Season 9’s Best of PlayGround-LA Gala
PlayGround-LA, Los Angeles’s incubator for a new generation of playwrights, caps off its ninth season on Monday evening, April 12, with Best of PlayGround-LA, a one-night gala celebration of the best playwrights and short plays selected from more than 150 submissions and 36 works developed as part of the season’s Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s gala event will be live streamed via Zoom on April 12, with actors performing remotely. The Gala will feature an all-star performance of the six Best of PlayGround winners and, at the conclusion of the evening, audience members will participate in the selection of the People’s Choice Award and recipient of the 2021 PlayGround-LA full-length play commission. The event is admission-free (donations gratefully accepted) and includes a virtual reception with the artists following the show. Advance reservations are required and includes access to the live-stream and on-demand viewing for up to one week. For tickets or more information, visit PlayGround-LA.org/bestof. Zoom access information will be sent on the day of the performance. All proceeds support PlayGround-LA’s playwright incubator programs.
Best of PlayGround-LA
The six plays to be presented in this year’s Best of PlayGround are:
Guiding Light by Starina Johnson
We Jump Broom by Mildred Inez Lewis
Courage by Scott Mullen
Underworld by Nicholas C. Pappas
The Speck by Nicki Spencer
Waiting for Umoja by Daysha Veronica
About the Plays
Guiding Light by Starina Johnson
A new look at one of the oldest stories in history that started one of the most popular religions of all time.
We Jump Broom by Mildred Inez Lewis
In the Antebellum South, star-crossed lovers consider their future.
Courage by Scott Mullen
In the midst of a global pandemic, two strangers reflect on their life decisions and regrets.
Underworld by Nicholas C. Pappas
Tensions are high between two rulers of the underworld as they try to help a man process his death.
The Speck by Nicki Spencer
A woman’s interview for her dream job is challenged by an unexpected visitor.
Waiting for Umoja by Daysha Veronica
A family faces old tensions during Christmas dinner as the conversation turns to gender roles, politics, and Kwanza.
About the Playwrights
STARINA JOHNSON (Guiding Light), She/they is a multidisciplinary artist who can be seen in award-winning films such as “West Hollywood Motel” and “Casserole Club.” Theatre projects include Piñata, directed by Stan Zimmerman, and complex[ion] woman, directed by Ebony Gilbert. Starina’s play, Border Towns won SLAM Boston’s Diverse Voices in Theatre competition, and her short plays have been produced across the country. StarinaJohnson.com
MILDRED INEZ LEWIS (We Jump Broom), She/her, writes and directs for theater, radio, film and the digital space. A member of the Dramatists Guild, she writes with the Company of Angels and EST-Los Angeles. She was recently published by Broadway Play Publishing and Next Stage Press. Upcoming play productions from Antaeus, Central Works, Digital Dramatists, and Dragon Egg Productions. Her sci-fi script, “Ruby, Data Point 083a3” is in pre-production.
SCOTT MULLEN (Courage), He/his, is a longtime Hollywood screenplay analyst and screenwriter, a two-time winner of Amazon Studios’ screenwriting contest, whose thrillers THE SUMMONING, IN BROAD DAYLIGHT and BLOOD ON HER BADGE aired on TV One. His short plays have been produced hundreds of times around the world. An evening of his comic plays, A NIGHT OF S.M., recently had a two-week run in Hollywood. This play is dedicated to Scott’s father Don, who passed away in December.
NICHOLAS C. PAPPAS (Underworld), he/him is a playwright, dramaturge, and director. Plays include: Including Shooter (publisher: Playscripts), The Ballad of 423 and 424 (Heideman Award; Actors Theatre of Louisville), Fatty (Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor), and The Dreams in Which I’m Dying (Deborah Aquila Reading Series). Published by Dramatics Magazine and Playscrips. He has directed at San Francisco Playhouse, Moorpark College, SFSU, and others. Dramaturgy: Center Theatre Group, San Francisco Playhouse, Berkeley Rep, South Coast Rep, and TheatreFolk. A graduate of San Francisco State University’s MFA program, he teaches at Moorpark College and is currently in development on several television and film projects.
NICKI SPENCER (The Speck), she/her. After receiving a Master’s Degree in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California, Nicki has worked as a Writers’/Showrunner Assistant on several TV Shows including A&E and History Channel’s “Knightfall,” FOX’s “The Gifted” and “Proven Innocent,” and HBO Max’s Golden Globe nominated show “The Flight Attendant.” In PlayGround LA, she has had several short plays performed on Monday Nights, three plays in the Best Of Gala, and one full-length play commission.
DAYSHA VERONICA (Waiting for Umoja) is a playwright, author, digital media producer, MFA candidate at UCLA and a Television Academy Foundation Internship alum. Her plays have been workshopped/performed at UC San Diego, UCLA, Meet Cute LA, Celebration Theatre, and PlayGround-LA! Her digital work has appeared on Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, BuzzFeed, Refinery29, and The Huffington Post. She is currently under commission with PlayGround-LA. Social: @DayshaVeronica
About PlayGround-LA
The mission of PlayGround-LA is to support the development of significant new local voices for the theatre with a focus on uplifting historically marginalized communities. PlayGround-LA has developed a unique model for identifying and nurturing the best new writers, helping them to build a significant body of original work, and strongly weaving these artists into the family of local theatre professionals. PlayGround pairs early development playwrights with established, professional actors and directors and fosters the artistic relationships that develop.
Each month, a prompt is announced and emerging playwrights in the Greater Los Angeles Area have just four-and-a-half days to generate their original short script in response. A panel of judges selects six winners, whose entries are quickly cast and then rehearsed with the area’s best professional actors and directors in a whirlwind ninety minutes each before being performed as script-in-hand staged readings. Recent topics have included: “Fearless”, “Reunification”, and “Hero’s Journey”.
PlayGround-LA is the first regional expansion of the celebrated Bay Area playwright incubator and theatre community hub, PlayGround. PlayGround was launched in San Francisco in 1994 by co-founders Jim Kleinmann, Brighde Mullins and Denise Shama. In 1996, Kleinmann became PlayGround’s first Artistic Director. Since its founding, PlayGround has developed and staged over 950 original ten-minute plays by 250 Bay Area and Los Angeles early-career writers and has commissioned/developed 85 full-length plays by distinguished PlayGround alumni. In the process of staging those works, PlayGround has helped to identify some of the leading emerging writers and, at the same time, has engendered the creation of a true community of theatre artists, bringing together hundreds of local actors, directors and playwrights. For most if not all of the participating writers, PlayGround is the first professional staging their work has received and serves as their introduction into the professional theatre community.
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, Humana Festival, Sundance Festival, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, and Bay Area Playwrights Festival, among others. Directors and actors participating in PlayGround are among some of the most distinguished theatre professionals, regularly working on leading local stages.
For more information, visit http://PlayGround-LA.org or follow PlayGround on Facebook (http://facebook.com/PlayGround.LosAngeles), Twitter (http://twitter.com/PlayGround_LA) and Instagram (https://instragram.com/PlayGroundLATheatre).