In 2002, PlayGround launched its first full-length play commissioning programs, the June Anne Baker Prize and the PlayGround Fellowship. The June Anne Baker Prize, established by PlayGround supporter John H. Gilman in memory of his late wife, honors the top female playwright each year, representing a gifted new comedic or political voice for the stage, and includes a full-length play commission. The PlayGround Fellowship honors a distinguished PlayGround alumnus and also includes a full-length play commission. PlayGround additionally awards three Alumni Commissions per year to previously commissioned PlayGround playwrights. The resulting new works are presented as public staged readings as part of The Best of PlayGround Festival.
In 2006, PlayGround launched its Commissioning Initiative, through which PlayGround expanded its commissioning efforts to five per year (now six per year) and began supporting full production through strategic partnerships and a co-production fund.
2009 Commissions
Golden Gate Fair by Trevor Allen
An interracial love story, set simultaneously during the 1939 Treasure Island
World’s Fair and in the present. Tamara, a heroin addicted singer
is caring for her elderly Grandmother, Rose in an old Navy housing unit
on Treasure Island. On the last night of her life, as Rose’s mind
slips further and further into the past, she finds an old photo album filled
with lost memories from when she worked as a beautiful bathing beauty at
the Fair and where she met her first husband, a young Latino. As the old
woman tells her stories, they come alive, secrets are revealed and the young
woman reclaims her life and her Latina heritage.
The Secret Rulers of the World Go to Camp by Tim Bauer
After 10 years on the waiting list, an accidental internet mogul finally
joins the Bohemia Club and is invited to their annual encampment of the
most powerful men in the world. Will he discover the vast global conspiracy
he’s always imagined, linking wars, UFOs and the sub-prime mortgage
crisis? Or is Bohemian Grove just a place for rich men to drink, swim and
put on big, drag-filled musicals?
Nightmare Play by Erin Bregman
A father and his ten year old daughter have only each other, so when the
girl begins to share her father’s terrible nightmares night after
night, he struggles to stay awake so she can sleep in peace. A play of nightmares
and the hallucinations of extreme sleep deprivation, reality blurs until
father and daughter can not tell reality from dreams.
Seven Days by Daniel Heath
Seven Days will be a play in seven scenes, one for each day of the week,
telling the linked stories of three couples. Seven Days is an expansion
of the short play Wednesday (2009 Best of Playground festival). Wednesday,
the middle of the week and the middle of the two characters lives, tells
the story of an infidelity; the days and stories that come before and after
will deal with the beginnings and the ends of love, starting on a lazy,
romantic Sunday and ending on a chaotic Saturday night that finally brings
all six characters together.
The Sum of All Parts by Brady Lea
Three childhood best friends reunite in the small town they grew up in.
As teenagers, they got wild in that small-town way, partying, causing trouble
and vowing to leave their crappy little town. Twenty-something years later,
only one has managed to get out, and even he is tormented by the trauma
that haunts them all: In a drunken teenaged game of truth or dare, the three
accidentally blew up a house they all thought was abandoned. It wasn’t.
And they each live with constant reminders of its mysterious occupant.
Truffaldino Says No by Ken Slattery
Truffaldino, son of Arlecchino, in love with Isabella but rejected by her,
leaves the “old world” and his responsibilities in the commedia
dell’arte community behind, and travels to the “new” world.
He discovers the new world is not so far removed from the old world. He
soon carries some important responsibilities in the new world, and falls
in love with Debbie, remarkably identical to Isabella. Meanwhile, the “old
world” discovers it needs him. Truffaldino must make a choice: stay
in the new world and accept his responsibilities there, or come back to
his responsibilities and life in the old world.
All 2009-10 commissions will be presented to the public as staged readings during the 2010 Best of PlayGround Festival, scheduled for May 2010. To sign up for updates on these readings and other festival activities through PlayGround's monthly email newsletter, click here.
For more information on these or other PlayGround-commissioned plays, contact
PlayGround Artistic Director Jim Kleinmann.