PlayGround-LA Presents Season 12 BEST OF PLAYGROUND-LA

PlayGround-LA has announced the selected plays and playwrights for our twelfth annual year-ending ten-minute play festival: BEST OF PLAYGROUND(LA) '24!, featuring works by Michael P. Adams, Damian Alejandro Arteaga, Esther Banegas Gatica, Rachel Harner, Cara Sanchez, and Evelyn Wu-Coffey. For one night only, PlayGround-LA will celebrate these artists and their place within the next generation of great playwrights in Los Angeles and beyond.

Tickets can be reserved at https://playground-la.org/bestof for live performances at the Broadwater Second Stage and simulcast online, Monday, April 8th at 7pm PT and on-demand for one week. Admission is free (donations gratefully accepted and directly support the artists) but advance reservations are required.

PlayGround-LA's artistic leaders have selected these six ten-minute plays from more than 150 submissions and 36 plays that were staged as a part of PlayGround-LA's Monday Night PlayGround series. "Best of" plays are selected based on the plays' artistic excellence, overall dynamism, and the unique voice of the individual playwrights behind the work. These plays and their playwrights highlight the commitment to artistic innovation, storytelling, and the equitable process at the heart of the PlayGround community.

Since 1997, PlayGround has recognized hundreds of the most promising new writers through the annual Best of PlayGround, including Lauren Yee, Jonathan Spector, Geetha Reddy, Vincent Terrell Durham, and Diana Burbano, among others.

ABOUT THE PLAYS

Love Language of Origin

by Michael P. Adams

An adult spelling bee competition leads to an exploration of feelings between two

The Family with a Short Fuse

by Damian Alejandro Arteaga

Santa brings the Turner family together through dramatic, and time-sensitive, means.

DNA You and Me Becoming We Inc.

by Esther Banegas Gatica

An futuristic examination of ancestral lineage yields more questions than answers.

The Pig Formerly Known as Porcine Subject Two-Seventy-Nine

by Rachel Harner

Knowledge is power, especially in the hands of a vengeful, sentient pig.

Body, Soul, Heart

by Cara Sanchez

Two sisters reconnect in the wake of a family tragedy.

Guest Slippers

by Evelyn Wu-Coffey

That family that cleans together stays together, and grows together.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS

MICHAEL P. ADAMS (Love Language of Origin), he/him, is a playwright, actor, director, and producer. His plays have been produced in Los Angeles, Memphis, Albuquerque, Spokane, and Tucson, among others. Michael is a member of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights and part of the PlayGround-LA writers' pool. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Jose State University.

DAMIAN ALEJANDRO ARTEAGA (The Family with a Short Fuse), he/him, is an accomplished playwright, actor and director in Southern California. He recently graduated from Cal State Fullerton with his B.A in theater with an emphasis in Playwriting, and a minor in Chicana/o Studies. His plays have seen staged readings at CSUF's One Act Play Festival, including S.D.H.I.F.L and Izzy. He has also participated in The Larking House Playwright Intensive to put on a staged reading of The Hole. He hopes to inspire the next generation of playwrights and push the theater medium.

ESTHER BANEGAS GATICA (DNA You and Me Becoming We Inc.), she/her, is a Honduran bilingual playwright, actress, director, and translator. She's a graduate of Teatro Prometeo from Miami Dade College. She's obtained a BFA from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She's taught and performed with/at: Miami Hispanic International Theatre Festival, Syracuse Stage, the Gluck Foundation, and Fort Worth Fringe. Esther is a recent graduate from the University of California, Riverside with an MFA in writing for the performing arts. She is a Line Producer for Lime Arts productions and part of PlayGround-LA, as well as part of Black Voice News. Follow her work on Instagram @esteyg

RACHEL HARNER (The Pig Formerly Known as Porcine Subject Two-Seventy-Nine), she/her, is a playwright and screenwriter who hails from the rainy backwoods of Washington State. Her short plays and monologues have been produced in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles. She has several pilots and features in development across multiple genres and was recently hired to write her first rom-com. @rachelharner

CARA SANCHEZ (Body, Soul, Heart), she/her, is a recent graduate of Cal State Fullerton, where she studied theatre and film. In addition to Body, Soul, Heart, The Beauty Who Created The Beast and Witches, have also been produced by PlayGround-LA. Other recent projects include a workshop reading of her full-length play, The Dybbuk: A Reimagining with The Larking House Theatre, and her murder mystery one-act, Stage Fright, produced at the CSUF Advanced Directing showcase. Her other works, Catching Violets and Finding Faith have been performed at CSUF. She's received a certificate of exceptional writing from the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.

EVELYN WU-COFFEY (Guest Slippers), they/she, is a playwright, actor, musician, and music educator based primarily in Los Angeles. As a playwright, they have had their work produced by HOOLIGAN Theatre Company and Shakespeare Company at UCLA, participating in the latter's inaugural New Works Cohort (2020-2021). EDUCATION: UCLA - B.M. in Bassoon Performance. Instagram: @evelynhueienwucoffey

ABOUT PLAYGROUND

Founded in 1994 by Jim Kleinmann, Brighde Mullins and Denise Shama, PlayGround has grown into a leading national playwright incubator and theatre community hub, providing unique development opportunities for the Bay Area's, Los Angeles', 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 350 early career playwrights, developing and staging more than 1,500 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 60 of these writers through its Commissioning Initiative and, through the innovative New Play Production Fund, has directly facilitated the premiere of 36 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 Steinberg Awards, Glickman Awards (including 6 of the last 10), O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and New York International Fringe Festival, 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. For more information, visit http://playground-la.org.

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