This closure date needs additional citations for verification .(February 2024) |
EXIT Theatre is an alternative theater located at 277 Taylor Street, San Francisco, California, in the downtown Tenderloin neighborhood, and at 890 G Street in Arcata California. The theater operates the two theaters and annually produces the San Francisco Fringe Festival in the City and the Short Play Festival in Arcata.
EXIT Theatre began in 1983 when the founder and artistic director Christina Augello directed a group of retired vaudevillians and method actors in two performances of a new play in the lobby of a San Francisco residential hotel.<
Early plays at EXIT Theatre include Sadie’s Turn (the first full-length play by noted Native American poet Mary TallMountain), Mystery of the Fourth Wall (the West Coast premiere in 1989 of Mary Zimmerman), [1] and Like (the first full production of beat poet Diane di Prima’s 35-year-old sound play). More recently, EXIT Theatre showed plays such as Breaking Rules, Broken Hearts: Loving across Borders (the second solo show by tenure professor-turned-storyteller Ada Cheng) in January 2018.
Recent premieres by EXIT Theatre include Waiting for FEMA by Karen Ripley and Annie Larson, and Guns and Ammunition by Sarah McKereghan. Other new work included mugwumpin's Nightgown Symphony, RIPE Theatre's Arrythmmica and resident playwright Sean Owens' Odd By Nature, selected “San Francisco’s Best Comic Playwright” by SF Weekly. EXIT Theatre toured Last of the Red Hot Dadas by Kerry Reid and Naught But Pirates by Sean Owens to New York City where EXIT Theatre co-founded the FRIGID New York festival. Notable productions by independent theaters at EXIT Theatre included the world premiere of Babylon Heights by Irvine Welsh (of Trainspotting fame) and Dean Cavanagh, a new authorized translation of No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre, the premiere of One Big Lie by Liz Duffy Adams, and an incendiary Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World by Suzan-Lori Parks.
In 1992 EXIT Theatre founded the San Francisco Fringe Festival. The Fringe accepts applications from theater companies and then selects the companies in the festival through a random lottery, without censorship or curation.
In 2023 EXIT Theatre founded the Short Play Festival. Each year EXIT Theatre accepts submissions of short plays from local, national and international playwrights. A committee of Humboldt County theater artists reviews the plays and selects the plays that are presented in the festival with local actors, directors, and other theater artists.
The San Jose Repertory Theatre was the first resident professional theatre company in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1980 by James P. Reber. In 2008, after the demise of the American Musical Theatre of San Jose, the San Jose Rep became the largest non-profit, professional theatre company in the South Bay with an annual operating budget of $5 million. In 2006, it was saved from impending insolvency by a $2 million bailout loan from the city of San Jose; this was later restructured into a long-term loan similar to a mortgage.
Robert Woodruff is an American theater director.
Amy Freed is an American playwright. Her play Freedomland was a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Prince Gomolvilas is a Thai American playwright. He has written many plays which have been produced in the United States and won several distinctive awards, including a PEN Center USA West Literary Award for Drama.
Stephen Adly Guirgis is an American playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor. He is a member and a former co-artistic director of New York City's LAByrinth Theater Company. His plays have been produced both Off-Broadway and on Broadway, as well as in the UK. His play Between Riverside and Crazy won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Gallimaufry Performing Arts is a theater and dance company founded in 2004 in Laguna Beach, California by Steve Josephson, the current Executive Artistic Director.
The Magic Theatre is a theatre company founded in 1967, presently based at the historic Fort Mason Center on San Francisco's northern waterfront. The Magic Theatre is well known and respected for its singular focus on the development and production of new plays. Sean San José is the Artistic Director.
Sharon Langston Ott is a director, producer and educator who worked in regional theaters and opera throughout the United States. Two plays she directed, A Fierce Longing and Amlin Gray's How I Got That Story, each won an Obie award after their New York runs.
