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Bindlestiff Studio / Golda Sargento
DarkHeart, a Filipina|x|o Futurism Punk Rock Sci-Fi play, is set in a dystopic diaspora where creativity is outlawed. Mary (played by Sargento), an off-bounder in an authority-controlled corporate kingdom, is arrested for being creative and is detained for Off Planet Work Reprogramming. When Mary’s songs find their way into a rogue recording device during a memory wipe, a special frequency connects her to inner-dimensional entities – Art, Artist, and Heart – with whom she discovers a source of liberating power.
Photo: Clare Adamos
Brava! / Kat Evasco
Be Like Water examines the mental health impacts of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies on undocumented families through the story of Lorna, the matriarch of a Filipino American family of four women. Tension builds as they come to terms with their differing immigration statuses and the lies that Lorna tells to keep her adult daughters in the dark about their “illegal” status. The family is thrown into further turmoil when Lorna’s daughter, Leah, decides to leave for the Philippines to see her estranged dying father, knowing she can never return to the US.
Photo: Mark Marking
Campo Santo / Marc Anthony Thompson AKA Chocolate Genius Inc
Marc Anthony Thompson AKA Chocolate Genius Inc. will write and create the world premiere of The N***** Lovers for Campo Santo, a performance piece inspired by the miraculous journey of the Crafts, a Black couple who escaped chattel slavery in antebellum Georgia, with the wife, Ellen, masquerading as a white boy, and her husband, William, playing her slave! The story was made historical in their book “A Thousand Miles to Freedom.” The piece will be written and shaped for an all-Black company of Campo Santo performers aesthetically owning minstrel and masquerade notions to reclaim history in the modern world and theatre. This follows Campo Santo’s history supporting ground-breaking first-time plays by lead artists from an array of backgrounds.
Eugenie Chan Theater Projects / Eugenie Chan
The Truer History of the Chan Family, A Virtual Vaudeville, spoken in English with Chinese subtitles, explores the impact of America’s legacy of anti-Asian legislation and sex trafficking of three generations of the playwright’s Chinese American family – peasants are sold into prostitution and turned traffickers when legitimate employment becomes impossible. The project exposes the racist policies and practices, and surfaces the pain that drives depression and suicide in a Chinese clan, a long-silenced issue for Asian Americans, while offering hope for reconciliation and healing. This pre-recorded video will be streamed free online and shown in-person at watch parties with community partners.
Eye Zen Presents / Marvin K. White
OUT of Site: Mighty Real in the Haight is a new collaboration between theater company Eye Zen Presents; writer, minister and public theologian Marvin K. White; and community partner SF Heritage. Through an intensive research process and two 3-month theatrical runs over two years, the collaborating team will explore the hidden history of queer ancestor, Sylvester, providing an accessible historical understanding of racial equity within the queer liberation movement in San Francisco’s Haight neighborhood of the 60’s and 70’s against the backdrop of the civil rights and anti-war movements, student uprisings, feminism, and gay liberation.
Photo: Fox Nakai
Golden Thread Productions / Adam Ashraf Elsayigh and Salma Zohdi
Adam Ashraf Elsayigh’s new play, Alaa, in collaboration with Dramaturg Salma Zohdi, is based on the real-life story of the Egyptian blogger, Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who spent much of the last decade in Cairo’s Tora Prison. In 2011, Abd El-Fattah’s writings made him one of the Egyptian Revolution’s leading youth voices. Today, Abd El-Fattah continues to write from solitary confinement, smuggling treatises to the outside world. Elsayigh’s Alaa invites us to bear witness to one man’s struggle for freedom by juxtaposing physical storytelling and embodied ritual with Abd El-Fattah’s words from his recently published anthology, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated.
Magic Theatre / A.M. Smiley (aka Smiley)
DIRTY WHITE TESLAS MAKE ME SAD (DWTMMS) is a performance work written by A.M. Smiley (aka Smiley) about the regentrification of San Francisco and the displacement of Black folks from their neighborhoods. DWTMMS is a testimonial about people and their struggles with hope. The story unfolds over a few days in the life of Sloosh, our protagonist. We follow Sloosh, a young Queer Afro Latina from Bayview Hunters Point caught up in a transcendental rut, as she navigates the City of San Francisco and the consequences of policies that favor new affluence over long-term investment in San Francisco’s most diverse sectors.
Oakland Theater Project / Lisa Ramirez
Chorus of Huertas is a chamber piece that explores the life of California activist Dolores Huerta. Drawing from both the unique activist style of Teatro Campesino and the choreopoetry of Ntozake Shange, the play seeks to offer a highly theatrical and nuanced portrayal of an underrecognized and impactful figure in California, American, and global history. The play aims to empower audiences and renew the activist spirit Dolores cultivated, while paying homage to the revolutionary life she led.