PlayGround Marks Opening of 25th Season with Inaugural THE 24 HOUR PLAYS: BAY AREA

PlayGround, the Bay Areas' and Los Angeles' leading playwright incubator, marks the opening of its twenty-fifth season with a special one-night celebration and performance launching a bold new partnership.

On Monday, September 17, in Berkeley Rep's Roda Theatre the legendary (Broadway & Off Broadway) NYC-based The 24 Hour Plays and PlayGround present the first "The 24 Hour Plays: Bay Area," fully produced and performed (i.e., off-book) performances of six original ten-minute plays by acclaimed PlayGround alumni playwrights, written and developed over just twenty-four hours, and staged by an all-star group of leading local directors and actors cast.

For this special one-night performance, PlayGround and The 24 Hour Plays have drawn from some of PlayGround's and the Bay Area's most distinguished alumni playwrights of the past twenty-five years.The six confirmed Playwrights and artists at the core of the celebration include Playwrights Victoria Chong Der (Graced, The Potrero Nuevo Project), Ruben Grijalva (Value Over Replacement), Garret Jon Groenveld (The Empty Nesters), Aaron Loeb (Ideation), Katie May (Abominable), and Marisela Treviño Orta (The River Bride).The evening's program includes special musical guest, The Kilbanes (Weightless) and will be co-chaired by producers/actors John Walker (Pixar, The Incredibles 2) and Pamela Gaye Walker (The Empty Nesters).

Directors joining in are San Francisco Playhouse Producing Director Susi Damilano, Britney Frazier, PlayGround Artistic Director Jim Kleinmann, Jeffrey Lo, Aurora Theatre Company Artistic Director Tom Ross, and Becca Wolff.

The cast (as of 8/27/18, cast to grow) features actors Rinabeth Apostol*, Julia Brothers*, David Cramer*, Tristan Cunningham*, Douglas B. Giorgis*, Cindy Goldfield*, Gwen Loeb*, Lisa Morse*, Joseph Patrick O'Malley*, Stephanie Prentice*, Cathleen Riddley*, JW Walker*, Pamela Gaye Walker*, Reggie D. White*, and Aaron Wilton*. (AEA)

PlayGround has built a reputation for its award-winning ten-minute play development program, Monday Night PlayGround, involving highly physicalized script-in-hand staged readings of short plays written in just four-and-a-half days. For The 24 Hour Plays: Bay Area, PlayGround offers a unique opportunity to see fully-produced performances by PlayGround veterans and special guests, all created in just twenty-four hours! Performance-only tickets are $50 ($25 for students), and tickets including the performance and a VIP pre-show reception are $100-$500. All proceeds will benefit PlayGround's soon-to-be-announced 25th season and ongoing playwright incubator programs. For tickets and more information, visit http://playground-sf.org/benefit.

"We're delighted to be making the first visit in our 23-year history to the Bay Area," said Mark Armstrong, Executive Director for The 24 Hour Plays, "and to be partnering with an organization that's as passionately devoted to new work and new voices as we are. We're looking forward to celebrating and supporting PlayGround on September 17 and in the years to come." PlayGround Artistic Director Jim Kleinmann added, "We've long admired the work of The 24 Hour Plays and the occasion of our 25th season celebration seemed a particularly opportune time to launch this bold new partnership."

The 24 Hour Plays brings together extraordinary artists to create time-limited theater around the world. In addition to The 24 Hour Plays on Broadway and The 24 Hour Musicals, regular events take place in London, Los Angeles, Dublin, Germany, Minneapolis, Athens, Helsinki, Mexico City and Florence. The 24 Hour Plays collaborates with organizations including The Old Vic Theatre, Dublin Youth Theatre, Urban Arts Partnership, Cornerstone Theater Company, The Orchard Project, Bennington College, Hennepin Theatre Trust, The University of Minnesota-Duluth and The Del Sole Foundation, and has raised millions of dollars for charities.

The 24 Hour Plays (Mark Armstrong, Executive Director) past participants with The 24 Hour Plays have included Jennifer Aniston, Elizabeth Banks, Leslie Bibb, Jason Biggs, Wayne Brady, Laverne Cox, Billy Crudup, David Cross, Alan Cumming, Hugh Dancy, Rosario Dawson, Daveed Diggs, Peter Dinklage, Rachel Dratch, Jesse Eisenberg, Gloria Estefan, Edie Falco, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, America Ferrera, Michael Ealy, Jenna Elfman, Megan Fox, Greta Gerwig, Carla Gugino, Josh Hartnett, Oscar Isaac, Cheyenne Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, John Krasinski, Zachary Levi, Anthony Mackie, James McAvoy, Aasif Mandvi, Julianna Margulies, Eva Mendes, Adrienne Moore, Julianne Moore, Tracy Morgan, Javier Muñoz, Cynthia Nixon, Lynn Nottage, Maulik Pancholy, Anna Paquin, Amanda Peet, Jay Pharoah, Rosie Perez, Phylicia Rashad, Retta, Chris Rock, Sam Rockwell, Emmy Rossum, Liev Schreiber, Amanda Seyfried, Wallace Shawn, Gabourey Sidibe, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Sarah Silverman, Jordin Sparks, Amber Tamblyn, Tracie Thoms, Maura Tierney, Marisa Tomei, Nia Vardalos, Naomi Watts, Michael Kenneth Williams, Vanessa Williams and many more! In addition to The 24 Hour Plays and The 24 Hour Musicals on Broadway, regular events take place in London, Los Angeles, Dublin, Minneapolis, Germany, Athens, Finland, Mexico City and Florence. Through collaborations with organizations including Dublin Youth Theatre, Roundabout Theatre Company, The Lillys, Urban Arts Partnership, The Orchard Project, Bennington College, Hennepin Theatre Trust, The University of Minnesota-Duluth, Cornerstone Theater Company, and The Del Sole Foundation, The 24 Hour Plays have raised millions of dollars for charities. For more information on The 24 Hour Plays, visit www.24hourplays.com.

PlayGround, the Bay Area's leading playwright incubator, provides unique development opportunities for the Bay Area's best new playwrights, including the monthly Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series, annual PlayGround Festival, full-length play commissions and support for the production of new plays by local playwrights through the New Play Production Fund, among others. Founded at San Francisco State University in 1994 by Jim Kleinmann (Artistic Director), Brighde Mullins, and Denise Shama, PlayGround has supported more than 200 local playwrights in the development and staging of 850 original short plays and 75 new full-length plays over the past two decades, including 27 that have since premiered in the Bay Area. PlayGround alumni - including some of the most distinguished new writers coming out of the Bay Area, such as Aaron Loeb, Lauren Yee, Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, Geetha Reddy, among others - have gone on to win local, national, and international honors for their short and full-length work, including recognition at the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, Humana Festival, Sundance Festival, The Lark, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and New York International Fringe Festival, among others. In 2017, PlayGround completed renovations on its San Francisco home, Potrero Stage: PlayGround Center for New Plays, a 99-seat state-of-the-art performance venue and home to some of the Bay Area's leading new play developers and producers, including PlayGround, Crowded Fire, Golden Thread, and Playwrights Foundation, among others. For more information on PlayGround and Potrero Stage, visit http://playground-sf.org.

For more information or to purchase tickets to the inaugural The 24 Hour Plays: Bay Area, visit http://playground-sf.org/benefit.

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