World Premiere of DIRTY WHITE TESLAS MAKE ME SAD to be Presented by The Magic Theatre and Campo Santo

The Magic Theatre will premiere the first live production by Ashley Smiley and announce the cast and creative team for the World Premiere of her new play DIRTY WHITE TESLAS MAKE ME SAD. This profound and potent new play is directed by maverick theatre artist Raelle Myrick Hodges. DIRTY WHITE TESLAS MAKE ME SAD will perform from February 28– March 17, 2024 at the Magic Theatre’s Fort Mason location (Fort Mason, 2 Marina Boulevard, Building D, 3rd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94123). The opening party performance and press opening will take place on Saturday, March 02 at 8:00 p.m. Tickets are available at: https://magictheatre.my.salesforce-sites.com/ticket/#/events/a0S6e00000o0b2VEAQ

*From the Writer Ashley Smiley:* 

My internal struggle coincides with the erasure of Blackness and Black people. Especially in recent years, nothing stays the same. The buildings are torn asunder. My neighbors are displaced and replaced by unrecognizable new people. My future creates an existential limbo about my place here. San Francisco is my home (not Africa, not Haiti), but my home shows me that it both hates me and needs me desperately. I am on a journey to figure out who I am and why I stay, even though I cannot put my foot on solid ground anywhere else but the sinking sand of San Francisco. I’ll deal with it all if I can keep a sense of authenticity in my environment. In my mind, this quagmire is most effectively symbolized by the popularity of Teslas, a custom-built, luxury car that, for the longest time, was only available in White. White Teslas seem to be everywhere. Its growing visibility on our streets was a harbinger of doom about a certain gentrification that has successfully eclipsed everything around it. One of the most visible and symbolic differences in economic disparity is the dirty, white Tesla. It signifies a level of expendable affluence that my community struggles to attain. The arrival of Teslas and their conductors also brought about a slick new drug trade that revealed San Francisco’s disparity of care. When our wealthiest class started overdosing on uppers, San Francisco took a new interest in drug addicts and abuse. Never mind the generations who didn’t fall into the elitist class. My play speaks to these issues, this disparity, and the struggle with hope and change amid the City’s shifting landscape. 

About DIRTY WHITE TESLAS MAKE ME SAD

DIRTY WHITE TESLAS MAKE ME SAD is a new performance work written by Ashley Smiley about the regentrification of San Francisco and the displacement of Black folks from their neighborhoods. The story unfolds over the last few days in the life of Sloosh in her hometown of San Francisco. Hearts aren’t left in San Francisco they’re stolen, bipped straight from the ribcage. No one understands this more than Sloosh, an AfroFranciscan suffering from the realities of hyper gentrification in the City she was born and raised in and she has 72 hours to do… something before her life drives off packed into a U-HAUL. Centered in the Bayview Hunters Point area of San Francisco, the last place one can turn 360 degrees and see a Black citizen at every turn, Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad is a story about a San Francisco native desperately seeking God, herself and a way to stay. 
 

This project is one of the recipients of the prestigious Gerbode Foundation Theatre Commission Award, and has more recently been honored with Theatre Bay Area’s Relly Lossy Award for New Play 2023. This play is especially exposing and exploring the Black born and bred beings of San Francisco, visioned by a Black artist and resident, born and bred in San Francisco. With this inside/outside perspective, Smiley comes from the past of a Black San Francisco, but is truly a play of the future.  This elegy for Black San Francisco is framed inside the multiple meanings of its amazing title - Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad.  Like the play itself- the title is honest and hilarious, while resonating poetically and politically. The Dirty White Teslas are the unkempt, uncared for luxury items, revealing a ubiquitous and mobile representation of the new money privilege interloping everywhere in San Francisco. In the play and in the real San Francisco streets- Dirty White Teslas are also the sales name given the mixed and massively potent fentanyl pills, an even more devastating dosage causing deaths to San Francisco residents. Smiley has created a living poem and prayer attacking both of these destructive forces working against San Francisco Black folx, while populating with lives and loves for this Black San Francisco.

Grounding us in the story is the character nicknamed Sloosh, a 29-year-old queer AfroLatina born and raised in San Francisco. She still lives with her mother, and aside from feeling the millennial shame of that, she’s also unsure of where to go in her life. Dirty White Teslas become the ultimate symbolic insult to those not part of the wealthy scene- a symbol of success not even sufficiently cared for by their oblivious owners.  Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad explores millennial manifestations of faith. In Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad the protagonists’ quest is revealed for what it truly is-  a false justification for experimental self-medication in the face of despair. Her future is made even more impossible by the constant changing of the only place she’s ever known, her home of San Francisco. In an always-evolving world between traditional values and cutting edge technology, social values, and access to an easy life, the main character struggles to survive the search for her identity. 

Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad was also featured at Bay Area Theatre Company’s exciting New Roots Festival this November.  The festival featured Campo Santo as “legacy group”- and the showings were special evenings led by writer Smiley talking through her process, with performances from Anna Maria Sharpe and Tanika Baptiste, while also highlighting the video and sound process for the show from designers Joan Osato and Christopher Sauceda respectively. The New Roots Festival was a great step in the process leading up rehearsals starting in 2024. This exciting world premiere by Ashley Smiley is directed by Raelle Myrick-Hodges, Featuring Campo Santo company of Juan Amador, Tanika Baptiste, Jamella Cross, Guillermo Yiyo Ornelas, Jessica Recinos, Anna Maria Sharpe; with the Collaborative Design Team: Aftasi the Artist, Alejandro Acosta, Cece Carpio, Solomon Casado, Leah Hammond, Tanya Orellana, Joan Osato, Lauren Quan, & Jessica Recinos.

This play starts the Magic Theatre’s 2024 Performance Year. Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad will be followed by a first time Repertory of premieres from Naomi Iizuka, in the first production premiere with Resident Company- Play On Shakespeare. The Iizuka Repertory will feature a new play, Garuda’s Wing, followed in Repertory with a new version of Iizuka’s Richard II. Completing the year of premieres, the Magic Theatre will do a first time collaboration with and at the Presidio Theatre.  Creative maverick Richard Montoya of Culture Clash returns to the Magic and the Bay Area to perform in a new musical storytelling tribute he has written- Jerry Garcia On The Lower Mission.  The Magic is expanding on last year’s thrilling and successful first full year of new programming highlighted by the premieres by Luis Alfaro (The Travelers), Marc Anthony Thompson (The N* Lovers),  and Playwright In Residence Star Finch (Josephine’s Feast.) In addition to these premieres, the Magic Theatre Performance Year will be filled with premieres and projects from the many Resident Companies, including new works from Resident Home Company Campo Santo, the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, ongoing events from the Saint John Coltrane Church, Indigenous Magic from TigerBear Productions, Resident Curator Juan Amador and Resident Poet Tongo Eisen-Martin- and a special premiere from Dar A Todo Productions written by Virginia Grise.

About Ashley Smiley

Ashley Smiley (She/Her), Playwright — Holding a B.A. in Performing Arts and Social Justice (Double Major in Theology/Religious Studies, University of San Francisco) and an M.A. in Drama (San Francisco State University), Ashley Smiley is a full spectrum creator with a focus on the living written word, currently serving as the Theater Manager for the Bayview Opera House: Ruth Williams Memorial Theater in the Bayview/Hunters Point neighborhood in San Francisco’s newly minted African American Arts and Culture District. Smiley began her career in Performing Arts first by working with the Colored Ink Hip Hop Theatre collective that was based at the Brava! Center for Women in the Arts (San Francisco) and took part in their Running Crew program and their Acting Academy while attending Lowell High School (2004-2008). During that same time, she began working with Youth Speaks, participating in writing workshops, and competing in slams. Once enrolled at USF she was hired as a House Technician, Stage Manager, House Manager, and Sound Designer for PASJ and College Players Productions. While at USF Smiley also started her professional career, first working on Blackbird: Honoring a Century of Pansy Divas (Eye Zen Productions) at Mama Calizo’s, then going on to work with various organizations such as the Bay Area Playwrights Foundation, African American Shakespeare Company, Youth Speaks/Life is Living, Intersection for the Arts, A.C.T., Berkeley Rep, Cal Shakes, San Francisco State University, Z Space, the SF International Arts Festival, Youth Speaks, PlayGround, TheatreFirst and many others in a variety of roles ranging from Production Stage Manager to Designer to Performer. 

Smiley has worked with artists such as The Last Poets, Edris Cooper Anifowoshe, Aaron Davidman, Rashad Pridgen, Devorah Major, and Ellen Sebastian Chang. Smiley finds her creative home in the Campo Santo Familia under the tutelage and support of Joan Osato and Sean San José, having acted as Production Manager, Stage Manager, Sound Designer and Assistant Director, and now acting as a Playwright and the coordinator for the Clika New Work Development group. In 2020, in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic and the huge pivot to ZOOM, Smiley, in collaboration with BVOH (Bayview Opera House) and Campo Santo, created an original web series titled The New Normal which ran for two seasons, landed a spot in the SF Chronicle Datebook and featured guests such as Margo Hall, Brian Rivera, Britney Frazier, and more Bay Area artist.

About Raelle Myrick Hodges

Raelle's primary goal by working in live performance is to rebuild community and create proactive performance from visual to interdisciplinary presentation - along the way she has directed some plays. She is the  founder of Azuka Theater in Philadelphia. Over the past 12 years, she has directed nationally including but not limited to: Public Theater, National Black Theater, Indiana Repertory Atlanta Shakespeare Company, Playmakers Repertory among others. She is a self-taught theater artist with no arts degree, yet,  Raelle is also a Master Teacher/Adjunct Professor with Actor's Studio,  PACE University,  Cornell University, SF State, CalArts, Brown University and recently finished a Master Teacher residency with Cornell University. She directed the world in the premier of, Media/Medea by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright James Ijames In Philadelphia 2023. This world premiere featured two college campuses - one private (Bryn Mawr) and one public (Philadelphia Community College) to work together around privilege, status and artistic development.Her work during the pandemic included all non-binary Coriolanus adapted by Sean San José for UNC/School of the Arts, as well as working on her 2023 work-in-progress reflecting on an adult father-daughter relationship, HE HAS THE PRETTIEST HANDWRITING, that sold out at The Public Theater in New York. She is excited to begin 2024 with Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad. To new voices!

