PlayGround

The Bay Area's leading playwright incubator

The Bay Area's leading playwright incubator

The mission of PlayGround is to support the development of significant new local voices for the theatre. More than just another play development program, PlayGround focuses on the creation of a true theatre community by nurturing the collaborative process between first-time or early development playwrights, and established, professional actors and directors.

Over the past eighteen years, PlayGround has developed a unique model for identifying and nurturing the Bay Area’s best new writers, while helping them to build a significant body of original work. The beneficiaries of our efforts are the writers, their collaborators and the audiences these artists serve – today and in the future. Since its founding in 1994, PlayGround has supported more than 170 early career playwrights, developing and staging 600 of their original short plays through the Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series and Best of PlayGround Festival. PlayGround has also commissioned 41 new full-length plays by 18 of these writers through its Commissioning Initiative and has directly facilitated the premiere of numerous works through its innovative New Play Production Fund.

PlayGround alumni have gone on to win both local and national honors for their short and full-length work, including recognition at the New York International Fringe Festival, Humana Festival, Sundance Festival, Aurora Theatre Company's Global Age Project, and Bay Area Playwrights Festival, among others. In a 2008 Theatre Bay Area Magazine article on the Bay Area’s top up-and-coming playwrights, 9 of 13 were PlayGround alumni.

For more information, visit http://playground-sf.org.