Cast Announced for PlayGround's 28th Festival of New Works Premieres From Anne Yumi Kobori and Jacob Marx Rice

Casting has been announced for PlayGround's 28th annual Festival of New Works Premieres: Anne Yumi Kobori's Apertures of Love in Times of War (May 11-12, 2024) and Jacob Marx Rice's A Thousand Natural Shocks (May 18-19, 2024).

These works, one historical and the other contemporary but both steeped in the fraught ideal of the "American Dream", highlight the intersectional identities and experiences of PlayGround's artists and tell stories that are at once highly specific and profoundly universal. Both plays were presented in last year's Festival of New Works as staged readings and subsequently developed throughout the 2023-24 season.

Each play will run for two in-person and simulcast online performances over consecutive weekends, performed live with full production support. Admission is free (donations gratefully accepted) with extended on-demand viewing for Festival Sponsors. For tickets, visit https://tickets.playground-sf.org.

Apertures of Love in Times of War

by Anne Yumi Kobori, directed by Katja Rivera. Featuring Michael Barrett Austin (Marty), Justin Hernandez (Ed), Brian Herndon (Jean-Baptiste), Julie Kuwabara (Gabriella /Miyo), Sakura Nakahara (Aya), and James Aaron Oh (Takahashi).

Apertures of Love in Times of War follows Ed, a Mexican-American photographer turned war correspondent, and Aya, a Japanese-American writer. Their love affair spans a vast ocean of time and space. But they cannot escape the brutal reality of their forced separation during World War II, when Aya was imprisoned in the Japanese Internment Camps, and Ed risked his life to capture photographs of war-ravaged Europe. Over the course of a tumultuous affair, they unite in their crusade to report the truth about the war-torn world. A play that re-examines what it means to be an American through the lens of the country's not-so-distant past.

Anne Yumi Kobori is a Japanese-American playwright, actor, producer, director, and teaching artist. As a director, she has worked with Utopia Theatre Project, EnActe Arts, Los Altos Youth Theatre, and SF Shakespeare Festival, where she spent 5 years as Education Program Manager. Her full-length plays Seeds, Every Day Alice, and her adaptation of Chekhov's The Seagull have premiered with Utopia Theatre Project. Currently, Anne is a co-writer for Braided, a play exploring Native American liberation and Japanese American resilience, in development with Theatre of Yugen. BA Theatre Arts, summa cumlaude, Santa Clara University.

A Thousand Natural Shocks

by Jacob Marx Rice, directed by Tracy Ward. Featuring. Catherine Castellanos (Doctor), Zoe Chien (Jennifer), Rebecca Pingree (Molly), Jeunee Simon (Kennedy), and Maryssa Wanlass (Laurel).

A Thousand Natural Shocks follows Kennedy, who is doing okay! Her depression is under control, she's got a stable job, and her wife adores her. But when the couple decides to make a baby, they must navigate the chaos of IVF, the inevitability of pain, and the Tik-Tok teen crashing on their couch. Taking its title from Hamlet's famous monologue, the play takes us on a journey through the increasingly fraught trials and tribulations of modern love and life.

Jacob Marx Rice has written plays that have been produced and developed at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center, The Finborough Theatre in London, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Flea Theater, The New Ohio, Atlantic Theatre Stage 2, and others. His play Chemistry has premiered in seven cities across three continents. Recent prizes include the Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award from The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, an Ensemble Studio Theater Sloan Commission, and the Faculty Award from the NYU/Tisch Department of Dramatic Writing. MFA: NYU.

​Through these world premiere plays, PlayGround helps to elevate the Bay Area's most important new voices for the stage, sharing diverse and inclusive stories that center communities too often excluded from the American Theatre. Past festival premieres have included Diane Sampson's Bernie Madoff-inspired musical Sleeping Cutie (2014), Glickman Award winner Ruben Grijalva's Anna Considers Mars (2019). and Genevieve Jessee's The Rendering Cycle (2020). A Thousand Natural Shocks and Apertures of Love in Times of War continue this decade-long legacy.

About the New Works Festival

In addition to these productions, PlayGround will include the 28th annual Best of PlayGround, featuring the top short works from the 30th season Monday Night staged reading series, an evening of the top short works by Bay Area high school dramatists as part of the 16th annual Young Playwrights Project, as well as staged readings of four new full-length plays in development, and an artist roundtable of playwrights and other artists featured in this year's Festival.

Taken all together, the festival provides theatre-makers and theatregoers with one of the most varied and robust opportunities to discover leading new voices of the American Theatre while providing up-and-coming writers with the exposure, production experience, and networks they need to succeed on the national stage. Both Funny like and Abortion by Rachel Bublitz (2022) and Sapience by Diana Burbano (2021) premiered in the PlayGround Festival of New Works before moving on to National New Play Network Rolling World Premieres. Other festival alumni include: Lauren Yee, Geetha Reddy, Jonathan Spector, and Cleavon Smith, among others.

Ticket and Venue Information

Tickets are available now and can be reserved here:

Apertures of Love in Times of War by Anne Yumi Kobori

May 11-12

Tickets: https://tickets.playground-sf.org/TheatreManager/1/online?event=369

A Thousand Natural Shocks

by Jacob Marx Rice

May 18-19

Tickets: https://tickets.playground-sf.org/TheatreManager/1/online?event=370

Why Free?

PlayGround has made all programs admission-free in furtherance of our commitment to radical accessibility. If you are able, we hope that you'll consider donating with your free ticket reservation, recognizing that your direct support makes it possible for us to continue providing fair and equitable wages for professional artists while sustaining our radical accessibility efforts for all.

PlayGround, a leading national playwright incubator, provides unique development opportunities for the Bay Area's, Los Angeles', New York's, and Chicago'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 350 early career playwrights, developing and staging more than 1,500 of their original short plays through the Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series and the PlayGround Festival. PlayGround has also commissioned 100 new full-length plays by 60 of these writers through its Commissioning Initiative and, through the innovative New Play Production Fund, has directly facilitated the premiere of 36 plays at theatres of every size, including three that have gone on to NYC and other major theater communities. Most recently, PlayGround renovated and relaunched the former Thick House Theater in San Francisco's Potrero Hill as Potrero Stage, a state-of-the-art center for new plays, home to PlayGround's expanding artistic programs and some of the Bay Area's most distinguished new play developers and producers. Over the past twenty-seven years, PlayGround has served to identify some of the most important new local voices for the theatre. PlayGround's alumni have gone on to win local, national, and international honors for their short and full-length work, including recognition at the Steinberg Awards, Glickman Awards (including 6 of the last 10), O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and New York International Fringe Festival, among others. PlayGround received the 2009 Paine Knickerbocker Award for outstanding contributions to Bay Area theatre, 3 BATCC Awards for Best Original Script for PlayGround commissions, a 2014 National Theatre Company Grant from the American Theatre Wing (founder of the Tony Awards), and a 2016 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award.

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