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In what should be called “the season of Star”- Playwright in Residence Star Finch’s new work! From one of our sister groups, Crowded Fire, a world premiere from this great writer. Inspired by a charged post-show talkback of a play examining Black bodies in media, Shipping and Handling is a taut experience that unpacks the unpacking process. Unfolding backwards in time, we uncover a parallel between actors and Artificial Intelligence, both players embodying another’s words and responding to an audience’s needs. The Afro Future is Now.
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Continuing the Season of Star, Home Resident Company, Campo Santo presents, a new form- a “flay”- a film/play presentation. Star Finch and Campo Santo were in rehearsals to premiere her latest work Side Effects as Shelter-In-Place orders shuttered all activity. Throughout the pandemic, Campo Santo, like others, stepped into this burgeoning form and filmed the play on a sound stage, socially distanced, and have spent the last years completing production. Be the first to see this new piece in a new form!
Featuring: Juan Amador, Regina Monique Lewis, Melissa Locsin, Cathleen Riddley, Emily Serdahl.
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Graphic by an otherwise co.
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Foto courtesy of Juan Amador
New Residency Curator, Juan Amador, will create an intimate musical experience. Gathering a group of musicians working across genres- Jazz, Hip Hop, Vocals, DJing and more- and will create a special musical event experience. Join us as we turn our theatre into a nightclub, jazz club, cross era disco.
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Image by Hunter Nelson
Developed previously in Magic’s Virgin Play Series through leadership with Lorreta Greco and Sonia Fernandez, this is another in a list of plays to premiere through the development series. Miranda Rose Hall just had a play presented at New Conservatory, so the Bay will be getting more of this special writer. In The Kind Ones, Nellie Dougherty is tired of this shit. A lone Montana farmer’s hopes for anonymity are thwarted when a stranger with a flyer arrives on her doorstep. Miranda Rose Hall's caustically funny world premiere, THE KIND ONES, contemplates the role of community and the heart of good and evil when systems fail. Send in the pigs! Featuring: Anne Darragh and Kian Johnson.
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This is a one weekend only event from our new Home Resident Company, Campo Santo. Shelter is a new supernatural and scary audio production, but one that will premiere with a special in theatre experience. Bennett Fisher (Candlestick for Campo Santo and many more plays throughout the Bay and nationally) created this piece in response to elements of fear and anxiety brought out by Shelter-In-Place.
Featuring: Juan Amador, Catherine Castellanos, Brian M. Rivera, Lauren Spencer, with an original score by Saucy and sound design by Christopher Sauceda.
Berkeley native Roger Guenveur Smith returns to the Magic Theatre with OTTO FRANK, a new solo performance inspired by the father of diarist Anne Frank, and scored live by Marc Anthony Thompson. Smith and Thompson presented their Obie and Peabody Award-winning A HUEY P. NEWTON STORY at the Magic and Oakland Ensemble Theatres, as well as CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS 1992 at the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, RODNEY KING at Laney College, and, with Campo Santo, CASA DE SPIRITS, at Yerba Buena. Smith also performed his FREDERICK DOUGLASS NOW at the Hansberry and the University of California, and, with Mark Broyard, INSIDE THE CREOLE MAFIA at the Climate and Theatre Artaud. Smith’s OTTO FRANK is an intimate meditation on our current moment which interrogates our not-so-distant past. His Otto, the only member of his immediate family to survive the Nazi death camps, addresses his daughter beyond her time and his own, navigating loss, adolescent ambition, the denial of the diary’s authenticity, and of the Holocaust itself. Smith and Thompson have devised poetic and sonically driven work which illuminates the Franks’ tragedy and triumph in a new and necessary light. This show will be coming from the Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theatre in NYC. “Roger Guenveur Smith gets it all and gets it brilliantly”- New York Times
Amy studies coral reefs, Constance writes for children's television, Mac mysteriously left a job she loves, and Lina is MIA. Add one epic road trip, four talking sloths, and countless hilarious cartoon bombs and you’ve got Monument, or Four Sisters (A Sloth Play). This world premiere comedy with claws from Sam Chanse asks how to build resilience after unimaginable loss.
One of the most unique and exciting voices in theatre is Sam Chanse. A former longtime Bay Area resident who spent years in the API literary and performance world, Sam returns with this boundary breaking play that was also developed previously in Magic’s Virgin Play Series. This play will be the third of Sam’s world premieres all happening in early 2022. Sam is part of a world premiere at The Public and a new play for The Civilians both happening in New York City prior to Monument. Sisters, Daughters of API Immigrants, Family, Sloths, and all that and more as the title suggests.
Featuring: Rinabeth Apostol, Lisa Hori-Garcia, Erin Mei-Ling Stuart and Sango Tajima.
The historical Lorraine Hansberry Theatre (LHT) presents their second production as part of the new Residency Program at Magic. This will be an intimate production of multi-Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Lynn Notage’s play. This period piece play follows an African American seamstress and her delicate relationships in 1905. Nottage’s well regarded play, to be directed by one of LHT’s long time collaborators, Jan Hunter, was recently turned into a chamber opera at Lincoln Center.
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