Playwrights Foundation's Annual Winter Festival FLASHPLAYS! to Play Three Performances Only This Month

Playwrights Foundation announces FlashPlays!, its 8th annual winter festival on December 16 and 17 (Sat.& Sun.), featuring an evening of newly penned micro plays that together evoke a complex mosaic of San Francisco with its shimmering beauty, fascinating legacy, and the current challenges - written by a cadre of the Bay Area's finest playwrights. FlashPlays! features 40+ Playwrights, 60+ Plays, and 80+ Minutes of Fast and Furious Fun! Including playwrights Chris Chen, Victoria Chong Der, Anthony Clarvoe, Roy Conboy, Roberta D'Alois, Prince Gomolvilas, Dipika Guha, Joan Holden, Patricia Milton, Enrique Muñoz Ramirez, Tanya Shaffer, Octavio Solis, Jonathan Spector, Michael Gene Sullivan and so many more!

Playwrights Foundation Artistic Director Amy Mueller notes, "The idea of FlashPlays! is to create a theatrical composite of our beloved city in short flashes of insight, recognition, revelation, anger, despair, and ebullience that reflect us here in this moment, against the backdrop of of San Francisco's inspirational legacy as a place of hope, celebration and sanctuary."

For two nights only FlashPlays! Saturday, December 16 at 8 PM and Sunday, December 17, 2017 at 2PM and 5PM presented at the Dennis Gallagher Arts Pavilion, 66 Page Street in San Francisco. A community benefit for Playwrights Foundation, tickets range from $20 advance general admission to the $36 VIP package (reserved best seat and festive drink of your choice). Limited tables of four are available for $150 each and include a drink for each guest. General admission tickets will be $25 at the door. We are grateful to our Event Community Sponsor, the French American International School.

Among the 60+, 60-second plays in this year's crop are gems that celebrate our wildly diverse voices, who poignantly and theatrically speak about the current challenges that face us. An evening, replete with cocktails and mocktails, that will be sure to be both entertaining and engaging.

FlashPlays! features 40+ local playwrights, 7 of whom are Resident Playwrights (or RP alumni)* at Playwrights Foundation: E.H. Benedict • Jon Bernson* • Chis Chen* • Victoria Chong Der* • Anthony Clarvoe • Roy Conboy • Roberta D'Alois • Barry Eitel • Star Finch • Britney Frazier • Elizabeth Gjelten • Michaela Goldhaber • Prince Gomolvilas • Garret Jon Groenveld* • Dipika Guha* • Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko • Andrea Hart • Joan Holden • Susan Jackson • Nicole Jost • Barbara Jwanouskos • Lynne Kaufman • Mathew Keuter • Carol Lashof • Jeffrey Lo • Alison Luterman • Karen Macklin • Patricia Milton • Enrique Muñoz Ramirez • Evelyn Jean Pine • Madeline Puccioni • Kate Robards • Josh Senyak • Tanya Shaffer* • Octavio Solis* • Jonathan Spector* • Michael Gene Sullivan* • Aimee Suzara • Tom Swift • Brian Thorstenson • Aaron Wilton • Ignacio Zulueta

*PF Resident Playwright and/or alumni

Directors include: Kieran Beccia • Allie Moss • Nicole Meñez • Michileen Marie Oberst • Jessica Bird • Leyla Modirzadeh • Tierra Allen • Gaby Schneider • Ashley Smiley

ABOUT THE FLASHPLAYS! FESTIVAL

The FlashPlays! Festival is a community benefit for Playwrights Foundation, and will bring our community together creatively to think about our city and our world. This format builds on the idea of "Flash Fiction", featuring newly penned short plays, none longer than 60 seconds, each one telling a complete and riveting story in a quick flash - a moment. The accumulation of these moments together create a composite picture - one that is meaningful and relevant.

Playwrights are selected by invitation and encouraged to write about contemporary themes such as "Many Voices of the Other," "Glitter City/Gritty City," "Safe Harbor & Safe Havens: Sanctuary City," and "Tiny Pockets of Positivity and Joy"; as these themes emerge from the submissions, the plays are organically curated into clusters that reflect connected themes. Teams of directors and actors work to stage each cluster of plays. And the result: 80+ fully mounted plays of a minute or less, staged with bold creativity.

ABOUT PLAYWRIGHTS FOUNDATION

Playwrights Foundation (PF) was founded in 1976, and is today widely recognized as one of the top play development labs in the U.S. Our artistic purpose is to support and champion contemporary playwrights in the creation of new works to sustain theater as a vital, dynamic art form. PF seeks to identify exceptional emerging artists and give them space and time to explore new theatrical ideas and forms in an environment free from the pressures of the marketplace.

By providing a creative home for largely unknown, exceptional local and national playwrights, and committing to accelerating their careers, PF fulfills an essential need in the cultural ecology of the Bay Area. In so doing, we have earned a national reputation for introducing a truly diverse range of singular, boundary-breaking new voices to the American stage, challenging assumptions about subject matter and artistic complexity. The only development lab of its size and scope on the West Coast, PF is widely recognized for its programmatic excellence. Our programs include the Bay Area Playwrights Festival; the Resident Playwrights Initiative; and the Producing Partnership Initiative, which includes our monthly Rough Readings Series.

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