Bay Area Playwrights Festival Reveals 2026 Cohort and Creative Teams

Playwrights Foundation has announced the playwright cohort & creative teams for the 47th Bay Area Playwrights Festival (BAPF47), which will be presented in a hybrid festival with in-person readings September 18 - 27, 2026 in San Francisco at The Rueff on the second floor of ACT's Strand Theater and on-demand recordings released October 19-25, 2026. Four powerful new voices, selected from over 600 applicants via a committee process with 148 readers, will receive public readings and workshops of a new play in the 2026 festival. Festival passes are now on sale, as well as single tickets (priced on a sliding scale). For more information, the public may visit playwrightsfoundation.org or call 415-626-2176.

The playwrights for the 47th Bay Area Playwrights Festival are Jordan Bird, a neurodivergent playwright who hails from East Tennessee; Austin, Texas playwright and O'Neill National Playwrights Conference finalist Maxine Dillon; playwright, dramaturg, comic book writer, and educator Greg T. Nanni, who hails from New York and Philadelphia; and Georgia born, Bay Area based playwright, performer, and licensed clinical therapist christina michelle watkins.

These four transformative playwrights take us on a journey through inner and outer worlds, traversing time and space - from Jordan's haunting depiction of a neurodivergent woman grappling with memories of childhood trauma as fairy tale and reality blur; to Maxine's exploration of Black twentysomethings confronting the real Living History of the plantation museum where they work; to Greg's powerful depiction of the inner and outer struggle of a survivor of suicide as he tries to help someone very much like himself choose to live; to christina michelle watkins's poetic exploration of the complicated bond between estranged sisters reckoning with reverberations from the past.

The Bay Area directors helming the readings in the festival are freelance producer and casting director Tessa Corrie (PlayGround SF, Pear Theatre, Cutting Ball Theatre); transmedia artist, educator, and Director of Programs for SV CREATES Sinjin Jones; multi-hyphenate theatre artist and Playwrights Foundation Literary and Producing Director Leigh Rondon-Davis; and co-artistic director at Dreamlighting, The Greenhouse New Play Festival's Artistic Producer, and lecturer in SF State's Creative Writing MFA program Adam L. Sussman.

Dramaturgs working in collaboration with the BAPF playwrights and directors to help shape these plays will be multi-hyphenate theater maker and activist Tierra Allen (3Girls Theater, PlayGround, Crowded Fire Theater); Professor of Theatre Arts at Sonoma State University Scott Horstein, Literary Manager and Casting Associate at American Conservatory Theater Austin Riffelmacher, and director, teaching artist, and Artistic/Program Director at Sandcastle Theater Company Ariella Wolfe.

As previously announced, Playwrights Foundation reimagined the Bay Area Playwrights Festival in 2023, shifting the program from an annual to a biennial festival. This change expanded the pre-festival development process from four months to a full year, allowing staff to be more intentional and responsive to each playwright's needs while increasing the time, care, and resources dedicated to the creative process.

Over that year-long process, playwrights receive significant artistic and developmental resources for the creation of a new play, including paid professional collaborators, individual dramaturgy sessions, and multiple stages of artistic development. This includes an in-person Artist Retreat with their director and dramaturg, and an early table reading with professional actors, each designed to help the playwright test and strengthen their script ahead of the public readings. Playwrights also receive ongoing support through monthly cohort meetings, networking opportunities, and sustained engagement with PF staff throughout the process.

'The 47th Bay Area Playwrights Festival is about revival, resistance, and renewal, themes that live at the heart of every story in this year's cohort,' said Executive Artistic Director Jessica Bird Beza. 'From Jordan's fearless dive into memory and disability, to Maxine's reckoning with history refusing to stay buried, to Greg's tender wrestling with survival and connection, to christina michelle's poetic excavation of sisterhood and healing, these four playwrights are exposing the soul's deepest joys and pains in communities not often depicted in the American theater. Our expanded, biennial timeline gives them a full year in a laboratory environment with incredible collaborators to develop these plays, and I couldn't be prouder to bring their work to Bay Area audiences and online worldwide."

BAPF47 is scheduled to welcome in-person audiences over two weekends in San Francisco, CA from September 18-27, 2026, presenting each play once on both weekends. Playwrights will have time to actively rewrite and work on their scripts in between readings. Audiences get the opportunity to offer curated feedback to impact the playwrights' future changes and be at the cutting edge of the new play process. Building on the success of Playwrights Foundation's online engagement, on-demand recordings of the second public readings will be released post-festival in mid-October, allowing audiences around the globe to experience exhilarating new work by emerging theater artists.

Festival audiences will also have the opportunity to engage in meaningful community events, including pre- and post-show gatherings, facilitated feedback post-show conversations, panel conversations, as well as a chance to meet and experience work by Playwrights Foundation's 2026-27 Resident Playwrights Linda Amayo-Hassan, Megan Calfas, Aidaa Peerzada, and Julius Ernesto Rea.

Playwrights Foundation also invites professionals in the theatre industry to engage with the works during Theater Professionals Weekend, September 25-27, which offers industry professionals a space to create community connections and to experience public readings of all four new works, a mini showcase with our Resident Playwrights, and opportunities to network with the playwrights and other theater professionals at a series of special events and pre-and post-performance gatherings. Theatre Professional passes and pay-what-you can individual tickets are available on Playwrights Foundation's website. A limited number of free passes are available by application.

In addition to the BAPF47 cohort, Playwrights Foundation has selected ten honorable mention playwrights from the Finalist list: Lupe Finds Me in the Garden of Dreams by Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel; Brother, Brother, Brothers / 大哥，兄弟，弟兄們 by Rebs Chan; Swallow Me Whole by Sarah Galante; Everything, Devoured by Katherine Gwynn; come straight home by DJ Hills; Ministry of Gummy Worm by Sepehr Jafari Jozani; Beautiful Blessed Child by Daria Miyeko Marinelli; At the Confluence of Creeks by Sam Mueller; The Misplaced Saints by Audley Puglisi; and Slash & the Space Cadet by A Yourd.

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