Potrero Stage

Name: Potrero Stage
Address: 1695 18th Street, San Francisco, CA, 94107, US
Telephone: +14159926677
Price range: $
Rating: 4.7

Potrero Stage is a state-of-the-art performance space, operated by PlayGround and serving as home to

Potrero Stage is a 99-seat state-of-the-art performance space located in the heart of San Francisco's Potrero Hill neighborhood, operated by PlayGround, and serving as home to some of the Bay Area's leading new play developers and producers, including PlayGround, Crowded Fire, Golden Thread, and Playwrights Foundation, among others. For more information or to inquire about rentals, email [email protected] or call (415) 992-6677.

01/18/2025

📣JUST ANNOUNCED: PLAYGROUND’S 2025 YOUNG PLAYWRIGHTS CONTEST
PlayGround invites Bay Area high school students, grades 9-12, to submit short plays for consideration in the 2025 Young Playwrights Project (TPP) Contest. The finalists will each receive a professional staged reading of their play as part of the PlayGround Festival of New Works at Potrero Stage and simulcast on Friday, May 23, 2025. Submission deadline: April 21, 2025.

Submission details here: https://playground-sf.org/youngplaywrights/

01/15/2025

PlayGround Solo Fest Spotlight:
Diana Brown in VERTIGO-BUT NOT THE MOVIE by Susan Lily Jackson
2/7 at 7pm, 2/8 at 7pm, & 2/9 at 4pm

Lily reveals her unexpected connection to Vertigo–but not the movie--the chronic condition. Is there humor after being diagnosed? Yes, because now she can’t clean the house: PPPD and all its variations are explored in this informative/amusing/eye opening exposure of what it’s like to be dizzy all the time.

Get Tickets:
https://tickets.playground-sf.org/TheatreManager/1/online?event=390

01/14/2025

PlayGround Solo Fest Spotlight: Tansu Philip in Most Achieved Person
2/7 at 7pm, 2/8 at 4pm, & 2/9 at 1pm

Most Achieved Person is a follow-up to Paratha, exploring familiar themes while charting new territory. In this piece, Tansu once again serves as the narrator, but instead of revisiting her Indian-American identity and travels to India, she invites you into her life over the past two years. It’s a candid and humorous look at taking on too much, burning out, and ultimately finding relief in medication. This comedy emphasizes the value of community and mental health, delivering a relatable and hilarious journey. It also features Bollywood dancing!

Get Tickets:
https://tickets.playground-sf.org/TheatreManager/1/online?event=390

01/14/2025

Playground Solo Fest Spotlight: Lucy London in Grasping at Straws
2/2 at 4pm, 2/8, 2/9 at 7pm

Grasping at Straws: Reflections on an Activist Trajectory explores the contradictions and nuances of changemaking through storytelling, poetry, movement, song, meditation, and community building. Lucy’s performance brings audiences along on her evolving theory of changemaking, from championing individual sustainability in high school as “the straw girl,” to focusing on systems change and living in Indigenous-led resistance camps fighting the Line 3 tar sands pipeline in Minnesota during the summer of 2021. Through sharing these experiences, Lucy hopes to prompt personal and community reflection and collective healing. Grasping at Straws considers the question: how do we recognize our agency among waves of other people’s theories of change, navigate the inherent and ever-present contradictions of changework, and acknowledge our interconnectedness with all things?

Get Tickets:
https://tickets.playground-sf.org/TheatreManager/1/online?event=390

01/12/2025

PlayGround Solo Fest Spotlight:
Miyoko Sakatani in I Wasn’t Always An Asian
2/2, 2/8, & 2/9 at 4pm

Miyoko takes us on a funny and sometimes serious look at what it means to be Asian-American and more specifically, Japanese-American. The performance is a mix of biography, stand-up, storytelling, and an impersonation of an iconic Japanese-American woman. She will take us on a journey of how the Japanese-American’s rose from the depth of exclusion, anti-Asian laws and imprisonment to economic and educational success as “model minorities.” And how Japan’s cultural exports influenced and contributed to the lives of the Japanese in America. She also gives the audience a look into how America’s traditional cinematic and theatrical history deeply influenced her perspective and place in America, and why there are so few notable Japanese-Americans in the performing arts compared to other Asian cultures.

Get tickets:
https://tickets.playground-sf.org/TheatreManager/1/online?event=390

01/11/2025

PlayGround Solo Fest Spotlight:
Steve Harper in SNOW (Black man / White out Conditions)
1/31 at 7pm, 2/1 at 4pm, & 2/2 at 1pm

During a mid-pandemic drive from Reno to L.A., Steve is just trying to make it home (from his husband’s house in Nevada) when a freak snow storm turns the trip into a near-death experience. The journey is harrowing, absurd, thought-provoking and funny, touching on issues of race, loss, grief, death, and loneliness. Snow: Black man. White out Conditions reveals sharp truths about modern life, mortality, faith and what it means to survive.

