PLAYGROUND-CHICAGO’S BEST OF 3RD SEASON ANNOUNCED

PlayGround-Chicago, a leading national playwright incubator and theatre community hub, is pleased to share the lineup for Best of PlayGround(Chicago) ‘25. Originally developed among thirty-six new short plays through PlayGround-Chicago’s Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series, these plays will receive a special one-night encore performance on May 5, 2025 at 7pm PT at Theater Wit and simulcast under a unique new media agreement with SAG-AFTRA. Free to stream, watch on-demand, and at the door on show nights (donations gratefully accepted), advanced in-person reservations start at $10. For tickets and more information, visit playground-ch.org/bestof.

The Best of PlayGround(Chicago) ‘25 selected plays/playwrights are:

Holly’s Jolly Christmas by Jessie Bond
Disloyal by Anne Brady
Talk Show Terror by Jae Jenkins
The Last of Its Kind by Juliet Kang Huneke
A Question of Legitimacy by Alex Kingsley
Room 504: Winner by Katherine Swan

Honorable mentions for the 2024-25 season include Vi Chi Sci Fi  by Beth Kander and Triangle by Marnie Monogue.

Plays & Playwrights

Holly’s Jolly Christmas by Jessie Bond
Holly meets a man claiming to be the fulfillment of her Christmas wish… but Santa made a crucial error.

Disloyal by Anne Brady
A conspicuous Revolutionary War widow tries to collect her husband’s pension after his death, but there is one small hiccup.

ANNE BRADY, she/her, is honored to be a first-year Writer’s Pool member. After earning a degree in Creative Writing from Seattle Pacific University, Anne worked as a professional actress and playwright in Seattle before relocating to Chicago in 2012. Her plays have been produced around the West Coast as well as internationally. She studied playwriting with Chicago Dramatists and The Second City and has authored or co-authored over 20 children’s books. She lives in Bucktown with her husband and 2 kids and has an astonishing amount of Bluey committed to memory.

Talk Show Terror by Jae Jenkins
What happens when your dream job turns into a nightmare for your family?

JERLUANE “JAE” JENKINS, she/her, is a local Chicago artist and theatre maker. When she’s not writing she’s busy being the executive director of Perception’s theatre, where the focus is bringing art to Black and brown people on the south side of Chicago.

The Last of Its Kind by Juliet Kang Huneke
The last Javan Rhinoceros and a gay zookeeper bond over waiting and loneliness at a Mississippi zoo.

JULIET KANG HUNEKE, she/they, is a playwright and performer who is passionate about theatre that is larger than life. In 2023, she was awarded the ReImagine: New Plays in TYA grant to develop her new play for young audiences, Hannah and Halmoni Save the World!, with Filament Theatre. Filament is producing the world premiere of Hannah and Halmoni, now running through April 27th. Juliet is also a 24 Hour Plays Nationals alum! Other Chicago writing credits include: Echo’s Inferno (The Understudy), Home for the Summer (Theo Ubique, American Music Theatre Project), Mycelium (Playground Chicago), and Mechanicals (Impostors Theater Co Footholds Vol. 4). Northwestern 2022!

A Question of Legitimacy by Alex Kingsley
A former tax robot consults a robotics lawyer in hopes of gain legal personhood.

ALEX KINGSLEY, they/them, is a writer, comedian, game designer, and playwright. They are a co-founder of the new media company Strong Branch Productions. Their debut novel, Empress of Dust, was published by Space Wizard Science Fantasy in Fall 2024. Their short fiction has appeared in a variety of publications, such as Translunar Travelers Lounge and Radon Journal. In 2023, they published their short story collection, The Strange Garden and Other Weird Tales. Alex’s sci-fi plays have been produced in LA, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Alex’s SFF-related non-fiction has appeared in Interstellar Flight Magazine and Ancillary Review of Books.

Room 504: Winner by Katherine Swan
A teacher that witnesses a school shooting explains what it means to win in America.

KATHERINE SWAN, she/her, is a playwright who lives in Chicago. Her plays include Some Other Woman Like Me, a finalist for the Henley Rose Award and semi-finalist for The Bay Street Theatre New Play Festival, and Act V, which was developed at A Red Orchid Theatre’s Incubator Series in Chicago. Her plays have been performed and developed at The Road, The William Inge Theatre Festival New Play Lab, the Reboot Festival, and other theatres nationally and internationally. Her play Pony was a winner of the Carlow Little Theatre’s 2021-22 International One Act Play Competition in Carlow, Ireland. Her work has been anthologized by Smith & Kraus in their collections Best Ten-Minute Plays and Best Women’s Monologues.

