Playwrights Foundation Announces 43rd Festival Semifinalists And Finalists

Playwrights Foundation, the West Coast's premiere launchpad for exceptional plays and playwrights, has announced the semifinalists and finalists for the 2020 Bay Area Playwrights Festival (BAPF), which is scheduled to run July 17-26, 2020.

The Bay Area Playwrights Festival is one of the oldest and most successful new play festivals for new works in their developmental stages. Established in 1976 by Robert Woodruff, the festival has continuously discovered original and distinctive new voices in the theater, invested in the development of their work and launched their careers.

"We are excited to shine a light on all of the talented playwrights whose plays made it to the Semifinalist and Finalist stages of our competitive play selection process for the 2020 Bay Area Playwrights Festival," says Executive Artistic Director Jessica Bird Beza, "Each of these plays have merit and represent an extremely diverse range of narratives, form, and identify that will hopefully find homes at a theatre one day when we are able to return to live performances. These playwrights are the future of the American Theatre and we are proud to help uplift their work."

After receiving 735 play submissions, the Artistic team in partnership with Playwrights Foundation's National Reading Committee of 150 volunteers from across the United States narrowed down the submissions to 135 Semifinalists. After that, in partnership with a Literary Council composed of 18 Bay Area theatre professionals narrowed the selection to 35 Finalists with a focus on diverse narratives, voices, forms, and experience levels. The Festival lineup of five playwrights will be announced on Sunday, May 3rd at the Playwrights Foundation's Virtual Launch Party which will be live on their Facebook page from 2 to 3:30pm PST.

List Of Finalists & List Of Semi-finalists Follow

LIST OF FINALISTS (alphabetical)

Brent Askari, Exiled Kings of Persia

Kari Barclay, Stonewallin'

Benjamin Benne, In His Hands, or, the gay christian play

France-Luce Benson, Tigress of San Domingue

J. Corey Buckner, Cross Roads: An Igbo Folktale

Diana Burbano, Sapience

Darcy Parker Bruce, The Place that Made You

John J. Caswell, Jr., Wet Brain

Preston Choi, the performing class

Mia Chung, This Exquisite Corpse

Clarence Coo, Chapters of a Floating Life

Val Dunn, O, Possum!

Tyler English-Beckwith, Mingus

Nancy Garcia Loza, Tocaya

Emma Goldman-Sherman, FUKT

Min Kahng, Freedom Conference

Stefani Kuo, Final Boarding Call

Leora Lihach, Madres de la Revolución

Felice Locker, Mud Season

Gloria Majule, Culture Shock

Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin, The Well-Tempered Clavier

Daria Miyeko Marinelli, This is Not What I Expected When I Imagined a Republic

Eliana Pipes, Dream Hou$e

Juan Ramirez, Jr., Calling Puerto Rico

Jordan Ramirez Puckett, To Saints and Stars

Julius Rea, Mercy

Deneen Reynolds-Knott, Babes in Ho-lland

Harrison David Rivers, The Salvagers

Andrew Rosendorf, One-Shot

Lisa Sanaye Dring, The Wicked One

Omar Vélez Meléndez, We Built Our Homes Near Kingdoms of Animals and Magic

Lisa VillaMil, Siren

Noelle Viñas, Derecho

Ali Viterbi, Shame Spiral (or a probably-bad-stupid-nobody-will-ever-want-to-watch-it play about The Bachelor)

Stephanie Alison Walker, The Ordeal of Water