PRICES, LOCATION, ETC.
JULY 30-AUGUST 8
Magic Theatre
Fort Mason Center, Bldg. D*
San Francisco
Festival Passes: $65-75
Single Ticket Admission: $12
BOX OFFICE (415) 263-3986
OFFICE: (415) 626-0453, ext 110
festival dates*:
JULY 13, 15, 17 & 18: FESTIVAL PLAYWRITING INTENSIVE
Workshop – Darrah Cloud
FRIDAY, JULY 30
8pm autodelete:// beginning dump of physical memory//
By Honour Kane, with original music by Eve Beglarian
10:30pm A TRIBUTE TO NAOMI IIZUKA
Honoring BAPF alumna (1998, Aloha Say the Pretty Girls) Ms. Iizuka in a celebration of her accomplishments
SATURDAY, JULY 31:
4pm MISSIVES
By Garret Jon Groenveld
8pm JUAN GELION DANCES FOR THE SUN
A play with music by Dominic Orlando
SUNDAY, AUGUST 1
1pm BASH! (Bay Area SHorts)
Four plays in an afternoon by Bay Area writers
- CROW’S EYE VIEW & HUE by Roy Conboy
- COUNTER-TERRORISM by Judy Juanita
- I GOT IT by Andrea Kuchlewski
- WE SPEND OUR LIVES by Mia Chung
5:30pm VOICES UNDERWATER
By Abi Basch directed by PF Artistic Director, Amy Mueller
MONDAY, AUGUST 2
10:30am ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION:
Bridging the Gap: Practical Considerations – Establishing Positive Connections @ a TBA off-site location
A conversation with literary managers and producers of new work about the process of getting to know a playwright’s work (free admission)
8pm ALL THE TRUTH IN THE WORLD
By Liz Duffy Adams, with an original score by David Rhodes
Co-commissioned by Playwrights Foundation and Crowded Fire Theater Company, developed with Amy Mueller and Rebecca Novick, performed by Crowded Fire Theater Company
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4
10:30am ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION:
Playwrights and Actors – Working Models @ a TBA off site location
A conversation with playwrights and producers about creating new work for a specific group of performers (free admission)
FRIDAY, AUGUST 6
10am to 4 pm BAPF 27 SYMPOSIUM
On the Edge: The Role of Radical Aesthetics in a Whacked-Out World
Panel discussions, break-out groups, discovery and support for work that defies categorie
8pm VOICES UNDERWATER
By Abi Basch directed by PF Artistic Director, Amy Mueller
SATURDAY, AUGUST 7
1pm autodelete:// beginning dump of physical memory//
By Honour Kane, with original music by Eve Beglarian
4pm JUAN GELION DANCES FOR THE SUN
A play with music by Dominic Orlando
8pm Project 6: A BAPF 27 collaborative commission
FORTY ACRES
By Robert Alexander, directed by Edris Cooper Anifowoshe
SUNDAY, AUGUST 8
1pm ALL THE TRUTH IN THE WORLD
By Liz Duffy Adams, with an original score by David Rhodes
Co-commissioned by Playwrights Foundation and Crowded Fire Theater Company, developed with Amy Mueller and Rebecca Novick, performed by Crowded Fire Theater Company
5:30pm MISSIVES
By Garret Jon Groenveld
*exact times are subject to change
All Events at Magic Theatre unless specified
Special Events
A Tribute to Naomi Iizuka
Friday, July 30 @ 10.30 pm
BAPF alumna (1998, Aloha Say the Pretty Girls) Naomi Iizuka has garnered international recognition for her original, haunting plays that focus our gaze on mysterious forces at work under the surface of a community. Ms. Iizuka has wowed Bay Area audiences, who have seen many world premiere productions of her work at Campo Santo and 36 Views at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.
A party, a tribute, a joyous post-performance toast – please join us in honor of Ms. Iizuka’s accomplishments.
BASH! [Bay Area Shorts]
Four Plays in One Sitting
Now in its second year, BASH! showcases four one-act plays by Bay Area playwrights, most of whom are largely unknown to local and national producers and audiences.
Mia Chung
We Spend Our Lives
Mrs. Song asks her sister, Mrs. Kim, for money.
