THEATRE/ARTS/ENTERTAINMENT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media contact: Jim Kleinmann at
(415) 992-6677 or [email protected].
PLAYGROUND PREMIERES THE BEST SHORT WORKS
BY THE BAY AREA’S BEST NEW PLAYWRIGHTS IN
BEST OF PLAYGROUND 19
AT 19TH PLAYGROUND FESTIVAL OF NEW WORKS
MAY 7-24, 2015 AT THICK HOUSE, SAN FRANCISCO
ALL-FESTIVAL PASSES START AT $60
SAN FRANCISCO, (April 17, 2015) – PlayGround caps off its 2014-15 season with BEST OF PLAYGROUND
19, the centerpiece of this year’s PlayGround Festival of New Works (http://playground-sf.org/festival).
The Best of PlayGround features six fully-produced ten-minute plays (each play is presented at every
performance), selected from the 36 works developed as part of the season’s Monday Night PlayGround
staged reading series at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and more than 180 submissions received this year.
Monday Night PlayGround has engaged and inspired a growing and enthusiastic audience with new
plays inspired by a single topic each month, including “Ghost of Christmas Present”, “Nice Work If You
Can Get It” (Gershwin-inspired plays and musicals), and, as part of a new collaboration with Planet Earth
Arts/Sustainable World Coalition, “Is Earth F**ked?”. Individual tickets are $25-$55 and All-Festival
Passes (including priority seating tickets to all festival activities) start at $60. Tickets are available
through the Box Office at 415-992-6677 or online at http://playground-sf.org/bestof.
The six ten-minute plays to be presented at this year’s Best of PlayGround are:
Reading Babar in 2070 by Rachel Bublitz, directed by Rebecca Ennals
Someone by Genne Murphy, directed by Jeffrey Lo
Preapocalyptica (ten-minute version) by Erin Marie Panttaja, directed by Katja Rivera
Art and Tech by Kirk Shimano, directed by Jon Tracy
Frankenstein's Grandmother by Steven Westdahl, directed by Tracy Ward
Cratchit by Davern Wright, directed by Jim Kleinmann
This year’s Best of PlayGround ensemble includes: Michael Barrett Austin*, Millie DeBenedet, Melissa
Ortiz*, Michael Phillis, Stephanie Prentice*, Lindsey Marie Schmeltzer, and Jomar Tagatac*. Member,
Actors’ Equity Association.
ABOUT THE PLAYS:
Reading Babar in 2070 by Rachel Bublitz
In the slightly distant future, a little girl discovers the high price of unchecked human development and
story time will never be the same.
Release – Best of PlayGround 19, p. 2
Someone by Genne Murphy
Max prepares to send his reluctant daughter, Hannah, off to her first school dance - leading to a
conversation about love, heartbreak and letting go.
Preapocalyptica by Erin Marie Panttaja
California has a year of water left. ‘Grim-on-bleak’ Preapocalyptica explores how far one would go to
save the planet.
Art and Tech by Kirk Shimano
The two sources battling for the soul of the Bay Area reflect on their past lives as lovers.
Frankenstein's Grandmother by Steven Westdahl
Before there was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, there was a fateful visit to a dark and stormy lake house
and, before there was Mary Shelley, there was her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft.
Cratchit by Davern Wright
Bankrupt Bob Cratchit — along with his squabbling children, constipated spouse, and a clueless
Christmas “ghost” — must convincingly trick his boss, the misery Mr. Scrooge, into giving him a raise.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS:
RACHEL BUBLITZ (Reading Babar in 2070) is the Founder of the 31 Plays in 31 Days Project and a Youth
Ambassador for the Dramatists Guild of America. This is her second season with PlayGround. Rachel’s
full-length play, Of Serpents & Sea Spray, will open at Custom Made Theatre Co. in January of 2016.
Rachelbublitz.com
GENNE MURPHY (Someone) is a Philadelphia-born playwright / arts educator. Her plays include Hope
Street and Other Lonely Places (2011 O'Neill finalist, 2012 Azuka Theatre production) and Outside the
Wire (shortlist, 2013 BBC International Radio Play Competition). Genne is a member of PlayGround, the
2015 SF Olympians Festival and Philadelphia Young Playwrights’ Alumni Council.
ERIN MARIE PANTTAJA (Prepocalyptica) is in her third season as a member of the Writers Pool. She
received a Planet Earth New Play Festival commission to develop a new full-length play based on her
short Preapocalyptica, to be workshopped this spring at University of California Berkeley and Stanford.
