San Francisco Playhouse Opens Season with BARBECUE

San Francisco Playhouse (Bill English, Artistic Director; Susi Damilano, Producing Director) opens its fifteenth season with the Bay Area premiere of Barbecue by Robert O'Hara. In an unusual artistic feat, Margo Hall will direct and also act in the play.

The hard-partying, foul-mouthed O'Mallery family is staging an intervention for their drug-addicted sister, Barbara. With a plan inspired by reality TV, they have disguised their meeting as a family barbecue in the park-but soon it's the whole family's problems that are in the spotlight. Barbecue overturns our presumptions about race, poverty, and the American family in uproarious and incisive fashion. Written by Obie and Helen Hayes Award winner Robert O'Hara, this Barbecue serves up a healthy helping of sibling love and loathing.

"We are thrilled to present the Bay Area premiere of Barbecue, bringing Robert O'Hara's distinctive voice to our theatre," said Playhouse Artistic Director Bill English with the announcement. "O'Hara poses essential questions about race in America in a profound and hilarious way that will make us question our own subtle prejudices and give us a new perspective on the chasms in society."

The cast of Barbecue features Jenny Brick, Edris Cooper, Susi Damilano*, Anne Darragh*, Margo Hall*, Halili Knox*, Kehinde Koyejo*, AdrIan Roberts*, Teri Whipple, and Clive Worsley.

San Francisco Playhouse's production of Barbecue is made possible by Executive Producer William J. Gregory, Producers Fred, Beth, & Leslie Karren; the Muir Family; and Arne and Gail Wagner, as well as Associate Producers Linda Brewer; Harry & Kay Rabin; Loni & Bob Dantzler; Margaret Sheehan; and Valerie Barth.

Margo Hall (Director) is an award winning actor/director/playwright. She has performed and directed in theaters throughout the Bay Area. She directed Red Velvet and The Storyfor SF Playhouse. She most recently direcTEd Brownsville Song, B-Side for Tray for Shotgun Players, where she also co- directed Bulrusher with Ellen Sebastian Chang. She is a founding member of Campo Santo, and has directed, performed and collaborated on several new plays with artists such as Naomi Iizuka, Jessica Hagedorn, Phillip Kan Gotanda, and Octavio Solis. She debuted as a director with The World Premiere ofJoyride, from the novel Grand Avenue by Greg Sarris, for Campo Santo. The production won the Critics Circle Award and SF Weekly Black Box Award for Best Director. She also co-directed Mission Indians with Nancy Benjamin, The Trail of Her Inner Thigh with Rhodessa Jones, Hotel Angulo, and Simpatico for Campo Santo. Other directing credits include Thurgood for Lorraine Hansberry Theater, and Friend of my Youth and Sonny's Blues for Word for Word. She is also a professor at Chabot College where she directedFabulation, Hamlet Blood in the Brain, The Trojan Women, It Falls, SPUNK, Ragtime, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Polaroid Stories at UC Berkeley.

Robert O'Hara (Playwright) has received the NAACP Best Director Award, the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play, two OBIE Awards and the Oppenheimer Award. He directed the world premieres of Nikkole Salter and Dania Guiria's In the Continuum, Tarell McCraney's The Brother/Sister Plays (Part 2), Colman Domingo's Wild with Happy, as well as his own plays, Bootycandy and Insurrection: Holding History. His new playsZombie: The American and Barbecue, world premiered at Woolly Mammoth Theater and The Public Theater, respectively.

Founded in 2003, San Francisco Playhouse is the only mid-sized professional venue in downtown San Francisco, an intimate alternative to the larger more traditional Union Square theater fare. Presenting a diverse range of plays and musicals, San Francisco Playhouse produces new works as well as re-imagined classics, "making the edgy accessible and the traditional edgy." And with its bold Sandbox Series, dedicated to nurturing World Premieres, the Playhouse has become a significant player in developing new works as well. San Francisco Playhouse is committed to providing a creative home and inspiring environment where actors, directors, writers, designers, and theater lovers converge to create and experience dramatic works that celebrate the human spirit.

TICKETS : For tickets ($20-$125) or more information, the public may contact the San Francisco Playhouse box office at 415-677-9596, or www.sfplayhouse.org

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