Announcing the 2016 San Francisco Olympians Festival

Come explore the kingdom of death, sleep, and dreams!

The San Francisco Olympians Festival has been gaining momentum since its first year, with twelve plays that were commissioned by the festival having gone on to full productions: 2010's Hermes (No Nude Men Productions, Dramaworks, Bread and Water Theatre), Juno En Victoria (Wily West Productions), and Salty Towers (Thunderbird Theater Company); 2011's Cassiopeia (Eat Street Players), Chronus (Bread and Water Theatre), You're Going To Bleed (DIVAFest), and Pleiades (No Nude Men Productions); 2013's Take Me Home: a One-woman Odyssey (Salon San Carlos, Lucy Tafler Presents, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival); 2014's Satyr Night Fever (San Francisco Theater Pub), Centaur or The Horse's Ass (Repurposed Theatre) and The Dryad of Suburbia (PianoFight); 2015's Cymopoleia or Wave Walker (Pear Avenue Theatre).

Many have also received additional readings on local and national stages, including: 2010's Juno En Victoria (Pacific Play Company); 2011's Joe Ryan (Impact Theatre), Pleiades (Atlantic Stage), Io (Eat Street Players), and Selene, or Someone Like The Moon (EXIT Theatre); 2012's Caenis and Poseidon(Playwrights' Center of San Francisco, City Lights Theater), and Twins (San Francisco State, Custom Made Theatre Company); 2013's Under The Gods' Golden Cleats (Dramatist Guild) and See Also All (Otherworld Theatre Company); 2014's Beauty Secrets (Cutting Ball Theatre Company); 2015's You'll Not Feel The Drowning and Oceanus (Custom Made Theatre Company). 2013's Walls Of Troy was a finalist for the Stanley Drama Award and the entire festival won "Playwriting Series Most Likely to Win a Gold Medal" from the SF Bay Guardian in 2013.

Additionally, EXIT Press has released a collection of five plays from Year One of the festival, Songs of Hestia, and ten plays from Year Two, Heavenly Bodies, both available for purchase on Amazon.com and at bookstores across the country. Find out more at www.sfolympians.com.

Since 2010 the festival has featured the work of 89 Writers, 65 Directors, 358 Actors, and 34 Fine Artists!

This year the festival will debut 22 new plays by 23 local writers, 9 of whom will be contributing written work to the festival for the first time! The plays range from shorts to one-acts to full-lengths, and each one explores a different underworld legend or god from Greek or Egyptian mythology.

The 2016 festival will play 12 nights, October 5-22, Wednesday through Saturday, at the EXIT Theatre in San Francisco (156 Eddy Street). Tickets are $10.00 at the door, and can be purchased starting at 7:30 the night of the show, or for $12 in advance at Brown Paper Tickets. All shows begin at 8 PM. Audience members who attend more than four nights get the fifth free.

All shows begin at 8 PM. Audience members who attend more than four nights get the fifth free.

This year's fine artists include: Christopher Bauman, Che Belcher, Molly Benson, Sam Bertken, Donald Bolin, Liz Conley, Ashlyn Grantham, Brett Grunig, Lacey Hill Hawkins, Hannah Laws, Emily C. Martin, Ashley Key Ramos, Cody A. Rishell, Rachel Vanderpool, Brian Yee

The art will be on display at the EXIT Theatre the entire month of October!

This year's lineup, all shows beginning at 8 PM:

October 5, 2016: The Door

DEMETER by Stuart Bousel, directed by Dale Albright

A Victorian romance of loss and recovery, several journeys intersect in a house full of secrets, perched on The Edge of the sea, waiting for the revelations of a long anticipated spring.

October 6, 2016: The Hall

DIONYSUS by Charles Lewis III, directed by Charles Lewis III

What's worse for an artist: thinking your muse will no longer inspire you, or knowing the spirit of death is breathing down your neck?

HERMES CTHONIS by Oren Stevens, directed by Emma Nicholls

A yearly ritual. Two girls descend a rocky path. But what is in the box that they carry? What is it that they follow into the dark? And why, each year, does only one return?

October 7, 2016: The Chamber

HECATE by Neil Higgins, directed by Adam Odsess-Rubin

When two girls discover an ancient goddess, they are willing to do anything to get her attention. Even commit murder.