Her plays have been produced at the Dublin Fringe Festival's Thread workshop and Mendocino College's
New Works Festival and as part of Twisted Christmas Live. She is also an engineer, designer, roboticist,
and homemaker.
KIRK SHIMANO (Art and Tech) wrote the screenplay for Miss Finknagle Succumbs to Chaos, which
received the People's Choice Award at the 2013 PlayGround Film Festival. His plays include Love in the
Time of Zombies (San Francisco Theater Pub) and Pegasus: The Movie (The Play) (San Francisco
Olympians), which was inspired by his day job of illuminating imaginary things with imaginary lights.
STEVEN WESTDAHL (Frankenstein’s Grandmother) graduated from Emory University (BAs in English and
Theatre & Film), became a founding member of the SF Neo-Futurists (Best Theater, 2014, SF Weekly /
Best of the Bay, 2014, Bay Guardian), and will direct Zurich Plays, a Dada history of the Dadaist, at the SF
Fringe in 2015.
DAVERN WRIGHT’s (Cratchit) scripts include Would You Like the Can, Sir? (January 2015 PlayGround
People’s Choice Award) and Something’s Wrong with Peter (2011 Santa Fe Film Festival Official
Release – Best of PlayGround 19, p. 3
Selection). He also acts, and can be seen this summer in Marin Shakespeare Company’s Cymbeline and
Richard III. He has an M.F.A. in Film Production from USC, a B.A. in Theatre from Williams College, and
currently teaches Film Editing at Academy of Art University.
ABOUT PLAYGROUND:
PlayGround, the Bay Area’s leading playwright incubator, provides unique development opportunities
for the Bay Area’s best new playwrights, including the monthly Monday Night PlayGround staged
reading series, PlayGround Festival of New Works, Best of PlayGround, full-length play commissions and
support for the production of new plays by local playwrights through the New Play Production Fund and,
PlayGround’s newest initiative, the PlayGround Film Festival. To date, PlayGround has supported nearly
200 local playwrights in the development and staging of over 700 original short plays and 55 new fulllength plays, including more than a dozen that have since premiered in the Bay Area. PlayGround alumni
have gone on to win local, national and international honors for their short and full-length work,
including recognition at the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Humana Festival, Sundance
Festival, Source Festival, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Aurora Theatre's Global Age Project,
Internationalists Playwriting Prize, and New York International Fringe Festival, among others. More
information at http://PlayGround-sf.org.
Release – Best of PlayGround 19, p. 4
FOR CALENDAR EDITORS:
WHAT: BEST OF PLAYGROUND 19, featuring the best short plays by the Bay Area’s best new
writers. Includes works by Rachel Bublitz, Genne Murphy, Erin Marie Panttaja, Kirk Shimano, Steven
Westdahl, and Davern Wright.
WHERE: Thick House , 1695 18th Street, San Francisco, CA
WHEN: May 7-24, 2015; Thu-Sat at 8pm / Sun at 7pm.
Thursday, May 7, 8pm (Preview, PWYC)
Friday, May 8, 8pm (Press Night)
Saturday, May 9, 8pm (Opening)
Sunday, May 10, 7pm (Playwrights Post-Show Talk)
Thursday, May 14, 8pm (Young Playwrights Project curtain-raiser, PWYC)
Friday, May 15, 8pm (Young Playwrights Project curtain-raiser)
Saturday, May 16, 8pm (Young Playwrights Project curtain-raiser, JAB Prize Night)
Sunday, May 17, 7pm (Young Playwrights Project curtain-raiser, Playwrights Post-Show Talk)
Thursday, May 21, 8pm (PWYC)
Friday, May 22, 8pm
Saturday, May 23, 8pm
Sunday, May 24, 7pm (Closing, Playwrights Post-Show Talk)
TICKETS: $25-$55. All-Festival Passes (including one priority seating ticket to each festival event,
including Best of PlayGround, Hella Love Oakland, The Empty Nesters, and more!) start at just $60. For
more information about Best of PlayGround 19 or to purchase tickets, call (415) 992-6677 or visit
http://playground-sf.org/bestof. For more information about the PlayGround Festival of New Works,
visit www.PlayGround-sf.org/festival.
--30-Media Contact: Jim Kleinmann, Artistic Director
PlayGround, 3286 Adeline St #8, Berkeley, CA 94703-2485