Roy Conboy
Crow’s Eye View
An urban commuter and an urban bird search for nourishment in the grinding evening commute.
Hue
A woman sits at the window, a drunken boy stands at the door, and bodies float in the South China Sea.
Judy Juanita
Counter Terrorism
Ann, a homeless truth teller, begins to creep into the mind of Tylea, a shopaholic, kindling radical thoughts.
Andrea Kuchlewski
I Got It
Eve’s friend Michael provokes her to violence with his imprecise use of language.
FORUMS:
PlayBack # 1: Submit and Conquer
Monday, August 2 @ 10:30am
OFF-SITE @ SF Performing Arts Library and Museum
410 Van Ness Ave, Veterans Building, 4th Floor
Getting your play accepted for production involves more than sticking to guidelines. How do playwrights create relationships with the folks who read their plays? How can you endear yourself to literary managers, dramaturgs and directors? Find out from the folks who open the manila envelopes.
Speakers include:
Elisa Marina Alvarado, artistic director, Teatro Vision
Claire Chafee, playwright
Meghan Monaghan, literary director, Alliance Theatre, Atlanta
Torange Yeghiazerian, artistic director, Golden Thread Productions
Christine Young, literary manager, Playwrights Foundation
PlayBack #2: Writing the Group Mind
Wednesday, August 4 @ 10:30am
OFF-SITE @ SF Mine Troupe Headquarters
855 Treat Street (between 21 & 22 St.)
Writing a play for a group—or with a community of theatre artists—demands a wild patience. Veterans of the form discuss the special synergy of group mind and individual voice.
Speakers include:
Michael Gene Sullivan, writer, director, actor, S.F. Mime Troupe
Les Waters, associate artistic director, Berkeley Repertory Theatre
SYMPOSIUM: RADICAL AESTHETICS: SUBVERTING THE SPIN CYCLE
Alternative theater artists’ guilty secret: they take inspiration from traditional disciplines. That’s what radical means: back to the roots. While corporations co-opt our culture, we seek inspiration and solace in antique disciplines: dancing, shtik, tragedy. Spend the day in lively dialogue with a diverse group of performing artists whose work aspires to cut through the smog of globalization. There’ll be panel discussions, performance, and time to schmooze. Meet theater professionals from across the Bay Area and the nation. The no-can-miss event of the theater professional’s calendar. $30 includes lunch. The event is included in Bouquet Pass. Pre-registration is required: please call (415) 626-0453 ext. 110 or email us at admin@playwrightsfoundation.org to reserve your spot.
10 - 11 am – The Dancer’s Foot: Root of Performance
Moderator Jo Kriter
Before there was dialogue, there was dance. This panel acknowledges the root of all performance: the disciplined body able to express ideas in time and space. Dancers and choreographers who have crossed over into theater discuss the necessary interchange. Panelists include Erika Shuch, choreographer, Intersection for the Arts; Rosie Radiator, tap dance guru; and Joe Goode, choreographer.
11 am – noon – Pre-Emptive Theater: Purge the War Urge
Moderator David DeRose
The Greeks believed tragedy had a medicinal effect on its audience, through the purging of the emotions pity and fear. Antonin Artaud (Theater of Cruelty) said if we didn’t take culture seriously, people would perform nasty acts on one another. Theater artists, who know firsthand the tonic effects of performance, discuss the transformational mechanics of theatrical play. Panelists include: Naomi Newman, founding member of A Travelling Jewish Theater; Sean San Jose, actor, Campo Santo; and Randall Stuart, artistic director, Upon These Boards.
Noon – 1:30 – Lunch
1:30-2:30 pm – Next Generation: A Performance Interlude
Moderator Erin Blackwell
Where’s our next genre coming from? A new generation of performing artists from the Bay Area lay out possibilities for innovations in theatrical form. Performers include: Dan Wolf, new world vaudevillian; Tim Barsky, beat-box flute and morbid storyteller, Colored Ink, eclectic theater artists of color off the page; and Youth Speaks, slam poets.
