The Potrero Nuevo Project!
“Like Rome and other great cities, San Francisco is a city of villages on hills. Potrero Hill is the quintessential village-on-a-hill, and all phases of San Francisco history have been portrayed on it.” –Kevin Starr, California State Librarian Emeritus. PlayGround celebrates the grand re-opening of its renovated and renamed San Francisco home, Potrero Stage (formerly Thick House), with The Potrero Nuevo Project, a theatrical imagining of the past, present and future of Potrero Hill. Featuring original short works by local playwrights Patricia Cotter, Victoria Chong Der, Ruben Grijalva, Garret Jon Groenveld, Genevieve Jessee, Martha Soukup, Maury Zeff, and Ignacio Zulueta, The Potrero Nuevo Project is co-directed by Norman Gee, Margo Hall, Katja Rivera, and PlayGround Artistic Director Jim Kleinmann, with an ensemble of eight — Carlos Aguirre, Melvign Badiola, Jessica Bates*, Karen Offereins, Soren Oliver*, Jed Parsario, Cathleen Riddley*, and JD Scalzo — performing more than 25 roles. Journey over 250 years in 90 minutes to experience the people, places, and times that shaped this region: the Ohlone who first hunted and fished here; the Spanish missionaries and early Californios who began settling the region; Kit Carson, the De Haro family, and the launch of the Mexican-American War; post- Gold Rush San Francisco and a rancher’s unique legacy; survivors of the 1906 earthquake; the WWII shipbuilders of Pier 70; Fritz Maytag and the birth of the craft brewing movement; a Potrero Annex family’s memories on the eve of the Hope SF reconstruction, and beyond! Each Potrero Nuevo Project performance will be followed by a brief panel discussion with local residents, business and civic leaders, historians, and more. For tickets and more information, visit http://playground-sf.org/potreronuevo.
* Member, Actors’ Equity Association.
PlayGround will debut the improvements to Potrero Stage, including new air conditioning, seating, theatrical lighting, signage, and lobby and restroom upgrades, the weekend of January 28-29 with two community open houses, one for the Bay Area theatre community (Saturday, January 28, 11am-1pm) and one for the Potrero Hill community (Sunday, January 29, 12pm-2pm).
PlayGround, the Bay Area’s leading playwright incubator, provides unique development opportunities for the Bay Area’s best new playwrights, including the monthly Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series, annual PlayGround Festival of New Works, full-length play commissions and support for the production of new plays by local playwrights through the New Play Production Fund. To date, PlayGround has supported over 200 local playwrights in the development and staging of more than 800 original short plays and 71 new full-length plays, with 8 more commissions currently in development. For more information, visit http://playground-sf.org.
In October 2015, PlayGround signed a multi-year lease for the Thick House Theater, where PlayGround has been in residence and produced its annual festival and numerous co-productions since 2008. Under PlayGround’s leadership, the Thick House venue, recently renamed Potrero Stage: The PlayGround Center for New Plays, will expand its role as a hub for diverse small theatre companies and independent artists and a platform for the development and production of great new works. To that end, PlayGround launched a $250,000 capital campaign to support significant capital improvements and continued artist accessibility/affordability and temporarily closed the venue last fall to complete the renovations, including new air conditioning, seating, lighting and signage. The renovated and renamed theatre will reopen the last weekend of January with two public open houses: Saturday, January 28, 11am-1pm for the Bay Area theatre community and Sunday, January 29, 12pm-2pm for the Potrero Hill community.
WHAT: THE POTRERO NUEVO PROJECT, a theatrical imagining of the people, places and times that shaped this region! Featuring original short plays by Patricia Cotter, Victoria Chong Der, Ruben Grijalva, Garret Jon Groenveld, Genevieve Jessee, Martha Soukup, Maury Zeff, and Ignacio Zulueta. The inaugural production of Potrero Stage.
WHERE: Potrero Stage (formerly Thick House), 1695 18th Street, San Francisco, CA
WHEN: February 2-19, 2017
THE POTRERO NUEVO PROJECT
Thursday, Feb 2, 8pm (Preview, PWYC)
Friday, Feb 3, 8pm (Preview, PWYC)
Saturday, Feb 4, 8pm (Press Night)
Sunday, Feb 5, 7pm
Thursday, Feb 9, 8pm
Friday, Feb 10, 8pm
Saturday, Feb 11, 8pm
Sunday, Feb 12, 7pm
Thursday, Feb 16, 8pm
Friday, Feb 17, 8pm
Saturday, Feb 18, 8pm
Sunday, Feb 19, 7pm (Closing)
TICKETS: $25-$55. For more information about The Potrero Nuevo Project, call (415) 992-6677 or visit www.PlayGround-sf.org/potreronuevo.