Playwrights Foundation Presents Reading of SIDE EFFECTS By Star Finch

Playwrights Foundation's second 2020 Rough Reading is Side Effects by Star Finch, a Playwrights Foundation Resident Playwright, that will have its world premiere at Campo Santo April 1-April 19, 2020.

The play asks us to consider where exactly privilege and hope intersect-and to what effect? Directed by Sean San Jose, playwright Star Finch's play travels back to 2009 in order to better interrogate the present as it relates to the American Dream, gentrification, and the marijuana industry. "Playwrights Foundation is excited to invest in the development of Side Effects before its world premiere at Campo Santo." says Jessica Bird Beza, new PF Executive Artistic Director. "This partnership gives deeper support to our Resident Playwright Star Finch on her dive into her timely exploration into the privilege that exists in gentrification of the marijuana industry in San Francisco."

Readings of Side Effects by Star Finch are on:

February 10, 7:30pm, Roble Hall, Stanford University, and

February 11, 7:30pm, Theatre of Yugen, San Francisco.

Side Effects by Star Finch- February 10 & 11

Directed by Sean San Jose

This play asks us to consider where exactly privilege

and hope intersect-and to what effect?

Feb.10, 7:30pm, Roble Hall, Stanford University,

Feb. 11, 7:30pm, Theatre of Yugen, SF

Side Effects by Star Finch

In playwright Star Finch's Side Effects we travel back to 2009 in order to better interrogate the present as it relates to the American Dream, gentrification, and the marijuana industry. The play follows two very different (weed smoking) households in San Francisco's Bernal Heights neighborhood. On one street we find a married couple struggling to start a family in their newly purchased home. On another street we're introduced to a mother and daughter in the process of rebuilding their relationship upon the daughter's return home from a marijuana-related prison sentence. This play asks us to consider where exactly do privilege and hope intersect-and to what effect?

Star Finch (playwright) is a native San Franciscan trying her best to hold ground amidst the erasure of gentrification. She's a member of Campo Santo Theater Company and a Resident Playwright at Playwrights Foundation. Her plays include H.O.M.E. [Hookers on Mars Eventually] and BONDAGE (Princess Grace Award semifinalist, Relentless Award honorable mention). She was the lead writer on the collaborative performance piece Babylon is Burning, a loose adaptation of Jeff Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop; and on Death Become Life: Banish Darkness, a collaboration with AXIS Dance, Ensemble Mik Nawooj, and Crowded Fire Theater. Finch has also contributed to various collaborative projects including TheaterFirst's PARTICIPANTS and Campo Santo's ETHOS DE MASQUERADE. She's held residencies in Crowded Fire's R&D LAB and AlterTheater's Alter Lab. She is a recipient of the San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Commission in Theater.

Sean San José (director) is co-founder of Campo Santo, the award-winning resident theater company of San Francisco's Intersection for the Arts. Program Director of Theatre for Intersection for the Arts, San José has helped create and curate a new program called the Hybrid Project, formed to bring together artists of all genres, merging differing and emerging styles of performance in order to find a new performance language. He has been awarded one of the Audrey Skirball-Kennis TIME Grant Awards to support the development of his new work. He has also been awarded a San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Commission, two residencies at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts from the Wattis Artist Residency, a Bay Area Critics' Circle Award, the DramaLogue Award, Backstage West, the Cable Car Award, and the Bay Guardian Goldie Artistic Achievement in Theatre Award. Productions he has conceived, created and produced have also garnered numerous awards in excellence, including; the Bay Area Reporter Best of the Season, Cable Car Award, DramaLogue and Bay Area Critics' Circle Award.

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