Magic Theatre Launches 2024 Performance Passes, Including 4 World Premiere Plays

The Magic Theatre's 2024 Performance Passes are now available for purchase. The programming for the calendar year 2024 will include the World Premiere plays Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad by Ashley Smiley (February 28 – March 17, 2024), Iizuka Repertory: Garuda’s Wing by Naiomi Iizuka (June 5 – 23, 2024), and Richard II translated by Naomi Iizuka (August 22 – September 28, 2024).  These World Premieres plays continue the Magic Theatre’s legacy of premiering bold, new plays and highlight resident companies Campo Santo and Play On! Shakespeare as co-producers.  Additionally, the Magic Theatre and the Presidio Theater are partnering to collaborate on Jerry Garcia in the Lower Mission by Richard Montoya. This brand new play will be produced at the gorgeous Presidio Theater. These world premiere productions are part of the new age at the Magic Theatre, developing plays from conception to premiere production, continuing our breakout year in 2023 with the premieres by Luis Alfaro, Marc Anthony Thompson and Star Finch leading the way in a year full of projects that are still going strong through December! The 2024 Performance Year and Performance Pass will have even more premieres, projects, and collaborations- making this Pass an even better deal than before- accessible and affordable.

2024 will also continue to bring new events from the Magic Theatre’s Resident Companies, Resident Artists and Community Collaborators, including:

• Residents Program

The Magic Theatre is now home to more Resident Artists and Companies of Color than any other performance company in the Bay Area, with 8 unique Companies in Residence: (Resident Home Company Campo Santo, historic Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, the legendary Saint John Coltrane Church, Play On Shakespeare, TigerBear Productions, Bay Area Theatre Cypher, BACCE, Ellen Sebastian Chang / Sunhui Chang) and more than a ten Resident Artists (Playwright In Residence Star Finch, Resident Curator Juan Amador, Russell Champa, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Tanya Orellana, Joan Osato, Lauren Quan, Christopher Sauceda, Ashley Smiley, Brittany White.)

• New Performances Program

The Magic Theatre features theatrical storytelling in theatre and playwriting of course- but also expands that through intentional theatrical storytelling in other forms from San Francisco Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin to the Mission district’s dance music company Rising Rhythms and so much more: service, DJs, film, and more.

• Collaboration Program

We partner in organic ways with local sister organizations as currently with Crowded Fire Theater and next year with a new Star Finch play, and earlier with San Francisco Girls Chorus, and upcoming this year with some great local groups who fill the space with their own art and audiences, helping make this a generative space for all.

• Play Development Reading Series

We continue our Martha Heasley Cox Reading Series with our Campo Santo inspired Open Process- sharing projects on their development path to premiere with the lead artists, designers, and the communities, all of the premieres will feature special Open Process events with invites to these intimate gatherings for Performance Pass holders.

The other Resident Company projects will include more new work from Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, led by Margo Hall, with her vision to feature Black Women’s voices in new plays; TigerBear Productions continues their Indigenous Magic series and a new work Ghost Rave; Ellen Sebastian Chang/ Sunhui Chang development of the film merge play The Boiling; and of course the big co-productions with resident companies Campo Santo and Play On! Shakespeare.

Lead Director Sean San José’s first full year of programming in this new age boasted sold out and extended World Premiere plays of Luis Alfaro’s The Travelers, Marc Anthony Thompson’s The Ni¿¿er Lovers, and Star Finch’s Josephine’s Feast.  Resident company Lorraine Hansberry Theatre staged two productions in 2023 the world premier of In the Evening by the Moonlight by Traci Tolmaire and the upcoming Soulful Christmas. The Magic Theatre hosted a special event with Tessa Thompson and father Marc Anthony Thompson as well as conversations with Margo Hall, Star Finch and Ellen Sebastian Chang, and Luis Alfaro, sustaining our desire to connect audiences with the playwrights and providing an accessibility and approachability that doesn’t compare.  Post show parties and special events continue to abound in the new year. 2024 Programming year ups the energy and excitement of 2023. Performance Passes give priority and exclusive access to workshops, readings, talkbacks and special events, plus discounts to resident and collaborative programs. Don’t miss the chance to get first dibs on everything Magic with a 2024 Performance Pass, available at the special price of $150 for a limited time!

The Magic Theatre’s 2024 Performance Pass includes a ticket to all three Magic-produced World Premiere plays AND entry to the Magic and the Presidio Theatre’s collaborative production of Richard Montoya’s Jerry Garcia in the Lower Mission at the newly renovated Presidio Theater.

