Up Next: Acting
Sign My Name to Freedom
The Unheard Songs of Betty Reid Soskin
By Michael Gene Sullivan
Directed by Elizabeth Carter
March 29, 2024- April 13,2024
World Premiere!
How do you chronicle 102 years of life? Flood survivor, racial integrator, World War II defense worker, business owner, activist, revolutionary, songwriter, and… park ranger? Bay Area icon Betty Reid Soskin has survived it all. In this World Premiere musical based on her life, acclaimed playwright Michael Gene Sullivan weaves Soskin’s original music in and out of dialogue between The Four Bettys - Little Betty, Married Betty, Revolutionary Betty, and Ranger Betty as they take us through a century of the Negro, Colored, Black, and African-American experiences of this amazing woman. Conceived by Jamie Zimmer, the production boasts choreography direction by laura elaine ellis, aerial choreography by Joanna Haigood, and direction by Elizabeth Carter.
Shipping and Handling
By Star Finch
Directed by Lisa Marie Rollins
August 8, 2024- September 7, 2024
World Premiere!
A revolutionary world premiere from Crowded Fire & Campo Santo’s Playwright In Residence, Star Finch, Shipping & Handling explores how our humanity will be measured within the soon-to-be robotic-reality. As an audience member, you’ll start at a moment in time and move back; from an afterparty with actors, to a playwright’s experimental talkback, to the performance of the play you’ve been hearing all about, a surreal and beautiful future vision from a
Black Feminine gaze.
Up Next: Costume Design
Choir Boy
By Tarell Alvin McCraney
Directed by Darryl V. Jones
September 24, 2024- October 20 ,2024
Pharus attends the Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys and is the lead singer for their renowned choir. He is not only open about his queer identity, he also questions long-held traditions. With contemporary arrangements of traditional African American spirituals and step choreography, Choir Boy is a brilliant, moving, and uplifting play from Academy Award-winning playwright, Tarell Alvin McCraney. This is not a coming-out story. It's a story about the power of self-love.
The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body
A Theatrical Mixtape to Heal your mind, body, and soul.
By Lisa B.Thompson
Directed by Margo Hall
September 18, 2024- October 6,2024
The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body details an intimate examination into aging and health disparities for Black women as well as capitalism's impact on Black bodies and spirits.
By combining poetic musings, spiritual dance, and a soulful mixtape, this piece offers a community guide as a love song to Black women.
