The culture of San Francisco is major and diverse in terms of arts, music, cuisine, festivals, museums, and architecture but also is influenced heavily by Mexican culture due to its large Hispanic population, and its history as part of Spanish America and Mexico. San Francisco's diversity of cultures along with its eccentricities are so great that they have greatly influenced the country and the world at large over the years. In 2012, Bloomberg Businessweek voted San Francisco as America's Best City.
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.
Francis Jue is an American actor and singer. Jue is known for his performances on Broadway, in national tours, Off-Broadway and in regional theatre, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area and at The Muny in St. Louis. His roles in plays and musicals range from Shakespeare to Rodgers and Hammerstein to David Henry Hwang. He is also known for his recurring role on the TV series Madam Secretary (2014–2019).
Lamplighters Music Theatre is a semi-professional musical theatre company based in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1952 by Orva Hoskinson and Ann Pool MacNab, the Lamplighters specialize in light opera, particularly the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, as well as such works as The Merry Widow, Die Fledermaus, Of Thee I Sing, My Fair Lady, Candide, and A Little Night Music.
Rajiv Joseph is an American playwright. He was named a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, and he won an Obie Award for Best New American Play for his play Describe the Night.
Tony Taccone is an American theater director, and the former artistic director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Berkeley, California.
The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre is an African-American arts institution located in downtown San Francisco. It is named after Lorraine Hansberry, who wrote A Raisin in the Sun while living in Bay Area. Since being founded in 1981, The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre has mounted productions that have included performances by Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Danny Glover and Ntozake Shange.
The Kite Runner is a stage adaption of Afghan-American novelist Khaled Hosseini's 2003 book The Kite Runner. Aside from sharing the 2003 book as a source, it is unrelated to the 2007 film The Kite Runner. The play was adapted for the stage by Matthew Spangler and premiered at San Jose Repertory Theatre in 2009.
Coraline is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephin Merritt and a book by David Greenspan. It is based on the 2002 novella of the same name by Neil Gaiman. The story follows Coraline Jones, a young girl who discovers a parallel world beyond a secret door in her new home. The world has everything Coraline dreams of, but hides an ominous secret.
Liz Duffy Adams is an American playwright who has written many plays including Born With Teeth; Or,; Dog Act; The Salonnieres; A Discourse on the Wonders of the Invisible World; The Broken Machine, and others.
Jonathan Moscone is an American theater director and arts consultant, having most recently served as a Council member then Executive Director of the California Arts Council under Governor Gavin Newsom's administration. Formerly the Chief Producer of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), and artistic director of California Shakespeare Theater in Berkeley and Orinda, California for 16 years, Moscone received the inaugural Zelda Fichandler Award, given by the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation for his transformative work in theater in 2009.
We Players is a site-integrated theater company based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The company was founded in 2000 by Ava Roy, its Artistic Director, while she was a student at Stanford University.
Joan Mankin (May 16, 1948 – September 26, 2015] was an actor and clown prominent in the San Francisco Bay Area, from the early 1970s through 2014. Mankin started her professional career in San Francisco in 1970 with a production of the San Francisco Mime Troupe's An Independent Female. Thereafter, she appeared in major roles in many Bay Area theater companies including the American Conservatory Theater, Aurora Theatre Company, Berkeley Rep, San Francisco Playhouse and California Shakespeare Theatre as well as the feminist Lilith Theater in the late 1970s early 1980s, of which she was Artistic Director for two years. In 2006 she had a major singing role in the Los Angeles Ahmanson Theatre's production of The Black Rider: The Casting of Magic Bullets.
The African-American Shakespeare Company (AASC) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit professional regional theatre company in San Francisco, California. Since its founding in 1994 Sherri Young has been its Executive Director and in 2009 L. Peter Callender joined as its Artistic Director.
Seared is a play written by Theresa Rebeck set in a restaurant kitchen. Its world premiere was held at the San Francisco Playhouse in San Francisco, California in 2016. The production was directed by Margarett Perry, with Brian Dykstra in the leading role.
Party People is a play conceived/written/composed by UNIVERSES Theater Ensemble and directed by Liesl Tommy, with instrumentation and sound design by Broken Chord and choreography by Millicent Johnny. It was originally commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2009 and premiered at the festival in 2012. The production was then produced at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2014 and later at The Public Theater (NY) in 2016. It is an original work inspired by the revolutionary movements of the sixties and seventies, namely the Black Panther Party and The Young Lords.
Cindy Im is an American actress, most notable for her roles in Manifest, as Hannah in the world premiere of Hannah and the Dread Gazebo at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and as Lizzie Darcy in the world premiere of Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon's Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley at Marin Theatre Company.
Colman Domingo is an American actor, writer, and director.
L. Peter Callender is an American director and actor. Since 2009, he has been the Artistic Director of the African-American Shakespeare Company. He was trained at The Juilliard School.
