Playground, Inc

PlayGround is the Bay Area’s leading playwright incubator, providing unique opportunities for the cultivation and development of early-career local playwrights and partnerships with leading professional directors, actors and theatres. Since 1994, PlayGround has developed and staged more than original ten-minute plays by 250 early-career writers, and is now California's leading developer of short works for the stage. The company has also become one of the most important commissioners of full-length work by new writers, with 94 full-length commissions completed since 2002 and 3 new works currently in development. Over the past 16 years, PlayGround has also directly supported the full production of commissioned works in partnership with Bay Area professional theatres and in 2010 launched the New Play Production Fund (NPPF) to help increase production of new plays by local playwrights. During the past 28 seasons, PlayGround’s alumni have gone on to win local, national and international honors for their short and full-length work, including recognition at the NY International Fringe Festival, Humana Festival, Sundance Festival, and Bay Area Playwrights Festival, among others. In a 2008 Theatre Bay Area Magazine article on the Bay Area’s top up-and-coming playwrights, 9 of 13 were PlayGround alumni. PlayGround was recognized with the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle’s 2009 Paine Knickerbocker Award and the Playwrights Foundation's inaugural New Play Champion Award.