2:30-3:30 pm – The Comic Imperative: Subverting Convention
Moderator Lisa Drostova
If comedy’s funny, why should we take it seriously? The first thing to disappear from a totalitarian state is the freedom to make fun of people in power. Very funny people who have spent a lot of time getting people to laugh at themselves (and other tyrants) discuss why we need serious comedy now more than ever. Panelists include: Tim Barsky, beat-box flautist and storyteller; Heather Gold, stand-up comic; Joan Holden, playwright emeritus of S.F. Mime Troupe; and Doug Holsclaw, comic, playwright, teacher.
The Selected Plays:
AUTODELETE:// beginning dump of physical memory//
by Honour Kane, with original music by Eve Beglarian
Friday, July 30 @ 8pm & Saturday, August 7 @ 1 pm
High-speed media babe, Kick Malone is flying at the top of the publishing world when she is felled by a stroke and suddenly becomes dependent on three estranged friends. Surging with music and sharply comic, the play examines class, corporate and personal loyalties in a high stakes world.
Missives
by Garret Jon Groenveld
Saturday, July 31 @ 4 pm & Sunday, August 8 @ 5.30 pm
A white gay man and a straight African American woman develop an intimate friendship solely through the exchange of letters. Then a sinister third party enters the dialogue and the man disappears. A queer mystery.
Juan Gelion Dances for the Sun
A play with music by Dominic Orlando
Saturday, July 31 @ 8 pm & Saturday, August 7 @ 4 pm
You gotta admit, dealing with the second coming of Christ isn’t easy – especially for a right-wing presidential wannabe with similar aspirations. Maybe torture’s the way to go. Drawing on Latin Am erica’s painful colonial past Juan Gelion offers a surprising theological option.
Voices Underwater
by Abi Basch
directed by PF Artistic Director, Amy Mueller
Sunday, August 1 @ 5.30pm & Friday, August 6 @ 8pm
On a storm-filled night an interracial couple arrive at their inheritance— a deserted southern plantation bequeathed by an unknown donor. A beautifully rendered surrealistic journey that vivisects one of Am erica’s key psycho-emotional traumas.
All the Truth in the World
by Liz Duffy Adams,with an original score by David Rhodes
Monday, August 2 @ 8 pm & Sunday, August 8 @ 1pm
Lu-Lu the Goddess of Lies is banished from the celestial realm and visits earth to plot revolution against her fellow gods. Meanwhile a young woman sets out to rescue her sister from the lustful god who has abducted her. A musical poetic epic spanning centuries, from the ancient world to urban Am erica, gods and humans battle for eminence. Taking its title from Bob Dylan: “All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie,” Truth explores the travails of our own times through music, humor and exploded mythic tradition.. The original score will be performed live.
Commissioned jointly by Playwrights Foundation and Crowded Fire Theater Company and written specifically for CF’s ensemble of actors, Truth inaugurates PF’s new Producing Partners Initiative for the inception and development of new American theater.
Forty Acres
Project 6: A BAPF 27 collaborative commission
by Robert Alexander with visual artist Iris Polos
directed by Edris Cooper Anifowoshe
Saturday, August 7 @ 8pm (one show only)
Sonny Bledsoe, a successful African American Wall Street attorney, is incensed by his parents’ lawsuit against companies that profited in the marketing of slaves, and threatens to create mayhem to stop them. An explosive, dramatic portrait of American cultural amnesia.
Project 6 commissions two artists to collaborate on the inception of a new work created specifically for the festival. Forty Acres has been funded by a generous grant from the Peter S. Reed Foundation.
The Playwrights:
Honour Kane’s work has been produced by Sydney’s Mardi Gras Arts Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville, New Georges, and Ireland 's Inishbofin Arts Festival. Her plays have been developed by A.S.K. at Lincoln Center Theater, London's Royal Court Theatre, Playlabs and the Australian National Playwrights Conference. A current resident of New Dramatists, she holds fellowships from the NEA, New York Foundation for the Arts (2002, 1990), a New York State Council on the Arts Individual Theatre Artist Commission, a Bunting Fellowship at Harvard/Radcliffe, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.
