YOGA PLAY at San Francisco Playhouse this Spring

San Francisco Playhouse announced casting for Dipika Guha's Yoga Play. This will be its second production following the world premiere during South Coast Rep's Pacific Playwrights Festival. Bill Englishwill direct.

At the top of their game, yoga apparel giant Jojomon is hit with a terrible scandal that sends them into freefall. Desperate to recover their earnings and reputation, newly hired CEOJoan stakes everything on an unlikely plan. Yoga Play is a comedic journey towards enlightenment in a world determined to sell it.

"We couldn't be more excited to be producing another work by Ms. Guha, one oftheatre's most promising playwrights," said Bill English. "Yoga Play has such a sharp and funny script-with themes that mirror real-life events-and is an incisive look at corporate America." The Playhouse previously produced Guha's In Braunau and The Rules in their Sandbox Series of World Premieres.

The cast includes Bobak Cyrus Bakhtiari*, Susi Damilano*, Ayelet Firstenberg*, Craig Marker*, and Ryan Morales.

San Francisco Playhouse's production of Yoga Play is made possible by executive producers Gary & Dana Shapiro and Betty Hoener; producer Peggy Skornia; and associate producers Bruce Colman, Tom & Mary Foote, Nancy Thompson & Andy Kerr, and Eddie Schaefer & Betsy Gilbert.

Dipika Guha (Playwright) was born in Calcutta & raised in South India, Russiaand the United Kingdom. Her plays include Yoga Play (South Coast Rep, Moxie Theatre & SF Playhouse), The Art of Gaman (Theatre 503 London, Relentless Award semifinalist) and Unreliable (Upcoming: Kansas City Rep). Recent works includes Azaan, a play for for Oregon Symphony Orchestra, In Braunau for Playwrights Horizons Theatre School, contributions to You Across From Me (Humana, Actors Theatre of Louisville) and Elizabeth for the McCarter Theatre's Princeton and Slavery Project. Dipika's current commissions include South Coast Rep, Manhattan Theatre Club/Sloan, Barrington Stage and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She was a Hodder Fellow at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, the inaugural Shakespeare's Sister Playwriting Fellow with the Lark Play Development Center, A Room of Her Own and Hedgebrook and is a current Venturous Fellow for her play Passing. Dipika earned her undergraduate degree at University College London, a Frank Knox Fellowship from Harvard University and an M.F.A from the Yale School of Drama under Paula Vogel. For television she's written for American Gods, Paradise Lost, Sneaky Pete and is currently writing for Rainy Day People at AMC.

Bill English (Director) is a co-founder and Artistic Director of San Francisco Playhouse, and in sixteen years with Susi Damilano, has guided its growth from a bare-bones storefront to the second-largest theatre in San Francisco. He designed the first theatre space at 536 Sutter Street and personally reconfigured a barn-like 700-seat hall to our currently gracious and intimate 199-seat venue. Along the way he has served as director, actor, set and sound designer, winning San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle nominations or awards in all those categories. Bill is also an accomplished musician and builder. Milestone accomplishments include bringing Pulitzer Prize-winner Stephen Adly Guirgis to the Bay Area by directing three of his plays, commissioning twelve playwrights including Theresa Rebeck, Aaron Loeb, Lauren Gunderson, Lauren Yee, and Christopher Chen, and developing world premieres from workshops to Sandbox Series to our main stage to Off-Broadway (including the New York productions of Ideation and Bauer), and presenting the very first production of Grounded by George Brant which later played at The Public Theatre. He coined the phrase "the empathy gym" and it drives everything at the Playhouse.

Founded in 2003 and boasting 2800 subscribers, 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.

*Member of Actors' Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers.

Photo credit: Ken Levin