Rachel Esther

Playwrights Foundation, the West Coast’s premier launchpad for exceptional new plays and playwrights, has announced the semifinalists and finalists for the 45th Bay Area Playwrights Festival (BAPF), which will be presented as a hybrid (in-person and streamed) festival July 29-August 07, 2022. For more information and a complete list of winners, the public may visit  playwrightsfoundation.org or call 415-626-2176.

Pulitzer winners Paula Vogel, Katori Hall, Annie Baker & Sam Shepard are just 4 of the many celebrated playwrights whose work was developed in the Bay Area Playwrights Festival (BAPF). Established in 1976 and currently led by Playwrights Foundation’s Executive Artistic Director Jessica Bird Beza, this year’s BAPF runs July 16-25, featuring 5 very different new works. Casts include acclaimed actors such as Emily Kuroda. BroadwayWorld recently caught up with Beza to talk about the festival.

The Diversionary invites you to Explore THE MOORS in this Bronte inspired dark comedy playing through December 10th.

Among the bleakest of moors, two spinster sisters dwell in their aggressively gloomy mansion with their brother, their mastiff and their maid-in-waiting. When a governess arrives, her presence threatens to unleash lethal secrets and raging desires in a home held together by lies and etiquette. A radical riff on 19th century romantic novels and the sisters who conceived them, The Moors is a riotous and wild comedy pulsating with vivid, macabre glee that has more in common with the present than the period.

DeAnna Driscoll talks about what it's like being a mother like Beatrice in THE EFFECT OF GAMMA RAYS ON MAN-IN-THE-MOON MARIGOLDS at the Cygnet Theatre.

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds was the brainchild of a public school science teacher turned playwright, Paul Zindel. The work won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and the Obie Award for best American play. Generations of audiences are familiar with the film version from 1972, which was directed by Paul Newman and starred his wife, Joanne Woodward and their daughter, Nell Potts. Cygnet's production is directed by Rob Lutfy and runs August 30th through September 24th.

Write Out Loud - an organization founded in 2007 with a commitment to inspire, challenge and entertain by reading short stories aloud for a live audience - announces VOICES OF CHRISTMAS the third production in their 10th Anniversary Season.

Coming off the heels of another politically-charged play ALL THE WAY that they presented last month, Orange County's Tony Award-winning regional theater South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa is following up that searing drama with a staging of a brand new production of playwright Aaron Posner's DISTRICT MERCHANTS, a clever, thoughtful, and occasionally humorous re-imagining of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. This time around, the play-a self-aware comedic drama set during America's post-Civil War Reconstruction era-continues performances through October 23, 2016.

Arena Stage has a gem in Christopher Durang's Tony Award winning play VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE.

Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater presents the Washington, D.C. premiere of Christopher Durang's Tony Award-winning comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike runs now through May 3, 2015 in the Fichandler Stage. BroadwayWorld has photos from the opening night festivities below!

Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater presents the Washington, D.C. premiere of Christopher Durang's Tony Award-winning comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike runs now through May 3, 2015 in the Fichandler Stage. Scroll down for a first look at the cast in action!

In the words of Aaron Posner, actors Grace Gonglewski and Eric Hissom are “lifetime members of the Aaron Posner players!” Theirs is a professional relationship and personal friendship that dates back two decades. When Arena Stage's production of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike begins performances, they'll once again find themselves in familiar positions with Gonglewski and Hissom onstage and Posner in the director's chair.

Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater presents the Washington, D.C. premiere of Christopher Durang's Tony Award-winning comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike runs April 3-May 3, 2015 in the Fichandler Stage. Click below to watch a fun promo for the show!

Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater announces the full company for the Washington, D.C. premiere of Christopher Durang's Tony Award-winning comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Helen HayesAward-winning director and playwright Aaron Posner, known for his Chekhov-inspired plays Stupid f**king Bird and Life Sucks (Or the Present Ridiculous), lends his hand to this riotous sendup, which satirizes characters and themes from Anton Chekhov's classics. In this 'sunny new play about gloomy people' (New York Times), siblings Vanya and Sonia live out their days in an endless, bleak tableau in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. All seems numbingly mundane until in sweeps hurricane Masha, their fading movie star sister, with her shiny new boy toy and a big announcement. Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike runs April 3-May 3, 2015 in the Fichandler Stage. Check out a first look at the cast below!

Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater announces the full company for the Washington, D.C. premiere of Christopher Durang's Tony Award-winning comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.