Playwrights Foundation Announces 43rd Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2020 Dates

The Playwrights Foundation's Executive Artistic Director Jessica Bird Beza announces the 2020 dates for the 43rd annual Bay Area Playwrights Festival July 17 - 26, 2020. "Playwrights Foundation is committed to developing five playwrights' new, unproduced work at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2020 in July..." remarks Jessica Bird Beza "While there is hope that it will be possible to do so in person, we are actively developing plans to create a virtual aspect to the Festival, if necessary, due to COVID-19, to protect the health and safety of the artists, staff and audiences."

The 43rd Bay Area Playwrights Festival runs July 17-26, 2020 at the Potrero Stage at 1695 18th St. in San Francisco, CA 94103. Reach Playwrights Foundation at playwrightsfoundation.org or by calling (415) 626-2176

Playwrights Foundation will announce the lineup for the festival at a Virtual Launch Party on May 3 from 2 to 3:30pm PST with behind the scenes insights to their selection process. Visit Playwrights Foundation website for more information.

Starting now, Playwrights Foundation is launching a $15,000 Matching campaign called Be a Part of the Story to support the festival. PF is encouraging individuals to give and tell stories about a playwrights' work who has impacted them and share with the hashtag #BeaPartoftheStory to remind us all of the power of stories.

This is the first Bay Area Playwrights Festival for the new Executive Artistic Director Jessica Bird Beza who was the Associate Director of Come From Away and recent Interim Associate Artistic Director at The Old Globe.

"In this extraordinary time that we find ourselves in, it is even more important to invest in our artists and create new stories." Bird Beza states "We understand that might not look like it normally does and are prepared to be as creative with our producing models as our playwrights are with their stories. Our field is in a historical moment right now, and we are writing a new chapter together. I believe that we will discover some powerful ways of bringing community together during this time that will deepen our work moving forward. We will be a part of that story with our 43rd Bay Area Playwrights Festival."

The Bay Area Playwrights Festival is one of the oldest and most successful new play festivals dedicated to discovering diverse emerging playwrights in the US. Established in 1976 by Robert Woodruff, the festival has continuously discovered original and distinctive new voices in the theater and invested in the development of their work. Past playwrights featured in the Bay Area Playwrights Festival include Pulitzer Prize winners Nilo Cruz, Annie Baker, Sam Shepard, and Jackie Sibblies Drury, MacArthur Award winners Sam Hunter and Marcus Gardley, and two of the most produced playwrights in the U.S. Lauren Yee and Lauren Gunderson.

The festival provides playwrights with professional Bay Area directors, dramaturgs, and actors to develop their play over an immersive three week period with two public readings. Plays that were developed at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival include George Brandt's Grounded, Kimber Lee's brownsville song (b-side for tray), Mona Mansour's We Swim, We Talk, We Go to War, Aaron Loeb's Ideation, and Katori Hall's The Mountaintop.