Magic Theatre Announces Martha Heasley Cox Virgin Play Festival

Magic Theatre (Loretta Greco, Artistic Director and Jaimie Mayer, Managing Director) has announced dates for 2018's Martha Heasley Cox Virgin Play Festival, which will take place December 9 - 14, 2018. The public play readings kick off on Sunday, December 9 at 4:00 p.m. with THE FOUR CORNERS, a new play by Ashlin Halfnight (Magic Theatre's THE RESTING PLACE), followed by Ricardo Pérez González's DON'T EAT THE MANGOS at 7:00 pm.

The Festival will resume on Tuesday, December 11 at 7:00 p.m. with Anna Moench's MAN OF GOD, followed by Chisa Hutchinson's MAMA'S GONNA BUY YOU on Wednesday, December 12 at 8:00 p.m. The Festival continues on Thursday, December 13 at 8:00 p.m. with MJ Kaufman's EAT AND YOU BELONG TO US, before concluding on Friday, December 14 at 8:00 p.m. with Mfoniso Udofia's ADIA AND CLORA SNATCH JOY.

"We are thrilled to welcome seven writers that represent a rich diversity of voices and theatrical imaginations to the Magic Family through our Virgin Play Festival," said Sonia Fernandez, Magic Theatre's Associate Artistic Director and Festival Producer. "The Virgin Play Festival brings emerging and mid-career playwrights together, giving each writer the time and space to create, experiment, and hear their work out loud. It is an exciting opportunity for us to empower our playwrights, to get to know new writers, and to deepen our relationship with our past favorites. For our audiences, we offer the special opportunity to be in the room with a play when it is still raw and in-process. It's our pleasure to invite Magic Family patrons to join us for a fabulous theatre binge over six reading-filled days."

THE FOUR CORNERS

By Ashlin Halfnight

Directed by Jessica Holt
Sunday, December 9, 2018
4:00 p.m.

In an unnamed, upstate New-England town amid the opioid epidemic, four fair-weather friends are drawn together by a plan to rob a pharmacy. As loyalties are tested, friendships exploded, and best-laid plans undone, Ashlin Halfnight (writer of audience favorite THE RESTING PLACE) delivers an unflinching, surprisingly funny, deeply human, and unexpectedly classic drama about a rural America that is too often ignored

DON'T EAT THE MANGOS
By Ricardo Pérez González

Directed by Loretta Greco

Sunday, December 9, 2018
7:00 p.m.

With families and lives of their own, sisters Ismelda, Yinoelle, and Wicha are caring for their ailing Mami and Papi just outside of San Juan, Puerto Rico. In this hilarious and biting drama, playwright Ricardo Pérez González explores the bonds of familial obligation and asks: how do we carry the trauma our parents pass down?

MAN OF GOD
By Anna Moench

Directed by Mina Morita

Tuesday, December 11, 2018
7:00 p.m.

A hidden discovery in a hotel bathroom changes the lives of four Korean-American Christian girls on a mission trip to Thailand. Their communal rage and disillusionment fuel revenge fantasies amidst the sex-tourism mecca of Bangkok. Man of God is a funny feminist thriller about that moment when girls realize the male gaze has been watching all along-and decide they are going to do something about it.

MAMA'S GONNA BUY YOU

By Chisa Hutchinson

Directed by Victor Malana Maog
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
8:00 p.m.

When the politically-incorrect Carol offers pregnant Danielle a job as her live-in chauffeur, Danielle thinks she's found a convenient-if patronizing-solution to her financial worries. Mama's Gonna Buy You is a grimly funny psychological thriller that skewers the disturbing agendas beneath well-meaning white people's 'good intentions'.

EAT AND YOU BELONG TO US

By MJ Kaufman

Directed by M. Graham Smith
Thursday, December 13, 2018
8:00 p.m.

Grands returns from their gender-affirmative surgery speaking French and talking of fires. Their genderqueer grandchild, Jaime-obsessed with Joan of Arc-mysteriously vanishes the same week. On the battlefields of medieval France and the family dinner table, EAT AND YOU BELONG TO US explores contemporary queerness, gender identity, and how we become who we are meant to be. In this fantastical comedy, the family must learn what they're willing to die for, and more importantly, what they're willing to live for.

ADIA AND CLORA SNATCH JOY

By Mfoniso Udofia

Directed by Loretta Greco
Friday, December 14, 2018

8:00 p.m.

In the wake of her mother's death, Adiaha Ufot travels to Wilmington, NC, in search of the man who knew her mother last. Instead of Azell, Adiaha finds Clora-and a house that looks strangely familiar. Together, Adiaha and Clora reconcile their pasts and imagine new ways forward. This is the newest play in the Ufot family cycle, two parts of which will be featured at Magic (IN OLD AGE) and A.C.T (HER PORTMANTEAU) this spring.

Following the Virgin Play Series, Magic Theatre's 2018-2019 Season continues with the World Premiere of Mfoniso Udofia's In Old Age (March 22 - April 21, 2019 and a revival of Luis Alfaro's critically acclaimed Oedipus el Rey (May 29 - June 23, 2019) which premiered at Magic Theatre nearly ten years ago. Subscriptions are available at are available online at MagicTheatre.org or by calling Magic Theatre at (415) 441-8822.

Magic Theatre is located in the Marina District of San Francisco, at the historic Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (Fort Mason, 2 Marina Blvd., Building D, 3rd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94123).

Priority seating is reserved for patrons and subscribers. Tickets for the Martha Heasley Cox Virgin Play Festival are free and available to the public by emailing Magic Theatre's Box Office boxoffice@magictheatre.org or calling (415) 441-8822. For more information, visit MagicTheatre.org.

About Magic Theatre

Now celebrating its 52nd year of continuous operation, Magic is dedicated to creative risk: we cultivate bold new plays and playwrights to produce incendiary and ideologically robust stories that ask substantive questions about our place in humanity. Magic provides a nurturing yet rigorous artistic home where innovative writers can create a body of work. We believe that developing an evolved artistic vocabulary with the playwright at our side greatly improves a playwright's chances to thrive. By adding voices to the canon, we ensure the vibrancy of the American theatre.

Magic's impact has resonated throughout the country and beyond since its founding by John Lion in 1967; Lion brought in Sam Shepard and Michael McClure as playwrights-in-residence, establishing Magic as a space for the communion of playwright and audience. From these early plays to the World Premieres of Luis Alfaro's Oedipus el Rey and Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge and Hir, Magic continues to produce groundbreaking new work.

Since Artistic Director Loretta Greco assumed leadership of Magic in 2008, the theatre has produced twenty world premieres, seventeen of which have enjoyed life beyond the Magic stage. Magic plays have received numerous awards including the Pulitzer Prize, ten Obie Awards, the Kennedy Center Award, Bay Area Critics' Circle Awards, and the NAACP Image Award.

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