San Francisco Playhouse Sets Cast of Dipika Guha's THE RULES

San Francisco Playhouse has announced The Rules by Dipika Guha as the final world premiere show of the seventh season of the award-winning Sandbox Series. The play will be performed at The Creativity Theater in Yerba Buena Gardens.

When Ana, Julia and Mehr all fall in love with the same mysterious man, these old friends must reexamine the rules of their friendship in a technologically-saturated world. Inspired by its namesake, the seminal antifeminist dating guide, "The Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right," The Rules is a fable about love and blindness and the promise of happy endings. It is a "late" coming of age story.

The cast features Johnny Moreno* with Amy Lizardo*, Karen Offereins and Sarah Moser*.

Dipika Guha (Playwright) was born in Calcutta and raised in India, Russia and the United Kingdom. She is the inaugural recipient of the Shakespeare's Sister Playwriting Fellowship with The Lark Playwrights Development Center, A Room of Her Own and Hedgebrook. Her plays include I Enter the Valley, a Weissberger nominee '14 and a Finalist for the Ruby Prize '15; Mechanics of Love produced at Crowded Fire Theatre; Blown Youth published by Playscripts and The Rules. She is currently under commission from South Coast Rep and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Her play The Art of Gaman will be developed at The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep this summer. Her work has been developed at Playwrights Horizons, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, The Atlantic Theatre Company, the Drama League, Cutting Ball Theatre, New Georges, Roundabout Underground, Shotgun Players, Red Bull Theatre, Leviathan Theatre, Naked Angels, The Cherry Lane Theatre, One Coast Collaboration, The Sam French OOB Festival, The 24 Hour Plays on Broadway and the Tobacco Factory (UK) amongst others. She's been awarded residencies at the Hermitage Artist Residency, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, SPACE at Ryder Farm, McCarter Theatre's Sallie B.Goodman Residency, Ucross Artists Residency and the Rasmuson Foundation in Sitka, Alaska. She's an alumnus of Ars Nova Playgroup, the Dramatists Guild Fellows Program, Soho Rep W/D Lab, the Women's Project Lab & the Ma-Yi Writer's Lab. Dipika received her BA in English Literature from University College London, was a Frank Knox Fellow at Harvard University and received her MFA in Playwriting at the Yale School of Drama under Paula Vogel. She has taught playwriting at theaters, universities and non-profits across the country, at Bryn Mawr and Fairfield Universities, the Co-op Performing Arts High School and Young Playwrights Inc and Fellowship Place, a non-profit supporting adults with schizophrenia. She is currently a Visiting Artist at the Schell Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School. She is also a Resident Playwright at The Playwrights Foundation in San Francisco where she continues to develop her work. Despite a very long run in the United States she still drinks tea. www.dipikaguha.com

Susannah Martin (Director): An award-winning director, theatre maker, and theatre educator, Susannah has directed for Shotgun Players (where she is also a company member), A.C.T., Aurora Theatre Company, Boxcar Theatre, Mugwumpin, Playwright's Foundation, Porchlight Theatre Company,
San Francisco Playhouse, Sonoma County Rep,TheatreFIRST, TheatreWorks, and Town Hall Theatre Company, among others. She has taught for the California Shakespeare Theater for the past eleven years and directed several Shakespeare productions for their 5-week summer conservatory. Susannah has also taught for St. Mary's College, UC Davis, Los Medanos College, Marin Theatre Company, and a variety of high schools throughout San Francisco and the East Bay. Susannah received her BFA from NYU and her MFA from UC Davis.

Founded by Bill English and Susi Damilano in 2003, San Francisco Playhouse was described by the New York Times as "a company that stages some of the most consistently high-quality work around, and deemed "ever adventurous" by the Bay Area News Group. KQED/NPR recently praised the company: "San Francisco Playhouse is one of the few theaters in the Bay Area that has a mission that actually shows up on stage. Artistic director Bill English's commitment to empathy as a guiding philosophical and aesthetic force is admirable and by living that mission, fascinating things happen onstage." Presenting a diverse range of plays and musicals, San Francisco Playhouse produces new works as well as re-imagining classics, "making the edgy accessible and the traditional edgy." The company's 2012-2013 season marked its 10th anniversary and as it moved to a newly renovated venue, The San Francisco Chronicle raved: "On the verge of opening its 10th season, the company that lived a hand-to-mouth existence for its first few years has become the little playhouse that could. It quickly established a reputation for attracting some of the Bay Area's best acting and directing talent, as well as for its exciting play choices. And with its bold Sandbox Series, it's become a player in developing new works as well." Three plays in as many years that were developed in the Sandbox Series received the coveted Glickman Award for playwrighting-Grounded, Ideation and in a word and Ideation went from its development process in Sandbox Series to a critically acclaimed and sold out run on the Playhouse Mainstage and then moved to an Off-Broadway production in New York City. San Francisco Playhouse is committed to providing a creative home and inspiring environment where actors, directors, writers, designers, and theater lovers converge to create works that celebrate the human spirit.

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