Our signature program is the 8 Tens @ Eight Short Play Festival, now the longest running festival of its kind in the world. This festival, first produced in 1985, presents sixteen ten-minute plays, chosen from a playwriting contest that typically attracts over 300 submissions from around the world. Plays have been performed in English/Spanish and English/Mandarin.

We also produce two full-length plays each season by local, national and international authors, with an emphasis on plays that address issues of social justice, interpersonal relations and questions of race and gender. Recent plays include; “The Mountaintop” by Katori Hall, a reimagining of the last night of Martin Luther King’s life; “Red” by John Logan, about the painter Mark Rothko as he struggles to maintain his artistic integrity; “Looking for Normal” by Jane Anderson, about a family grappling with a father’s gender identity change.

We present a Young Playwrights’ Festival for Middle and High School students in a three county area (Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Benito) in which students write monologues or ten-minute plays in either English or Spanish.

Other programs include staged play readings and an annual women’s literary event, Celebration of the Muse.