Three Performances Added to DIRTY WHITE TESLAS MAKE ME SAD at The Magic Theatre

The Magic Theatre has added three performances on Friday March 22 and Saturday March 23 at 8pm and Sunday March 24 at 4pm of the World Premiere of Ashley Smiley’s Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad. DIRTY WHITE TESLAS MAKE ME SAD will now perform thru March 24, 2024 at the Magic Theatre’s Fort Mason location (Fort Mason, 2 Marina Boulevard, Building D, 3rd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94123).

This new play is directed by theatre artist Raelle Myrick Hodges.

DIRTY WHITE TESLAS MAKE ME SAD is a new performance work written by Ashley Smiley about the regentrification of San Francisco and the displacement of Black folks from their neighborhoods. The story unfolds over the last few days in the life of Sloosh in her hometown of San Francisco. Hearts aren’t left in San Francisco they’re stolen, bipped straight from the ribcage. No one understands this more than Sloosh, an AfroFranciscan suffering from the realities of hyper gentrification in the City she was born and raised in and she has 72 hours to do… something before her life drives off packed into a U-HAUL. Centered in the Bayview Hunters Point area of San Francisco, the last place one can turn 360 degrees and see a Black citizen at every turn, Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad is a story about a San Francisco native desperately seeking God, herself and a way to stay. 

This project is one of the recipients of the prestigious Gerbode Foundation Theatre Commission Award, and has more recently been honored with Theatre Bay Area’s Relly Lossy Award for New Play 2023. This play is especially exposing and exploring the Black born and bred beings of San Francisco, visioned by a Black artist and resident, born and bred in San Francisco. With this inside/outside perspective, Smiley comes from the past of a Black San Francisco, but is truly a play of the future.  This elegy for Black San Francisco is framed inside the multiple meanings of its amazing title-Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad. Like the play itself- the title is honest and hilarious, while resonating poetically and politically. The Dirty White Teslas are the unkempt, uncared for luxury items, revealing a ubiquitous and mobile representation of the new money privilege interloping everywhere in San Francisco. In the play and in the real San Francisco streets- Dirty White Teslas are also the sales name given the mixed and massively potent fentanyl pills, an even more devastating dosage causing deaths to San Francisco residents. Smiley has created a living poem and prayer attacking both of these destructive forces working against San Francisco Black folx, while populating with lives and loves for this Black San Francisco.

Grounding us in the story is the character nicknamed Sloosh, a 29-year-old queer AfroLatina born and raised in San Francisco. She still lives with her mother, and aside from feeling the millennial shame of that, she’s also unsure of where to go in her life. Dirty White Teslas become the ultimate symbolic insult to those not part of the wealthy scene- a symbol of success not even sufficiently cared for by their oblivious owners.  Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad explores millennial manifestations of faith. In Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad the protagonists’ quest is revealed for what it truly is-  a false justification for experimental self-medication in the face of despair. Her future is made even more impossible by the constant changing of the only place she’s ever known, her home of San Francisco. In an always-evolving world between traditional values and cutting edge technology, social values, and access to an easy life, the main character struggles to survive the search for her identity. 

Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad was also featured at Bay Area Theatre Company’s exciting New Roots Festival this November.  The festival featured Campo Santo as “legacy group”- and the showings were special evenings led by writer Smiley talking through her process, with performances from Anna Maria Sharpe and Tanika Baptiste, while also highlighting the video and sound process for the show from designers Joan Osato and Christopher Sauceda respectively. The New Roots Festival was a great step in the process leading up rehearsals starting in 2024. This exciting world premiere by Ashley Smiley is directed by Raelle Myrick-Hodges, Featuring Campo Santo company of Juan Amador, Tanika Baptiste, Jamella Cross, Guillermo Yiyo Ornelas, Jessica Recinos, Anna Maria Sharpe; with the Collaborative Design Team: Aftasi the Artist, Alejandro Acosta, Cece Carpio, Solomon Casado, Leah Hammond, Tanya Orellana, Joan Osato, Lauren Quan, & Jessica Recinos.

This play starts the Magic Theatre’s 2024 Performance Year. Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad will be followed by a first time Repertory of premieres from Naomi Iizuka, in the first production premiere with Resident Company- Play On Shakespeare. The Iizuka Repertory will feature a new play, Garuda’s Wing, followed in Repertory with a new version of Iizuka’s Richard II. Completing the year of premieres, the Magic Theatre will do a first time collaboration with and at the Presidio Theatre.  Creative maverick Richard Montoya of Culture Clash returns to the Magic and the Bay Area to perform in a new musical storytelling tribute he has written- Jerry Garcia On The Lower Mission.  The Magic is expanding on last year’s thrilling and successful first full year of new programming highlighted by the premieres by Luis Alfaro (The Travelers), Marc Anthony Thompson (The N* Lovers),  and Playwright In Residence Star Finch (Josephine’s Feast.) In addition to these premieres, the Magic Theatre Performance Year will be filled with premieres and projects from the many Resident Companies, including new works from Resident Home Company Campo Santo, the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, ongoing events from the Saint John Coltrane Church, Indigenous Magic from TigerBear Productions, Resident Curator Juan Amador and Resident Poet Tongo Eisen-Martin- and a special premiere from Dar A Todo Productions written by Virginia Grise.

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