PlayGround Announces 2023-24 Producing Fellows: 8 Next-Gen Theatre Leaders!
PlayGround has announced the 2023-24 Producing Fellows, an expanded class of eight next-gen theatre leaders drawn from across the country and who will work with PlayGround’s artistic staff and producing team on the company’s award-winning incubator programs over the next year in the SF Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. Fellows gain hands-on experience in the fields of Literary Management/Casting, Fundraising/Grant Writing, Theatre Management, Human Resources/Contracts, and Communications, with all fellows getting the opportunity to work in each department. This year’s selected fellows are: Zoe Chien (She/Her), an actor and arts administrator with a BFA in Theatre from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts; Xinyuan Pu (She/Her), a Chinese writer, director and recent graduate of Northwestern University with a BA in theatre, playwriting, and French; Carmia Imani (She/Her), a Chicago-based theatre artist who is committed to advocating for historically underrepresented groups and accessibility and inclusion in the theatre industry; River Bermudez Sanders (They/Them), a Bay Area actor, director, choreographer, stage manager, production manager, teaching artist, and dramaturge with a BFA in Musical Theatre from Emerson; Darius Adamson Jr (He/Him), a multi-disciplinary artist with experience in acting, writing, directing, producing, and design and a recent graduate from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts; Emily Zhou (She/They), a Chinese-American dramaturg, playwright, director, and arts administrator; Christy Spence (She/They), a former intern for multiple talent agencies and film/tv productions; and Julie Lippert-Pasco (She/Her), an LA actor familiar with stage management, lighting, sound, directing, and a registered nurse.
This cohort of up-and-coming producer-artists was curated to reflect the diverse artistic community that PlayGround serves, with a focus on parity and diversity of gender, ethnicity, and sexuality. As PlayGround has grown, so has the Producing Fellowship program. With fellows located in the SF Bay Area, LA, New York and Chicago, this year’s class is the first to represent all PlayGround cities. Together these eight fellows will work part-time with PlayGround under the leadership of Jim Kleinmann (Artistic Director), Lana Richards (Associate Director of Development), Jaque Bugler (Production/General Manager), and the full artistic staff to learn and develop their skill set in the process of theater production, from inception to execution. As part of the company’s ongoing commitment to equity, PlayGround has established a base compensation level of $20 per hour and is continually looking at how to increase support for artists and artist-administrators.
The Producing Fellowship program was launched during the 2019-20 season, just two weeks before California shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. PlayGround maintained its commitment to the new staff members, shifting the entire program online and extending the initial term through July 2021 to help the Fellows weather the challenging economic climate. The inaugural Fellowship class included: Donny Goglio, Edna Mira Raia, Lana Richards, and Chris Steele. Other fellows have included: Bacilio Mendez II, Savannah Greene, Justin P. Lopez, Emlyn Doolittle, and Caroline Portante.
2023-24 Producing Fellows
Darius Adamson Jr (he/him) is a multi-disciplinary artist with experience in acting, writing, directing, producing, and design. Darius is a recent graduate from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and he was selected to serve as Student Speaker at the Tisch Salute ceremony at Radio City Music Hall, where he delivered a message emphasizing the power of community. Darius is excited to enter the professional world as a multi-skilled artist. Darius has proven himself as a creative leader through his work at Tisch, where he trained at Playwrights Horizons Downtown Theatre School and Stonestreet Studios. Darius produced a variety of projects for film and stage— most notably an original play that he wrote, directed, performed in, and produced titled “A Very Special Episode.” Outside of creative work produced at Tisch, Darius served as the president of The Collective, a large student organization that fosters community amongst Black artists across the university. In 2022, Darius was one of eight interns selected to be a part of Black Theatre United’s marketing internship program, where he spent the summer working as an intern at Serino/Coyne. Through the program, Darius was able to take part in a variety of workshops and discussions related to the business of theatrical production and marketing. Darius is very inspired by this current moment of multidisciplinary artists finding and activating the power of their voices to tell a wide range of stories, especially stories about communities and people that have historically gone underrepresented. Darius is proud to be a part of this cultural shift and looks forward to contributing his own work to this movement.