Garret Jon Groenveld, a San Francisco-based poet and playwright, is five-time recipient of PlayGround's Emerging Playwright Award and the first PlayGround Fellow. His latest full-length play, Missives, was commissioned by PlayGround and received a workshop production as part of The Best of PlayGround festival last June. His play Winter, Sarajevo, 1994 was selected by the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival as Best Ten-Minute Play in 1998. A full-length adaptation of this piece, entitled Blood Winter, was selected for the 1999 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and by Edward Albee for his Playwrighting Workshop at the University of Houston in 2000. He is also the lead author and co-producer of the very popular live action Soap Opera, The Duboce Triangle.
Dominic Orlando just completed a year in Minneapolis as a Jerome Foundation Fellow to The Playwrights' Center, where he completed Juan Gelion. Initial work on the play was done at The MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, The Edward Albee Foundation in Montauk and The No-Pants Theatre Company in New York City. Also this year, Mr Orlando received commissions and fellowships from The Guthrie Theater, Nautilus Music-Theater, BVT Naples (NY) and The Cornucopia Arts Center in Lanesboro. With No-Pants, Mr Orlando’s work was supported by The New York State Council on the Arts, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, The Alliance of Resident Theatres/NY, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Writer’s Digest and The Puffin Foundation and presented at venues ranging from The Pasinger/Fabrike in Munich to Lincoln Center’s American Living Room Festival and The Samuel Beckett on Theatre Row.
Abi Basch writes plays about people, puppets, fear and history. Voices Underwater was a finalist for the 2004 Weissberger Award at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and was featured in the 2004 hotINK! Playreading Series in New York City. It will be presented in the 2004 Bay Area Playwrights Festival in San Francisco and the Theater Emory summer playreading series in Atlanta. Lucy Dies in Fives was presented at the 2003 Transeuropa Theater Festival in Hildesheim, Germany, and received a commission from Austin Script Works for production in the 2004 FronteraFest in Austin, TX, where it was awarded Best of the Fest. Fear of a Führer currently is in development with Physical Plant theater company, and will receive an April 2005 production with them in Austin. Abi received her A.B. from Brown University. She is based in Austin, where she’s a CORE member of Austin Script Works and is pursuing an MFA in Playwriting at the University of Texas. Abi is a 2004-05 Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis.
Liz Duffy Adams' plays include Dog Act (staged reading at Portland Stage Company's Little Festival of the Unexpected 2000 and New York Theatre Workshop, Finalist for the Clauder Competition 2001); The Train Play (Clubbed Thumb production at the Ohio Theater, Finalist for the Clauder Competition 1999); A Wrinkle in Time, (adaptation commissioned and produced by Syracuse Stage); A Fabulous Beast (One Dream Theater, with Edie Falco); Teacup for a Shallow Apocalypse (Santa Monica Playhouse); and the short plays, Greeks and Centaurs, The Last Woman on Earth, and Aphra Does Antwerp (The Women’s Project Tandem Acts Festivals; Last Woman also at New Georges Perform-a-thon 2000 and Estrogenius 2001). Her Poodle with Guitar and Dark Glasses will be published in May 2002 in Applause Books’ “Best American Short Plays 2000-2001”. She is a graduate of NYU's Experimental Theater Wing and the Yale School of Drama, and a member of New Dramatists.
Robert Alexander returns to the Bay Area after completing his TCG/PEW fellowship at Woolly Mammoth Theater Company in Washington , D.C. where he premiered The Last Orbit of Billy Mars, and mentored inner-city teenagers to use their words as weapons. He is an acclaimed national writer, with world premieres at regional theaters such as Harford Stage, Trinity Repertory and the Mark Taper Forum. He is the author of 23 produced plays including the critically acclaimed I Ain't Yo Uncle; The Hourglass; Bulletproof Hearts: A Preface to the Alien Garden; Servant of the People; Hatemachine (BAPF 25): Freak of Nature; The Last Orbit of Billy Mars; the rock opera Air Guitar; Will He Bop, Will He Drop?; Home Free; and The Erotic Justice Trilogy. Alexander's work has been produced locally by the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience (BACCE). Alexander has an MFA in playwriting from the University of Iowa, where he was a Patricia Harris Fellow, and he has taught graduate writing seminars at St. Mary's College, The Theatre Lab of Washington D.C., University of San Francisco and University of Iowa.