Rick Shiomi is an internationally recognized, award-winning Japanese Canadian playwright, stage director, artistic director and taiko artist, and a major player in the Asian American/Canadian theatre movement. He is best known for his groundbreaking play Yellow Fever, which earned him the Bay Area Theater Circle Critics Award and “Bernie” Award. Over the last couple decades, Shiomi has also become a notable artistic and stage director. He directed the world premiere of the play Caught by Christopher Chen for which he received the Philadelphia Barrymore Award Nomination for Outstanding Direction. He is currently the Co-Artistic Director of Full Circle Theater Company.
Rochelle Bass Owens is an American poet and playwright.
Dawn Monique Williams is an American theatre director. She was born in Oakland, California, United States, and is a graduate of California State University, Hayward, San Francisco State University and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2011.
California Shakespeare Theater is a regional theater located in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Its performance space, the Lt. G. H. Bruns III Memorial Amphitheater, is located in Orinda, while the administrative offices, rehearsal hall, costume and prop shop are located in Berkeley.
Simon Levy is an American theater director and playwright who has been the producing director and dramaturge with the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles since 1993.
Carey Elizabeth Perloff is an American theater director, playwright, author, and educator. She was the artistic director of American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) in San Francisco from 1992 to June 2018.
The Transversal Theater Company (TTC) is a nonprofit organization of American and European artists based in Amsterdam. Founded in 2003 by Bryan Reynolds, Lonnie Alcaraz, Douglas-Scott Goheen, and a number of other artists, TTC is an experimental theater company known for creating original performance works that explore charged social, cultural, conceptual, and political realities of today through the combined social-cognitive theory, performance aesthetics, and research methodology known as Transversal Poetics. The products of this praxis or practice research (practice-as-research) approach have been various and far-reaching, including a theory of acting and design aesthetics. TTC has toured productions to festivals and other venues in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, such as to the national theaters of Poland and Romania, Armenia's HIGH FEST, Romania's National Theatre Festival, Sibiu International Performing Arts Festival, and Interferences Festival, the Gdansk International Shakespeare Festival. TTC's core members and contributing artists have included Robert Cohen, Gary Busby, Lonnie Alcaraz, Niels Horeman, David Backovsky, Sky Reynolds, Shira Wolfe, Laila Burane, Christopher Marshall, Saskia Polderman, Luke Cantarella, Alan Terricciano, Christa Mathis, Kayla Emerson, Karyn Lawrence, Amanda McRaven, Michael Hooker, Stan Limburg, Henk Danner, Matthias Quadekker, Babette Holtmann, Mathieu van den Berk, Erik Lint, Alex Hoffman, Sam Kolodezh, Jon McKenzie, Saviana Stănescu, Gosia Lorenz, Emilia Simeonov, Vinnie Olivieri, Sammie Dasia Moore, Jacob Dovan Nguyen, Richard Brestoff, Bob Boross, Oscar Seip, Jessica Dunn, James Intriligator, Jesús López Vargas, and Merle DeWitt III.
Daniel Beaty is an American actor, singer, writer, composer and poet. Beaty is known for his blend of music, movement, and words in such original works as Emergence-See and Through The Night.
Joe Gulla is an American playwright, actor and reality television participant. He is best known for the autobiographical monologues that he writes and performs for the theater. He is a regular performer at Feinstein's/54 Below and Joe's Pub at The Public Theater. An award-winning playwright, his plays have been performed Off-Broadway, nationally and internationally.
The Cinnabar Theater, located in Petaluma, California, is a professional non-profit theater producing opera and musical theatre, drama and a chamber music series in a 120-seat venue, under the auspices of the Cinnabar Arts Corporation. The venue is also home to the Young Repertory Theater, the longest running and largest youth performing arts program in Sonoma County. The company's Music Director is Mary Chun.
Aleshea Harris is an American playwright, spoken word artist, author, educator, actor, performer, and screenwriter. Her play Is God Is won the American Playwriting Foundation's Relentless Award in 2016. In 2023, her play On Sugarland was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Leah Nanako Winkler is a Japanese-born American playwright currently living in New York City. Her play God Said This won the 2018 Yale Drama Series Prize. Her play, Two Mile Hollow, recently won the Francesca Primus Prize. She is a recipient of a 2020 Steinberg Prize in Distinguished Playwrighting.