River Bermudez Sanders (they/them) works as an actor, director, choreographer, stage manager, production manager, teaching artist, and dramaturge at companies around the Bay Area including SFBATCO, Hillbarn Theatre, Palo Alto Players, Children’s Fairy Land, the Oakland Theatre Project, SPARC, Townhall Theatre, NCTC, and Theatre Rhinoceros. Recent directing work includes Guillermo Reyes’ Bad Hombres (Theatre Rhino) and the first ever staged reading of Justin P. Lopez’ The Re-Education of Fernando Morales (Townhall Theatre). Other directing credits include Little Women (Emerson College), Legally Blonde (Hillbarn Conservatory), and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Irvington Conservatory). They’ll be onstage next in the ensemble of Ray of Light’s Rocky Horror this October. They are the author of an award-winning thesis that explores the ways Latine artists advocate for equity in the theatre industry. They are deeply invested in creating theatre that openly challenges white supremacy culture in content and process. Emerson BFA Musical Theatre ’20.
Zoe Chien (she/her) is an actor and arts administrator with a BFA in Theater from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she trained at The Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute, Playwrights Horizons Theater School, and the Stonestreet Studios for Television and Film. Zoe is the Associate Director of 3Girls Theatre Company. She feels lucky to be in this industry in a time when so much art is being made in response to our social and political climate. As a woman of mixed-race (Taiwanese and Italian-American), Zoe believes in the importance of representation in arts. She is especially inspired by projects that explore identity and celebrate womxn and other traditionally under-represented communities. Zoechien.com
Carmia Imani (she/her) is a Chicago-based theatre artist who is committed to advocating for historically underrepresented groups and the ever-growing need for accessibility and inclusion in the theatre industry. She is a recent graduate of Ball State University where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre with a concentration in Acting and a minor in New Works for the Stage. Carmia has produced several staged readings, a one-person show, and a short film. Her poetry film about police brutality and racism, “AmeriKKKa,” won Best Film at the Hoosier Films Annual Festival in 2021. She is passionate about embracing discomfort, advocating for radical change, and integrating anti-racist theatre practices into her artistry and work.
Julie Lippert-Pasco (she/her) is excited for the opportunity to be a part of the Playground Producer Fellowship. She originally hails from Maryland where she has been performing since she was a child. Julie is a classically trained vocalist and moved to LA to pursue her love of performing. Since moving to LA, she has been fortunate to have worked on stage, in television, and in film. She has also produced children’s theater and music nights while volunteering for children’s summer camps. Theater is her passion. She’s looking forward to expanding her producing skills in order to create inclusive, expansive, and engaging theater.
Xinyuan Pu (she/her) is a quadrilingual Chinese writer and director who works interdisciplinarily with poetry, movement, music, oral history, and ethnography. She is interested in the intersection of performance, history, and activism. Her plays include 新源, New Spring (Department of Performance Studies, Northwestern University), Project HEAL (Spectrum Theatre Company), A Flower Explodes, and Dragon in the Bird Country. A recent graduate of Northwestern University with a BA in theatre, playwriting, and French, Xinyuan has received multiple research grants to study multiculturalism and human rights issues in China, France, and Morocco. To read more about her works: puxinyuan.com.
Christy Spence (she/they) is a Bay Area native passionate about the arts and diversity within entertainment! She found her love for the behind-the-scenes aspect of entertainment while studying at Columbia College Chicago and went on to work as an intern for multiple talent agencies and on a few film/TV productions. They returned to California at the beginning of the pandemic and are currently working as a Box Office Agent at a Berkeley theater. She is so excited to be part of the PlayGround Fellowship and learn from like-minded artistic individuals! When they aren’t working you can find them attending drag shows with friends and hanging out with their cat, Bandit.
