Bay Area Artists Produce Monthly Virtual New Works Festival, OUR DIGITAL STORIES

While all Bay Area theatres are currently dark as we near almost half a year in quarantine, the new ensemble of artists at Our Digital Stories have begun work on an updated form of theatre: brand new works written specifically for a virtual format, that act as a hybrid between a play and a short film.

Led by Casting Director of the Tony Award-Winning TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Jeffrey Lo, and popular Bay Area artist and Twitch sensation, Tasi Alabastro, following their wildly popular collaboration on The Birthday Bench Project, this monthly production of new-short plays, featuring musical guests and fundraising for local charities, premieres on August 8.

"Although this new format of storytelling was not going to replace what we loved about live theatre or film and television," says Lo, "this format of storytelling provided us an opportunity to create stories that felt surprisingly intimate in a way that feels entirely real and entirely of the moment."

Featured plays for August 8th's premiere episode include: A Hero of Our Time by Cleavon Smith (directed by Giovanni Ortega), River's Message by Conrad Panganiban (directed by Julianna Garber), and Reunion by Isabella Waldron (directed by Emily Jackson). Performers include Bill King, Roman Gonzalez, Sara Luna, Davied Morales, Sophia Sherman, Keith Stevenson, and Kendall Young. This episode will feature a musical performance from Marcel and the Vampires, featuring Dem One.

The first episode of Our Digital Stories live-streams on Saturday, August 8 at 7 PM at www.ourdigitalstories.org/latest-episode. This will be no admission charged for this event, but viewers are encouraged to donate to this episode's partner organization, Silicon Valley De-Bug, a community organizing, advocacy, and a multimedia storytelling organization that has been a platform for Silicon Valley's diverse communities to impact the political, cultural, and social landscape of the region, while also becoming a nationally recognized model for community-based justice work.

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