TheatreFIRST 2018-19 Season Announced

The 2018-19 season announcement for TheatreFIRST is here, with three new original plays, including collaborations with both Virago Theatre Company and Shotgun Players.

Debuting December 6th, THE PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF NEXT, developed with Bay Area high schools, colleges, and community centers through listening circles, writing workshops, and media foraging, will be a play that explores ownership of the past, present, and future through one's relationship to their bloodline. After grief destroys the world, three teenagers find themselves the unwilling guardians of humanity's detritus. Surrounded by the ghosts of the past, they are forced to become the architects of the future.

The workshops and script are facilitated by artists/educators Awele, Anthony Clarvoe, Cleavon Smith, Lauren Spencer and Jon Tracy, with Tracy also directing the student cast.

The second production, PASSAGE, will premiere February 14th, 2019. PASSAGE written by Regina Evans and directed by Ayodele Nzinga, will be a co-production with Virago Theatre Company.

PASSAGE explores the issues of human trafficking through the story of "the skin" of past-day slavery: the moment-to-moment terror, hunger, pain, and desperation to find a way to endure. This ritual play calls forth healing, truth, and resilience through poetry, prose, dance, spirituals, and the first hand words of ancestors.

The final production of TheatreFIRST's season will be FAR, FAR BETTER THINGS by Geetha Reddy, one of the co-playwrights from TheatreFIRST's 2017 production of HELA. FAR, FAR BETTER THINGS will be directed by Katja Rivera, as a co-production with Shotgun Players and premieres April 25th, 2019 at Live Oak Theater, Berkeley.

FAR, FAR BETTER THINGS tells the tale of two women - Pilar, a Latina domestic worker, and Zoe, a young South Asian doctor - separated by class, race and the unspoken rules of modern womanhood. During a political period not unlike our own, the two women struggle to balance their responsibilities to their children, to themselves, and to each other. In the end they must decide if they are on the same or different sides of the struggle.

TheatreFIRST seeks to revolutionize the intersection of audience, artist and activism. Now an all in-house development company, our staff, board, and creative teams are built to explore how best to lift and amplify marginalized stories. Making theatre a place where social justice happens means breaking down perceived barriers so that we might all explore an equitable world.

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