About PlayGround

PlayGround was founded in 1994 by Jim Kleinmann, Brighde Mullins, and Denise Shama, beginning as a professional-academic partnership in residence at San Francisco State University (SFSU) and with initial sponsorship from SFSU’s Creative Writing Program. Early participating artists included Prince Gomolvilas, Garret Jon Groenveld, Daniele Nathanson, Sandra Hunter, Colman Domingo, Kent Nicholson, Antigone Trimis, Mary Coleman, and Rhonnie Washington. The fledgling organization moved to Project Artaud and A Traveling Jewish Theatre’s new 80-seat black box theatre in 1996, at which time Kleinmann took on sole leadership as PlayGround’s founding artistic director.

The company was in residence at Berkeley Repertory Theatre from 2003 until the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and has also presented at the San Francisco Main Library, Freight & Salvage, Zeum, A.C.T.’s Costume Shop, and Thick House, as well as co-producing with such notable Bay Area theatres as San Francisco Playhouse, Shotgun Players, Impact Theatre, San Jose Stage, and Magic Theatre, among others. PlayGround first brought its work to New York City with the 2008 co-production of Garret Jon Groenveld’s Missives, followed by the 2009 NY International Fringe Festival hit co-production of Aaron Loeb’s Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party, 2013 NY International Fringe Festival co-production of Katie May’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl. PlayGround celebrated its 25th anniversary with a one-night program of original short musicals at NYC’s Theatre Row in 2019.

PlayGround’s first ongoing regional expansion came in 2012 with the launch of PlayGround-LA at West Hollywood’s Zephyr Theatre. In 2018, PlayGround-LA relocated to Hollywood’s Broadwater Theaters (home of Sacred Fools Theater Company), where the company continues to present its Monday Night series. PlayGround expanded to NYC in 2021 and Chicago in 2022, with in-person performances (and simulcasts) beginning in the Spring of 2023, at NYC’s Producers Club and Chicago’s Theater Wit, respectively. 

Over its 30 year history, PlayGround has grown into a leading national playwright incubator and theatre community hub, providing unique development opportunities for the Bay Area’s and, more recently, Los Angeles’, New York’s, and Chicago’s best new playwrights through innovative programs such as the monthly Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series, annual PlayGround Festival of New Works, full-length play commissions, playwright residencies and production support through the New Play Production Fund.

To date, PlayGround has developed and staged more than 1,500 original short plays through Monday Night PlayGround and the PlayGround Festival. PlayGround has also commissioned and/or developed several hundred new full-length plays by PlayGround alumni through its Commissioning Initiative, Playwrights Residency and Alumni Programs and, through the innovative New Play Production Fund, has directly facilitated the premiere of 40 full-length plays at theatres of every size, including many that have gone on to NYC and other major theater communities across the country. 

In 2017, PlayGround launched Potrero Stage: PlayGround Center for New Plays, a 99-seat state-of-the-art performance venue to serve as a shared community resource for dozens of local companies and hundreds of artists. New programs in residence at Potrero Stage like the Free-Play Festival, Solo Performance Festival, and Innovator Incubator provide opportunities for local and national artists to self-determine and showcase their work in San Francisco at little to no cost. 

More than 350 early-career playwrights have gotten their start at PlayGround, including Lauren Yee, Jonathan Spector, Geetha Reddy, and Cleavon Smith, helping to expand and deepen the canon of American Theatre. 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, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and New York International Fringe Festival, among others. PlayGround serves one of the largest theatre artist networks in the nation, connecting hundreds of Bay Area, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York artists in support of a common vision: the development of bold and diverse new voices and new works. 

This work has not gone unnoticed. PlayGround has received numerous awards, including Playwrights Foundation’s Inaugural New Play Champion Award, San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle’s Paine Knickerbocker Award for ongoing contributions to Bay Area theatre, and American Theater Wing’s National Theater Grant. In 2016, Artistic Director Jim Kleinmann was recognized by Theatre Bay Area as one of the Bay Area’s top 40 leaders. Three of PlayGround’s commissioned plays have won the San Francisco Bay Area Critics Circle award for Best New Play, and three have had subsequent productions in NYC. Four of the past five Will Glickman Award winners for best new play are PlayGround alumni. When other theatre companies think of producing new work, PlayGround artists are often their first call. As a result of PlayGround’s strong leadership, planning, and a willingness to take bold risks with high payoff, the new play ecosystem has been utterly transformed by PlayGround. For more information, visit PlayGround-CH.org.