About Campo Santo

Founded in 1996, Campo Santo is an award-winning new performances group by and for People of

Color, committed to developing and premiering new performance works and to nurturing diverse new audiences for the performing arts. The longer-term goal is to model a way to generate new communities of theatre participants, creators, audiences and more- rather than singular experiences. Working in this process and model has allowed Campo Santo to have a diverse and dynamic audience and family of collaborators throughout the 28+ year existence. Campo Santo has developed and premiered more than 100 World Premieres pieces with a wide range of writers including Luis Alfaro, Junot Diaz, Jessica Hagedorn, Naomi Iizuka, Denis Johnson, Richard Montoya, and Ntozake Shange, to name a few, and nurturing the first works of writers Sharif Abu-Hamdeh, Dave Eggers, Star Finch,Chinaka Hodge, Dennis Kim, and Luis Saguar. We have a new home, as the first Home Resident Company of the Magic Theatre, giving a community base again after orbiting with residencies and collaborations since our long-term residency dissolved after 15 years with Intersection for the Arts (who remain the company fiscal sponsor.)   

This premiere play by Ashley Smiley follows Campo Santo’s history supporting ground-breaking first plays by lead artists from an array of backgrounds. The process and project will include workshops for development, music songwriting, and open forum discussion events, in addition to the development, rehearsal, and premiere performances at the Magic Theatre. Campo Santo has always sought new voices and those who push the bounds and break the walls of what a “play” can be- in order to aim for the most dynamic and future building theatre storytelling.  We have a long, amazing list of writers with whom we have created a home to develop new voices for the theatre. We feel we have done this in the context and balance of also simultaneously working with acknowledged masters of the field, while exploring the next model makers.  Denis Johnson, Chinaka Hodge, Jimmy Baca, Dave Eggers, Vendela Vida, Luis Saguar, Jorge Cortiñas, Sharif Abu-Hamdeh- and Dennis Kim. 

About the Magic Theatre

Since the company’s founding in 1967 by visionary John Lion, the Magic Theatre has identified and cultivated writers on the cutting edge of American theatre, serving as a vital center for the creation and performance of new American plays. Sam Shepard developed and premiered his Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child, True West, and Fool for Love during his decade-long Magic residency (1974-84), forever altering the shape of American drama. The Magic Theatre has entered a new Golden Age with the appointment of Sean San José as the new Artistic Director in June, 2021. With this new leadership, we are dedicated to making the Magic Theatre a home to more people by rightfully centering People of Color throughout the organization. While continuing to premiere bold and new plays as it has done for 55 years, we have expanded the vision with these new Programs: new Residency Program- which includes Home Resident Company Campo Santo, the historic Lorraine Hansberry Theatre(Artistic Director Margo Hall), along with Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience (Co-Artistic Directors Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe and Rotimi Agbabiaka), Ellen Sebastian Chang/ Sunhui Chang, Saint John Coltrane Church, TigerBear Productions, and Play On! Shakespeare; new Performances Program, telling theatrical stories in dance, poetry, and music led by San Francisco Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin; and Resident Artists, highlighted by Playwright In Residence Star Finch and Resident Curator Juan Amador, and designers Russell Champa, Tanya Orellana, Joan Osato, Christopher Sauceda, and Brittany White. In addition to the new Leadership Team and Staff (Daniel Duque-Estrada, Michael Ferrell, Brechin Flournoy, Oliver Holmes, Stephanie Holmes, Sara Huddleston, Kevin Nelson, Sean San José, Christopher Sauceda, Liam Vincent), we have energetically, artistically, and aesthetically shifted the whole space in ethos and activation, a redesign of the spaces (lobby, cathedral, and theatres) including multiple wall sized murals by local artists Mister Bouncer (Miguel Perez), Cece Carpio from the Trust Your Struggle collective, Adrian Arias, Ka’ala, and a space filled with legendary Black art from the Saint John Coltrane Church by Emory Douglas, Mark Roman, and Deacon Mark Doox. The space is open year round for engagement and entertainment, arts and activation from the plays to the people- the Magic Theatre is Home for bringing the City inside.

The Magic Theatre is located in the Marina District of San Francisco, at the historic Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (Fort Mason, 2 Marina Blvd., Building D, 3rd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94123). For more information, visit MagicTheatre.org or call the box office at (415) 441-8822. The performance schedule is Wednesday through Saturday at 8:00pm and Sundays at 4:00pm.

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