PlayGround Reveals Casting For 2024 Festival Premieres

Casting has been announced for PlayGround’s 28th annual Festival of New Works Premieres: Anne Yumi Kobori’s Apertures of Love in Times of War (May 11-12, 2024) and Jacob Marx Rice’s A Thousand Natural Shocks (May 18-19, 2024). These works, one historical and the other contemporary but both steeped in the fraught ideal of the “American Dream”, highlight the intersectional identities and experiences of PlayGround’s artists and tell stories that are at once highly specific and profoundly universal. Both plays were presented in last year’s Festival of New Works as staged readings and subsequently developed throughout the 2023-24 season. Each play will run for two in-person and simulcast online performances over consecutive weekends, performed live with full production support. Admission is free (donations gratefully accepted) with extended on-demand viewing for Festival Sponsors.

Apertures of Love in Times of War

by Anne Yumi Kobori, directed by Katja Rivera. Featuring Michael Barrett Austin (Marty), Justin Hernandez (Ed), Brian Herndon (Jean-Baptiste), Julie Kuwabara (Gabriella /Miyo), Sakura Nakahara (Aya), and James Aaron Oh (Takahashi).

Apertures of Love in Times of War follows Ed, a Mexican-American photographer turned war correspondent, and Aya, a Japanese-American writer. Their love affair spans a vast ocean of time and space. But they cannot escape the brutal reality of their forced separation during World War II, when Aya was imprisoned in the Japanese Internment Camps, and Ed risked his life to capture photographs of war-ravaged Europe. Over the course of a tumultuous affair, they unite in their crusade to report the truth about the war-torn world. A play that re-examines what it means to be an American through the lens of the country’s not-so-distant past.

Anne Yumi Kobori is a Japanese-American playwright, actor, producer, director, and teaching artist. As a director, she has worked with Utopia Theatre Project, EnActe Arts, Los Altos Youth Theatre, and SF Shakespeare Festival, where she spent 5 years as Education Program Manager. Her full-length plays Seeds, Every Day Alice, and her adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull have premiered with Utopia Theatre Project. Currently, Anne is a co-writer for Braided, a play exploring Native American liberation and Japanese American resilience, in development with Theatre of Yugen. BA Theatre Arts, summa cumlaude, Santa Clara University.

A Thousand Natural Shocks

by Jacob Marx Rice, directed by Tracy Ward. Featuring. Catherine Castellanos (Doctor), Zoe Chien (Jennifer), Rebecca Pingree (Molly), Jeunee Simon (Kennedy), and Maryssa Wanlass (Laurel).

A Thousand Natural Shocks follows Kennedy, who is doing okay! Her depression is under control, she’s got a stable job, and her wife adores her. But when the couple decides to make a baby, they must navigate the chaos of IVF, the inevitability of pain, and the Tik-Tok teen crashing on their couch. Taking its title from Hamlet’s famous monologue, the play takes us on a journey through the increasingly fraught trials and tribulations of modern love and life.

Jacob Marx Rice has written plays that have been produced and developed at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, The Finborough Theatre in London, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Flea Theater, The New Ohio, Atlantic Theatre Stage 2, and others. His play Chemistry has premiered in seven cities across three continents. Recent prizes include the Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award from The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, an Ensemble Studio Theater Sloan Commission, and the Faculty Award from the NYU/Tisch Department of Dramatic Writing. MFA: NYU.

Through these world premiere plays, PlayGround helps to elevate the Bay Area’s most important new voices for the stage, sharing diverse and inclusive stories that center communities too often excluded from the American Theatre. Past festival premieres have included Diane Sampson’s Bernie Madoff-inspired musical Sleeping Cutie (2014), Glickman Award winner Ruben Grijalva’s Anna Considers Mars (2019). and Genevieve Jessee’s The Rendering Cycle (2020). A Thousand Natural Shocks and Apertures of Love in Times of War continue this decade-long legacy.

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