Get tickets:
https://tickets.playground-sf.org/TheatreManager/1/online?event=390

01/10/2025

PlayGround Solo Fest Spotlight: Ric Iverson in Period. New Paragraph.
1/25, 2/2 at 7pm, & 2/9 at 1pm

This is a follow up to last year’s award winning solo work, Ric Iverson is Alive and Well and Living in Milpitas. Surviving cancer was a huge part of that show. Being recently diagnosed with Stage IV Prostate Cancer, Ric’s just not sure where this new version is taking him…but it’s definitely still a musical!

Get tickets:
https://tickets.playground-sf.org/TheatreManager/1/online?event=390

01/09/2025

PlayGround Solo Fest Spotlight: Ben Chau-Chiu in Lucky Chances
1/26, 2/1, & 2/9 at 7pm

Lucky Chances is a collection of romantic memories and encounters. This piece explores how our views of love, relationships, and intimacy evolve over time as we meet potential, or realized, partners.

Get tickets:
https://tickets.playground-sf.org/TheatreManager/1/online?event=390

01/08/2025

PlayGround Solo Fest Spotlight: Aaron Pang in Herein Lies The Truth
1/26 at 7pm, 2/1 at 4pm, & 2/2 at 7pm

One accident, two stories: one you’ve heard a thousand times, one you’ve never heard before. Falling: a disabled love story is an autobiographical solo show that tells the story of how an accident changed the trajectory of Aaron Pang’s life. When strangers gesture to his cane and ask him “what happened?”, he is unsure of what to say. Faced with a spinal cord injury, this show follows Aaron’s journey to understand this new body in the uncertain world of first loves, online dating, and s*x. The show untangles his own understanding of his body and the stories he tells himself. Part stand-up comedy and part storytelling, Falling is an uncomfortably s*xy and hilariously vulnerable stumble through Aaron’s misadventures searching for love, lust, and life after disability.

Get tickets:
https://tickets.playground-sf.org/TheatreManager/1/online?event=390

01/07/2025

PlayGround Solo Fest Spotlight: Daniel Martinez Jr. in What’s in a Name?
1/26 at 4pm, 2/1 at 7pm, & 2/2 at 1pm

What’s In a Name? is the story of Gregory. He’s in his 30s and has worked hard his entire life to be successful. He wakes up, goes to work, comes home, and repeats. One day, he visits a medium who leaves their clients with their greatest attribute tattooed to their forehead. To his horror, and on the eve of his big promotion, Gregory looks in the mirror to see CUMDUMP tattooed on his forehead. A peculiar situation! Gregory grapples with the consequences of his choice, and the highs and lows of coming to terms with their true nature. This play explores the concept of living your life for yourself and on your own terms, and not living your life for other people.

Get tickets:
https://tickets.playground-sf.org/TheatreManager/1/online?event=390

01/06/2025

PlayGround Solo Fest Spotlight:
Elijah Jalil Paz Fisher in The SKiBiDi M’FiN BiBiDi EXPERIENCE
1/25 at 4pm, 1/26 at 4pm, & 1/31 at 7pm

THE SKiBiDi M’FiN BiBiDi EXPERiENCE is a one-person, musical, and athletic performance that wrestles with the comedic and sophisticated absurdity of modern-day existence through the examination of addiction, expectation, and the English language in an ever-evolving quest for understanding, knowledge, and wisdom. Its form spans multiple genres from an epic poem to a rap waltz to a performance art installation to a contemporary hip-hop dance piece. Most notably, THE SKiBiDi M’FiN BiBiDi EXPERiENCE aims to motivate the audience to look up from their phones and discuss what a cultural reset looks like amongst the middle class.

Get tickets:
https://tickets.playground-sf.org/TheatreManager/1/online?event=390

01/06/2025

PlayGround Solo Fest Spotlight: Jon Gentry in Black Bastard
1/24 at 7pm, 1/25 at 7pm, & 1/26 at 1pm

Black Bastard (Best of Free-Play 2024) is a poignant exploration of identity and becoming, told in phases that move through the intricacies of growing up as the black sheep navigating queerness and fatherlessness in the South. Through literature, clowning, self-discovery, and original song, the production invokes 90s nostalgia in a jambalaya of memoir, embodied character transformation, and socio-cultural commentary. The show confronts stereotypes about absent Black fathers while exploring broader themes of identity, expression, and our collective search for belonging and ultimately home.

