Bay Area Art Collective Pivots To Digital Programming With ETHER

The Forum Collective will showcase the first three episodes of its devised web series, ether, as a part of Playground's 2020 Innovator Incubator Showcase. The Innovator Incubator is a two-year program during which the Playground provides guidance, resources, and fiscal sponsorship to the member companies.

Inspired by interviews with real people, the anthology series of interconnected stories spotlights the characters' struggle to maintain their mental health, familial ties, and personal relationships during the COVID-19 quarantine and beyond.

After teasing ether's first episode in the Fools Fury-produced Build from Here Festival in September, the premiere of the first three episodes are a part of PlayGround's 2nd Annual Innovators Showcase. The festival will feature new work from seven up-and-coming SF Bay Area theatre companies including Analog Theatre, Juneteenth Theatre Justice Project, Kunoichi Productions, The Moonrisers, Poltergeist Theatre Project, and Theatre Cultura.

Released monthly on The Forum Collective's website, this series seeks to document shifts in the ways we converse with each other. The first episode, "Calling Card," portrays two siblings, each facing isolation and grief throughout the year. The piece is devised and performed by Marisa Gabriela Ramos and Francisco Rodriguez, of the Mexian American Conservatory Theatre.

The second episode, created by Ryan Takemiya and Sharon Shao, focuses on two friends facing the anxiety of the pandemic and the accelerated rise of anti-Asian sentiment throughout this year. The third episode, devised by Julius Rea and Kieran Beccia, raises questions about the realistic needs of social change movements in the wake of the presidential election.

Each presentation will be accompanied by a post-show discussion with some of the community members who inspired each episode. The Showcase is admission-free and runs from November 18 to December 6, 2020. For the complete schedule or to reserve tickets, visit playground-sf.org/incubator.

To learn more about ether visit theforumcollective.com/ether.

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