Grantee Database
PLAYGROUND INC
Grant Year
2023-24
Grant Program
Statewide and Regional Networks
Award Amount
$42,500.00
Project Description
With support from the California Arts Council, PlayGround will continue its important work as a regional service organization, providing services to hundreds of California playwrights, directors, and actors through a robust array of programming designed to launch the work of emerging artists, with a focus on uplifting historically marginalized voices through our policies and practices, staff, board, artists, audience, and programs.
PlayGround’s mission is to support the development of significant new local voices for the theatre, particularly those historically marginalized including BIPOC, women, and LGBTQIA+, helping to launch these writers onto the national scene. Funding from the California Arts Council will assist PlayGround in our efforts to fulfill our mission as an arts service organization, serving early-career to veteran artists across California, all working together to create new, daring works for the stage.
Organization Summary
Since its founding in 1994, PlayGround has supported more than 350 early-career playwrights, developing and staging over 1,500 of their original short plays through the Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series and PlayGround Festival of New Works. PlayGround has also commissioned 100 new full-length plays by 65 of these writers through its Commissioning Initiative and has directly facilitated the premiere of 36 of those works through its innovative New Play Production Fund and through intentional partnerships with other producers. The Festival has become one of the most important launching pads for early-career playwrights and their work, leading to collaborations, commissions and productions both in continuing relationship to and often well beyond PlayGround. In 2017, PlayGround added Potrero Stage, a state-of-the-art 99-seat performance space, to its suite of resources in support of new plays and playwrights. More recent programs in service to artists and arts organizations include: the PlayGround Solo Performance Festival, providing a platform for the development of new solo works by California artists; and the Innovator Incubator, fostering the launch of innovative new theatre companies representing the great diversity of the Bay Area.
PlayGround has received numerous awards including: Playwrights Foundation’s Inaugural New Play Champion Award, BATCC’s Paine Knickerbocker Award for ongoing contributions to Bay Area theater, and American Theater Wing’s National Theater Grant. PlayGround’s alumni have gone on to win local, national, and international honors for their short and full-length work, including recognition at the Humana Festival, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and New York International Fringe Festival. Six of the past ten Will Glickman Award winners for best new play are PlayGround alumni. Notable alumni include: Lauren Yee (Cambodian Rock Band), Jonathan Spector (Eureka Day), Vincent Terrel Durham (Polar Bears, Black Boys & Prairie Fringed Orchids & Rella Lossy Award Winner).
Organization
PlayGround Inc
Address
3286 ADELINE ST #9
BERKELEY
94703-2485
County
Alameda
Region
Bay Area – Other
Phone
(415) 992-6677
Congressional District
California District 13
State Assembly District
District 15
State Senate District
District 9