HADES by Jason Mendez, directed by Adam Odsess-Rubin

There's no point in being the smartest person in the room, if you're the only person in the room. Can Hades find a connection? Or at least a good wi-fi hack?

October 8, 2016: The Window

PERSEPHONE by Kathryn Kruse, directed by Steven Westdahl

What's harder to fight than life or death? A good metaphor and this woman is snared in a doozy.

October 12, 2016: The Guardians

ACHERON by Patsy Fergusson, directed Katja Rivera

The river of pain is overflowing, and the world will soon come to an end. Is it time for panic? Or pizza?

STYX by Christine Keating, directed by Ellery Schaar

Why did May cross the evil river? To get to The Other Side, of course.

LETHE by Alan Olejniczak, directed by Ellery Schaar

Lethe: Drink from the stream of consciousness, the river of oblivion.

October 13, 2016: The Executioners

THE FURIES by Rebecca Longworth, directed by Michelle Talgarow

The underworld is full of the shrieking cries and tormented victims of the Furies -- vicious goddesses who relentlessly pursue wrongdoers in the name of divine retribution. When two anti-death penalty activists enter the afterlife, they wonder if it isn't time for a change to the everlasting criminal justice system.

October 14, 2016: The Servants

ASCALAPHUS by Elizabeth Flanagan, directed by Laylah Muran de Assereto

The truths will set you free.

CHARON by Bridgette Dutta Portman, directed by Laylah Muran de Assereto

A young woman convinced she is dead meets a morgue worker with no patience for the living. Can they help each other confront the ghosts of their pasts?

MACARIA by Marissa Skudlarek, directed by Laylah Muran de Assereto

After thousands of years, the princess of the Underworld has had enough of her so-called life in Hades. Time to learn what it's like up where they walk, up where they run, up where they stay all day in the sun.

October 15, 2016: The Princes

THANATOS by Barbara Jwanouskos & Julianne Jigour, directed by Christine Keating
Something is preventing Thanatos from carrying out his duty to send mortals to their death with a gentle, peaceful touch. But he has gained the power of vivid dreams and visions that seem to point him in the direction of the answers he seeks. With the help of his brother, Hypnos, god of slumber, Thanatos throws himself into these alternative worlds and past lives, in the hopes of restoring balance to death and those whose time has come.

MORPHEUS by Kirk Shimano, directed by Christine Keating

Phantasos has long been the second banana of shape-shifting dream-inhabiting demigods. Can his own dream of being something more than an ornamental rock ever come true?

HYPNOS by Alan Coyne, directed by Christine Keating

Last known to have been performed by the King's Men in 1613, The History of Cardenio is the most famous of William Shakespeare's lost plays. Hypnos is an excerpt from that play, seen for the first time in over 400 years.

October 19, 2016: The Midwife

ANUBIS by David Templeton, directed by Adam Palafox

When Anubis, the Egyptian Lord of the Dead, drunkenly crashes the annual camping trip of four middle-aged guys, will the result be our creaky band of brothers' best male bonding weekend ever? Or its last?

October 20, 2016: The Mother

ISIS by Jovelyn Richards, directed by Jovelyn Richards

You've likely heard of the idiom, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned". Well, here's another for you consider: "Only the spirits of the heavens can offer answers to a woman after her husband is brutally murdered in the hellish fires of southern racism!"

NEPTHYS by Veronica Tjioe, directed by Nicole Menez

This play is for those who live with a perennial cloud above their head. It is also good for sisters, klutzes, and people who still do laundry at their friend's house.

October 21, 2016: The Father

OSIRIS by Tonya Narvaez, directed by Charles Lewis III

Breaking News: Millionaire mogul murdered; Manhunt is on for missing manhood!

SET by Nirmala Nataraj, directed by Adam Odsess-Rubin

Tallulah Beltran is a scientist who has made a career out of studying murderers, rapists, and other societal "anomalies." But never has she confronted the true nature of evil...that is, until meeting a seductive psychopath who calls himself Set.

October 22, 2016: The Baby

RA by Jeanie Ngo, directed by Melanie Lindow

Solara's schizophrenia medication is blanketing her life with numbness, but who can she turn to when her therapist, Doc Sham, really lives up to his name? The voices inside her head might have some answers.