nvidia • Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation • Planet Earth Arts • The Shubert Foundation • The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation • Zellerbach Family Foundation

INDIVIDUAL SUPPORTERS

SEASON SPONSORS ($5000+)

William Bivins, Emilie T. & Gordon C. Brooks, Jerome Joseph Gentes & Michael David Bourque, Lara Gilman & Jim Kleinmann, Peggy Haas, David Steele, Anonymous

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS ($2500–$4,999)

John H. Gilman, Regina S. Guggenheim

PRODUCERS CIRCLE ($1000-$2499)

Sidney Glass & Eleanor Clement Glass, In Memory of M. David MacCallum, Jr., Rebecca Martinez, Nitin, Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock, Marian Scheuer Sofaer & Abraham D. Sofaer, Anonymous (3)

PLAYWRIGHTS CIRCLE ($500-$999)

Thomas Patrick Broyhill, David Goldman, Jeff Gregory, Regina S. Guggenheim, Linda Kremer, Lisa A. Mammel, Lisa Morse, Nvidia, Nancy & Carty Spencer, J.B. Strasser, Susannah Wise & Scott Lebus, Anonymous (3)

PATRON ($250-$499)

Dr. Elaine Baskin & Kenneth R. Krechmer, Lily L Chow, Ruben & Keli Grijalva, Vicki Hamilton, Roxy Jones, Ray and Carla Kaliski, Annie Stuart, Lisa R. Taylor, Maury Zeff, Anonymous (3)

ASSOCIATE MEMBER ($125-$249)

Maura C. Berkelhamer, Dr. Katherine Ardis Blenko, Frieda de Lackner, Jessica Forbess, Mr. Eric Garcia, Sarah Gasser, Tom Goetzl, Gina Harris, Abbe S. Kalos & Kitt Saginor, Jennifer King, Douglas & Mary Ann Le Blanc, Gregg Le Blanc, Trynne Miller & David Prince, Everett & Julia Moore, Louis Parnell, Dr. Alan Pearl, Ms. Madeline Daly Puccioni, Mike Rosenthal, Lisa Gaye Thompson, Jeffrey Trescott, Liam Vincent, Mr. Darryl Wilburn, Janine & Darryl Wilburn, Robin L. Wimsatt, Kelli Wong, Anonymous (3)

To contribute to PlayGround-NY, visit https://playground-ny.org/contribute or contact PlayGround Associate Director of Development Lana Richards at lana@playground-sf.org or by phone at (415) 992-6677.

PLAYGROUND-NY WRITERS POOL

Sam Affoumado, Momo Akashi, Anthony Anello, Andy Boyd, Christin Cato, Todd Cerveris, Jayne Deely, Josh Drimmer, Barry Eitel, Bailey Elis, Jack Feldstein, Ruth Geye, Dana Leslie Goldstein, Stanley Hathaway, Rachel Herron, David Hilder, Rebecca Kane, Elizabeth Lee, Dani Nelson, Matthew Park, Alexander Perez, Jacob Rice, Rachael Richman, Kathryn Ryan, Natalie Sacks, Louise Schwarz, Marcus Scott, Riley Tollen, Gaven Trinidad, Rebbekah Vega-Romero, Charles Velasquez-Witosky, Leela Velautham, Rhys Washington, Maggie Wilson

PRODUCTION & STAFF

Jim Kleinmann, Co-Founder & Artistic Director
Kalina Ko, Associate Producer
Jully Lee, Associate Producer
Abigail Rosen, Associate Producer
Sarah Gasser, Resident Stage Manager
Kelsey Bray, 2022-23 Directing Apprentice
Laith Zuaiter, 2022-23 Directing Apprentice

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https://www.facebook.com/playground.newyork
https://twitter.com/playground_ny
https://www.instagram.com/playgroundnytheatre/theatre
www.playground-ny.org

c/o PlayGround
3286 Adeline St #8
Berkeley, CA 94703-2485