Get tickets:
https://tickets.playground-sf.org/TheatreManager/1/online?event=390

01/04/2025

PlayGround Solo Fest Spotlight: Safiya Fredericks in The Birthday Girl!
1/24 at 7 pm, 1/25 at 4 pm & 1/26 at 1 pm

This show has been described as a comical drama/dark comedy/dramedy. It takes place over the course of a day where I am trying to have a celebratory birthday rather than a “spend the day alone” kind of day. In my attempt to do this there is an underlying tone of grief which some years takes more of a front seat than others. “My parents are dead.” Throughout the meticulously planned day there are run ins with various characters, stories of past dates all the while looking forward to a night out with my best friend, which paints a clearer picture of what it’s like to be a single gal navigating life solo. There’s a lot of music sung or played and a simple set would be nice if possible depending on what is available in the space.

Get tickets:
https://tickets.playground-sf.org/TheatreManager/1/online?event=390

12/27/2024

☃Last Chance to stream: A VERY HITCHCOCK CHRISTMAS! 🎅
Originally staged at Potrero Stage, December 7-8, 2024, streaming thru 12/31
Admission-Free (donations gratefully accepted)

Inspired by the Alfred Hitchcock films Rope, To Catch a Thief, Notorious, The Birds, and Rear Window.

Enjoy five hilarious short plays:
"Santa on a Rope" by Shoshanna Green
"To Catch a Grinch" by Daniel Arzola (World Premiere)
"The Sugarplum Trap" by Marissa Skudlarek
"The Birds is Coming" by Jonathan Josephson (World Premiere)
"A Murder at Christmas" by Stan Stone (World Premiere)
Tickets and more: https://playground-sf.org/hitchcockchristmas

12/09/2024

A VERY HITCHCOCK CHRISTMAS is streaming thru 12/31!
Originally staged at Potrero Stage, December 7-8, 2024
Admission-Free (donations gratefully accepted)

Inspired by the Alfred Hitchcock films Rope, To Catch a Thief, Notorious, The Birds, and Rear Window.

Enjoy five hilarious short plays:
Santa on a Rope by Shoshanna Green
To Catch a Grinch by Daniel Arzola (World Premiere)
The Sugarplum Trap by Marissa Skudlarek
The Birds is Coming by Jonathan Josephson (World Premiere)
A Murder at Christmas by Stan Stone (World Premiere)
Tickets and more: https://playground-sf.org/hitchcockchristmas

12/06/2024

"A Very Hitchcock Christmas" is nearly upon us - this weekend only!
Inspired by the Alfred Hitchcock films Rope, To Catch a Thief, Notorious, The Birds, and Rear Window.
https://playground-sf.org/hitchcockchristmas/
Enjoy a peek at our holiday hilarity! The evening includes:

"To Catch a Grinch" by Daniel Arzola
Directed by Linda Amayo-Hassan
Featuring Wayne Wong, Leon Goertzen, Carolina Morones, and Tessa Koning-Martinez

"The Birds is Coming!" by Jonathan Josephson
Directed by Lana Richards
Featuring Maryssa Wanlass, Khary Moye, and Carla Gallardo

"The Sugarplum Trap" by Marissa Skudlarek
Directed by Jim Kleinmann
Featuring Zoe Chien, Brady Morales-Woolery, David Cramer, and April Ballesteros

"A Murder at Christmas" by Stan Stone
Directed by Ely Sonny Orquiza
Featuring James Aaron Oh, Joe Ayers, and Leon Goertzen

"Santa on a Rope" by Shoshanna Green
Directed by Norman Gee
Featuring L Duarte, Zoe Chien, Mark Rafael Truitt, and Emily Keyishian

Staff
Stage Manager: Heather Kelly-Laws
Lighting/Sound Designer: Birttany Mellerson
Props Designer: Dianne Harrison
Costume Designer: Aurie Stetzel

12/03/2024

Potrero Stage: PlayGround Center for New Plays marked its 25th Anniversary in 2024! The innovative space has served as home to more than a dozen small and mid-size Bay Area theatre companies, including PlayGround, Golden Thread Productions, Playwrights Foundation, Bread & Butter Theatre, AfroSolo, American Jewish Theatre, and many more. Your support of our mission ensures artistic opportunities and cultural events for hundreds of artists and thousands of audience members each and every year.

Donate here: https://playground-sf.org/contribute/

12/01/2024

Join us TODAY for the final screenings of PlayGround's FREE Hitchcock Film Festival!

December 1, 3pm: To Catch a Thief (1955)
A retired jewel thief sets out to prove his innocence after being suspected of returning to his former occupation.

December 1, 5pm: The Birds (1963)
A wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people.

Reserve here: tickets.playground-sf.org

Address

1695 18th Street
San Francisco, CA
94107

Telephone

+14159926677

Website

http://potrerostage.org/

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