Emily Zhou (she/they) is a Chinese-American dramaturg, playwright, director, and arts administrator originally from the DMV. Incoming Artistic/Literary Fellow at Playwrights Horizons. Former Berkeley Repertory Theatre Company Management Fellow, Kennedy Center TYA Intern, Shakespeare Theatre Company Literary Apprentice, Playwrights Foundation BAPF Artistic Intern. John Cauble National Finalist, The Vivian Play; Gary Garrison Regional Finalist, You Are A Pirate. UMD: Hookman (Jess, Dramaturg), Fearless New Play Festival 2020 (Assistant Dramaturg). Emily is a graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park.
About PlayGround
Founded in 1994 by Jim Kleinmann, Brighde Mullins and Denise Shama, PlayGround has grown into the Bay Area’s leading playwright incubator and theatre community hub, with a deep commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, helping to uplift and center artists from historically underrepresented communities. Over the past 29 years, PlayGround has supported more than 300 early-career playwrights, developing and staging over 1,500 of their original short plays through PlayGround’s signature programs, Monday Night PlayGround and the PlayGround Festival of New Works. PlayGround has also commissioned 100 new full-length plays through its Commissioning Initiative and has directly facilitated the premiere of 34 of those works through its innovative New Play Production Fund. PlayGround has developed a unique model for identifying and nurturing some of this country’s best new writers, while helping them to build a significant body of original work and lasting connections with the artistic collaborators they need to know to ensure their success. PlayGround expanded to Los Angeles in 2012, to NYC in 2021, and Chicago in 2022.
In 2015, PlayGround signed a long-term lease to operate the former Thick House Theater, where PlayGround has produced its festival since 2008. Following a successful $300,000 renovation which included new theatrical lighting, seating, signage, and upgrades to the lobby, box office and restrooms, PlayGround reopened the theatre in February 2017 as Potrero Stage: PlayGround Center for New Plays. In addition to supporting PlayGround’s expanding new play programs (including the PlayGround Solo Performance Festival launched in 2018), the theatre serves as home for some of the Bay Area’s other leading new play developers and producers, including Crowded Fire, Golden Thread, and Playwrights Foundation, as well as up-and-coming companies such as Ferocious Lotus and Bread & Butter Theatre, among others. In 2019, PlayGround launched the Innovator Incubator, fostering theatrical innovation and next generation innovative theatre companies. The program culminates in the annual Innovators Showcase each November, featuring over half-a-dozen new works, from developmental readings to full premieres, by the year’s Innovator Incubator cohort.
Following the closure of theaters due to the pandemic in 2020, PlayGround was one of the first theatres in the country to shift all of its programming online, with the launch of the PlayGround Zoom Fest and a unique partnership with the performers union, SAG-AFTRA. With the return of in-person performance, PlayGround has recommitted to radical accessibility with admission-free programming and online simulcast and on-demand streaming of all performances.
PlayGround’s alumni have gone on to win local, national, and international honors for their short and full-length work, including recognition at the Steinberg Awards, Glickman Awards (including 6 of the last 10), O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, New York International Fringe Festival, and others. PlayGround received the 2009 Paine Knickerbocker Award for outstanding contributions to Bay Area theatre, 3 BATCC Awards for Best Original Script for PlayGround commissions, a 2014 National Theatre Company Grant from the American Theatre Wing (founder of the Tony Awards®) and a 2016 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award.
In addition to its company of playwrights, PlayGround maintains a company of leading local directors, actors, designers and technicians whose work is regularly seen on the top stages of the SF Bay Area, Los Angeles, NYC, and Chicago. PlayGround has actively positioned itself as a hub, bringing together hundreds of individuals and organizations representing the best in local theatre. For more information about PlayGround, visit https://playground-sf.org.
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