2024 Performance Passes are on sale at  $150 through November 30th- this special offer gives you this affordable price through the end of November- and are available October 2nd at www.magictheatre.org.  Single  tickets will be valued individually at $75 per ticket, so the price of $150 for 4 performances is a true bargain.  Our Performance Pass is about offering the most exciting array of artists and performances, while making it accessible and welcoming to all, true to our mission.  At the same time, all our actions and initiatives are also focused on creating a new structure in the theatre world by redefining non-resonant structures and strictures and allows for a reinvention and reinvigoration for audiences and artists. 

We are building the year around these new plays and exponentially exploding the offerings by filling the year with Residency Productions, Plays, Performances, and Programs.  The rest of the offerings will include: Residency Program: an original world premiere play from the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre; Special Events: the 2nd annual Special event curated and hosted by Board Member (and newly minted Emmy Award Winner) Colman Domingo; Collaboration Program: new production from Crowded Fire Theater; Music Program: Resident Curator DJ Wonway Posibul Jazz Nites; weekly Sunday Services from the legendary Saint John Coltrane Church; and more and more and more.

the Magic Theatre-produced 2024 World Premieres are:

Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad

By Ashley Smiley 

Directed by Raelle Myrick-Hoges

February 28-March 17, 2024

A Gerbode Foundation Grant Winner and 2023 Theatre Bay Area Rella Lossy Fund winning play features the fantastic ensemble of performers including: Juan Amador, Tanika Baptiste, Jamella Cross, Lauren Garcia, Guillermo Yiyo Ornelas, Jessica Recinos.  This multi-media new play features video creations from Joan Osato, new murals by Cece Carpio, and original music and score by Christopher Sauceda, with choreography by Jessica Recinos who leads the dance music group Rising Rhythms.

DIRTY WHITE TESLAS MAKE ME SAD is a new performance work written by A.M. (Ashley) Smiley about the regentrification of San Francisco and the displacement of Black folks from their neighborhoods. This play is a testimonial about people and their struggles with hope. The story unfolds over a few days in the life of Sloosh, our protagonist. We follow Sloosh - a young Queer AfroLatina from Bayview Hunters Point caught up in a transcendental rut. This project is one of the recipients of the prestigious Gerbode Foundation Theatre Commission Award. Smiley is a do it all theatre maker and as the Program Director for Bay View Opera House has revitalized their audiences and programming the past few years.

IIZUKA REPERTORY

A unique repertory co-production between the Magic Theatre and Play On! Shakespeare will feature two of playwright Naomi Iizuka’s works: Garuda’s Wing and Richard II, both featuring the same the same company of actors for both plays that includes: Juan Amador, Daniel Duque-Estrada, Kina Kantor, Nora el Samahy, Jeuneé Simon, Mia Tagano.

Garuda’s Wing

By Naomi Iizuka

Directed by Margo Hall

June 5 - June 23, 2024
 

This play marks the return of the great Naomi Iizuka- a previously long time writer with Campo Santo, and since has been produced all over the country from NYC’s Public Theatre to the Humana Festival to Berkeley Repertory.  Iizuka is now a force in the film and television industry, as a writer on shows from Tokyo Vice from Michael Mann to The Sympathizer from director Park Chan-wook from Viet Thanh Nguyen.  She is now back in the Bay with a groundbreaking collaboration and ambitious new Repertory Project pairing a new play with a new translation of a Shakespeare play.

The new play is Garuda’s Wing- a ghost play of interpersonal intimacy and international investigation.  This intergenerational, global spellbinder is an exploration shrouded in mystery, entangled in the effects of colonization. Spanning continents and time, the play begins in Borneo.  It takes us to Jakarta.  And in the midst, we travel through generations, histories, and bloodlines.  The play involves a search, unearthing, and murder on the personal familial level as well as connecting to the large global colonial plane.  Iizuka possesses the ability to create intimate human portraits, while simultaneously evoking the layers of revolution and colonial effects - a stunning and magnetic feat. 

and the second play in the Repertory Project:

Richard II

translated by Naomi Iizuka

Directed by Doctora Karina Gutierrez

August 22 - September 8, 2024

Richard II is Shakespeare’s examination of the destructive powers of privilege. In the second half of the Iizuka Repertory - the company will perform a new, lean production of Iizuka’s Play On! version of Richard II. Not modernized, just new. This will be the first Shakespeare produced by the Magic Theatre in decades.

