Magic Theatre Announces THE ANNUAL MARTHA HEASLEY COX VIRGIN PLAY FESTIVAL

Magic Theatre (Loretta Greco, Artistic Director and Jaimie Mayer, Managing Director) has announced dates for 2017's Martha Heasley Cox Virgin Play Festival, which will take placeDecember 5 - 17, 2017. The public play readings kick off on Tuesday, December 5 at 7:00 p.m. with esteemed Magic Alumnus Han Ong's new work MACKYDEE, a gripping and haunting look at the people and events that make New York's "Zombie McDonald's" famous. Ong's previous work GRANDEUR premiered at Magic Theatre in the 2016-2017 season.

"We are so excited to welcome so many new writers to the Magic Family through our Virgin Play Festival!" said Loretta Greco, Artistic Director of Magic Theatre. "The Virgin Play Festival centers on bringing emerging and mid-career playwrights together, giving each writer the time and space to create and experiment and hear their work out loud. Past Virgin playwrights include: Barbara Hammond, John Kolvenbach, Clare Barron, Dipika Guha, Lauren Yee, Jessica Hagedorn, Han Ong, Mfoniso Udofia & many, many more. It is an exciting opportunity for writers to get space and time to work, for us to get to know new playwrights and familiar playwright's work and for our audience to meet new playwrights and new plays. We invite Magic Family patrons to join us for readings presenting new work by writers we love."

Following Ong's MACKYDEE, the Festival continues on Wednesday, December 6 at 8:00 p.m. with a reading of Magic newcomer Ashlin Halfnight's THE RESTING PLACE-an exploration of familial obligation, guilt, mental health, and our own complacency and culpability in wrongdoing.

Up next is Barbara Hammond, acclaimed playwright of THE EVA TRILOGY (World Premiere directed by Loretta Greco, 2017), as she returns to Magic with a reading of her new play VISIBLE FROM FOUR STATES on Friday, December 8 at 8:00 p.m. VISIBLE FROM FOUR STATES takes place in rural middle America, as a small town engages in debate regarding the use of the space on a prominent hill which is visible from the highway. Hammond's story examines the true nature of faith, Christianity, community, and forgiveness.

Next, Magic is pleased to welcome another talented newcomer, Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm, on Saturday, December 9 at 8:00 p.m. Chisholm's new work WE THE ILLEST PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS: P.Y.G. OR THE MIS-EDUMACATION OF DORIAN BELL is an insightful and biting look at the cultural and racial appropriation prevalent in our popular music industry through the fictionalized exchange of ideologies, vernacular, and alleged street cred.

Chisholm's play will be followed by Kate Tarker's new play LAURA AND THE SEA on Thursday, December 14 at 8:00 p.m. Tarker, who is also new to Magic Theatre, provides a quirky inquiry into grieving in the cold corporate atmosphere. It's company outing day, and Laura, one of the best travel agents of her generation, is having a very bad time. What happened that day, on the boat? We watch as each of her colleagues struggle with how to mourn someone they find they didn't know all that well. An unhappy comedy about depression, or: a treatise on travel agents who don't travel.

The Virgin Play Festival will then conclude with L. Feldman's ANOTHER KIND OF SILENCE on Sunday, December 17 at 2:30 p.m. ANOTHER KIND OF SILENCE is a bilingual (English/American Sign Language) play that tells the story of a woman who, after a decade of marriage to her husband, finds herself falling in love with a woman she meets in Athens. The play follows these characters and a Greek Chorus as they confront the mysteries of desire, long-term partnership, and a changing self; alongside the challenges and intimacy of communication. As newcomer Feldman says, Magic is dedicated to "saying yes to a challenging, bilingual, and theatrically ambitious new play."

Following the Virgin Play Series, Magic Theatre's 2017-2018 Season continues with the World Premiere of John Kolvenbach's Reel to Reel (January 31 - February 25, 2018) and concludes with the World Premiere of Jessica Hagedorn's The Gangster of Love (April 11 - May 6, 2018).

Magic Theatre is located in the Marina District of San Francisco, at the historic Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (Fort Mason, 2 Marina Blvd., Building D, 3rd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94123). The entrance to Fort Mason is at the intersection of Marina Blvd and Buchanan Street. The performance schedule is Tuesday at 7:00 p.m.,Wednesday - Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m.

Priority seating is reserved for patrons and subscribers. Tickets for the Martha Heasley Cox Virgin Play Festival are free and available to the public by emailing Magic Theatre's Box Office boxoffice@magictheatre.org or calling(415) 441-8822. For more information, visit MagicTheatre.org.

About Magic Theatre

Now celebrating its 50th year of continuous operation, Magic is dedicated to creative risk: we cultivate bold new plays and playwrights to produce incendiary and ideologically robust stories that ask substantive questions about our place in humanity. Magic provides a nurturing yet rigorous artistic home where innovative writers can create a body of work. We believe that developing an evolved artistic vocabulary with the playwright at our side greatly improves a playwright's chances to thrive. By adding voices to the canon, we ensure the vibrancy of the American theatre.

Magic's impact has resonated throughout the country and beyond since its founding by John Lion in 1967; Lion brought in Sam Shepard and Michael McClure as playwrights-in-residence, establishing Magic as a space for the communion of playwright and audience. From these early plays to the World Premieres of Luis Alfaro's Oedipus el Rey and Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge and Hir, Magic continues to produce groundbreaking new work.

Since Artistic Director Loretta Greco assumed leadership of Magic in 2008, the theatre has produced nineteen world premieres, seventeen of which have enjoyed life beyond the Magic stage. Magic plays have received numerous awards including the Pulitzer Prize, ten Obie Awards, the Kennedy Center Award, Bay Area Critics' Circle Awards, and the NAACP Image Award.