Play On! Shakespeare has created an entire library of new versions of the entire Shakespeare canon with some of the greatest living writers, translated line by line. The Magic Theatre is matching these translations with a new version embodying it entirely with a POC cast- filled with the folx typically outside of Shakespeare text and productions. This will feature POC, Women, and Queer folx throughout and rightfully centered, embodying the original story and context- no adaptation- created for now!

And an additional production produced by and performed at The Presidio Theatre in collaboration with the Magic Theatre:

Jerry Garcia in the Lower Mission

by Richard Montoya

Directed by the author with Sean San José

July 11 - July 21, 2024

This new play with live music includes the one of a kind Richard Montoya in the show, along with Lisa Hori-Garcia, Aidaa Peerzada, Brian Rivera, Sharon Shao, with the live band J. Raoul Brody, Joshua Icban, and Rachel Lastimosa.

A brand new music theatre piece from Richard Montoya of the iconic satire group Culture Clash. Richard Montoya continues his years-long collaboration with new performances group Campo Santo, creating this new performance piece especially for the Magic Theatre and Presidio Theatre. This is an original creation uncovering the roots of Jerry Garcia in the Mission.  A Tribute to the formative years in our own City of an American Icon and local legend- Jerry Garcia.  A special piece of storytelling and live music, San Francisco history, Grateful Dead Lore wrapped into an intimate theatre concert. The performance will be surrounded by video in the former movie theatre space of the beautifully refurbished Presidio Theatre!  This theatrical exploration goes to the earliest roots (1947-48) of this hero, Jerry Garcia. We go on a time trip journey into Garcia's early life as it plays out in our City, in the Mission District of yore. Before the Dead, we reach back to Jerry, an imaginative and sensitive child who witnesses the drowning of his Spanish father and must now navigate the length of Mission Street and his memory of a strong Irish Mother, owner of a Merchant Marine and Navy saloon, right in the heart of the Lower Mission.  

About the Magic Theatre

Since the company’s founding in 1967 by visionary John Lion, the Magic Theatre has identified and cultivated writers on the cutting edge of American theatre, serving as a vital center for the creation and performance of new American plays. Sam Shepard developed and premiered his Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child, True West, and Fool for Love during his decade-long Magic residency (1974-84), forever altering the shape of American drama. 

The Magic Theatre has entered a new Golden Age with the appointment of Sean San José as the new Artistic Director in June, 2022.  With this new leadership Magic is dedicated to making the Magic Theatre a home to more people by rightfully centering People of Color throughout the organization. The Magic Theatre, while continuing to premiere bold and new plays as it has done for 56 years, has expanded its vision and programming with these new Programs: new Residency Program- which includes Home Resident Company Campo Santo and the historic Lorraine Hansberry Theatre (Artistic Director Margo Hall), the legendary Saint John Coltrane Church, along with Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience (Co-Artistic Directors Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe and Rotimi Agbabiaka), Ellen Sebastian Chang/ Sunhui Chang and the new residents from this year: TigerBear Productions, Play On! Shakespeare and Bay Area Theatre Cypher; new Performances Program, telling theatrical stories in dance, poetry, and music led by San Francisco Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin; and Resident Artists, which is highlighted by 

Playwright In Residence Star Finch and Resident Curator Juan Amador, Resident Producer Jerome Gentes, and designers Russell Champa, Tanya Orellana, Joan Osato, Christopher Sauceda, and Brittany White, Hybrid Program by Ashley Smiley.  In addition to the new Leadership Team and Staff (Daniel Duque-Estrada, Michael Ferrell, Brechin Flournoy, Stephanie Holmes, Sara Huddleston, Kevin Nelson, Sean San José, Christopher Sauceda, Liam Vincent), more than doubled Board of Trustees, the Magic Theatre has launched its new branding by an otherwise co., and has energetically, artistically, and aesthetically shifted the whole space in ethos and activation, a redesign of the spaces (lobby, cathedral, and theatres, including multiple new wall sized murals by local artists Mister Bouncer (Miguel Perez) from the Trust Your Struggle collective, Adrian Arias, Cece Carpio, and a space filled with legendary Black art from the Saint John Coltrane Church by Emory Douglas, Mark Roman, and Deacon Mark Doox.  The space is open year round now for engagement and entertainment, arts and activation from the plays to the people- the Magic Theatre is Home for bringing the City inside.

The 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, 3rdFloor, San Francisco, CA 94123). For more information, visit magictheatre.org or call the box office at (415) 441-8822. The performance schedule is Wednesday through Saturday at 8:00pm and Sundays at 4:00pm.

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