SF Theatre: Magic Theatre Offers Exclusive Two-Week Streaming of Sold Out February Engagement

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Category: Theatre, Music

Published on Tuesday, 28 April 2020 16:35

Written by Janet Walker

Artistic Director Loretta Greco and Interim Managing Director Kevin Nelson are pleased to announce that Magic Theatre’s National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere Production of Ricardo Pérez González’s DON’T EAT THE MANGOS  will be available exclusively at magictheatre.org.

The production will be available for a limited time only, from April 28 – May 11, 2020. Tickets are Pay-What-You-Can beginning at $15 and can be purchased online at magictheatre.org.

Also, Chapter Two of the new Monday-through-Friday daily podcast series, Far Apart Art, began Monday, April 27, 2020. While the previous installments featured playwrights, the series will now be expanded to include actors, directors, designers and more. The podcasts will be available here: https://soundcloud.com/magictheatresf. Far Apart Art producers are Sean Dunnington, Hannah Meyer and Hunter Nelson. 

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“We hope these intimate visits from afar are providing some connectivity, solidarity and joy,” said Artistic Director Loretta Greco. “Next up: a month of reflections from your favorite Magic actors, directors, designers and special guests! We are also beyond thrilled to let you know that we have (finally) been given permission to make available the archival video of our critically-acclaimed World Premiere of DON’T EAT THE MANGOS by Ricardo Pérez González, directed by David Mendizábal.”

DON’T EAT THE MANGOS takes place just outside of San Juan, where three sisters take turns caring for their ailing Papa. As a hurricane wreaks havoc, secrets are spilled and ugly truths emerge. Confronting their legacy, the sisters wrestle with what it means to stay true to self, familia, homeland and...how to best seek their revenge. DON’T EAT THE MANGOS is a wickedly funny drama.

The cast included Wilma Bonet* as “Mami”, Yetta Gottesman* as “Ismelda,” Elena Estér as “Yinoelle,” Marilet Martinez* as “Wicha,” and Julian López-Morillas* as “Papi.” 

In addition to Mr. González and Mr. Mendizábal, the creative team included Tanya Orellana (Scenic Design), Brynn Almli (Costume Design), Chris Lundahl (Lighting Design), Sara Huddleston (Sound Design), and Libby Martinez (Props Design). Sonia Fernandez (Dramaturg/Casting), Dave Maier (Fight Director), and Shane Spaulding* (Stage Manager).

*Member of Actors' Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers.

DON’T EAT THE MANGOS is approximately 90 minutes long.

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DON’T EAT THE MANGOS was developed, in part, at the 2019 Sundance Institute Theatre Lab and was further developed and supported through a partnership between The Sol Project and Magic Theatre. 

ABOUT RICARDO PÉREZ GONZÁLEZ (PLAYWRIGHT)

Ricardo Pérez González, a queer Puerto Rican writer with bacalao on his breath and Salsa on his hips, recently finished writing on the third season of Netflix’s “Designated Survivor.” After developing Don’t Eat The Mangos at Sundance, his play On The Grounds of Belonging about racially segregated gay bars in 1950s Houston, the first in a trilogy, premiered at Long Wharf fall of 2019. Long Wharf has since commissioned him to write the second in the trilogy. He is also working on commissions for The Public Theater and MTC. Other upcoming projects include “Orlando,” a pilot with Nina Tassler about the Puerto Rican diaspora after Hurricane María.

ABOUT DAVID MENDIZÁBAL (DIRECTOR)

David Mendizábal is a NY-based director, designer, and one of the Producing Artistic Leaders of the Obie Award winning The Movement Theatre Company. He is also the Associate Artistic Director of The Sol Project. Select directing credits include: On The Grounds of Belonging (Long Wharf), the bandaged place (NYSAF), Then They Forgot About The Rest (INTAR), The Maturation of an Inconvenient Negro (Cherry Lane Mentor Project), And She Would Stand Like This, Look Upon Our Lowliness, Bintou (The Movement), and Tell Hector I Miss Him (Atlantic / Drama League Nomination). Member of Latinx Theatre Commons. Alumnus of Drama League, Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, NALAC, & artEquity. BFA NYU/Tisch.www.davidmendizabal.com

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ABOUT LORETTA GRECO (ARTISTIC DIRECTOR)

Loretta Greco (Magic Artistic Director) is celebrating her twelfth and final season as Magic Theatre's sixth Artistic Director. Ms. Greco is proud to have developed, premiered, and championed the country's most innovating and cutting-edge writers, including Taylor Mac, Mfoniso Udofia, Lloyd Suh, Luis Alfaro, John Kolvenbach, Jessica Hagedorn, Linda McLean, Han Ong, and Octavio Solis. Under her watch, twenty of the twenty-six world premieres produced here have gone on to have between two and seventy-one productions each throughout the country and beyond. Magic directing credits include the world premieres of Barbara Hammond’s Eva Trilogy, Ong’s Grandeur, Hagedorn’s Gangster of Love, Sharr White’s Annapurna, and Octavio Solis' Se Llama Cristina. She has also reimagined West Coast premieres such as Sharr White’s The Other Place, Liz Duffy Adams’ Or, and Theresa Rebeck's Mauritius, among many others.   

At Magic, Greco is grateful for her longstanding collaborations with playwrights Sam Shepard, Luis Alfaro, and Taylor Mac. Greco worked closely with Shepard on Magic’s five-year Bay Area Sheparding America series and directed the critically-acclaimed legacy revivals of Buried Child and Fool for Love. She developed and directed the world premieres of Alfaro's Oedipus el Rey, Bruja, and This Golden State: Delano. She produced Taylor Mac's five-hour The Lily's Revenge, the world premiere of Hir, and Associate Produced the West Coast premiere (with Curran, Pomegranate Arts, and Stanford Live) of A 24-Decade History of Popular Music. She has commissioned and will direct Mac's upcoming premiere, Calamity Joy for 2021.

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Her New York directing credits include the premieres of: runboyrun and A Park in Our House at New York Theatre Workshop; The Story, Lackawanna Blues, and Two Sisters and a Piano at The Public Theater; Meshugah at Naked Angels: Mercy at The Vineyard; Under a Western Sky at INTAR; and Victoria Martin Math Team Queen, Touch, and Gum at Women’s Project.  Her regional directing credits include: Sweat, The Realistic Joneses, Speed-the-Plow, and Blackbird at American Conservatory Theater; Life is a Dream at California Shakespeare; Romeo and Juliet and Stop Kiss at Oregon Shakespeare Festival; and productions for McCarter Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Long Wharf, La Jolla Playhouse, Intiman Theatre, Williamstown, Coconut Grove Playhouse, Repertory Theatre of St Louis, Cincinnati Playhouse, and Playmakers Rep, among many others. Ms. Greco directed the National Tour of Emily Mann's Having Our Say, as well as the international premiere at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, South Africa.  

Off stage, Ms. Greco is dedicated to the Bay Area community and developing the next generation of theater leaders through Making Magic: Arts and Community, which includes a decade-long robust cross-curricular partnership with Oakland's Laney College, a season-long competitive professional apprenticeship program now in its twelfth year, and multi-generational residencies throughout San Francisco's underserved Tenderloin neighborhood focusing on legacy, literacy, and performance, now in its third year.  Free Magic matinee performances can be seen at both Laney College and the Tenderloin Museum. With the generosity of developer Group i, Ms. Greco has acquired an additional flexible theater space for Magic to further serve the community due to open as part of 950-974 Market in July 2021.  

Prior to her Magic post, Greco served as Producing Artistic Director of New York’s The Women’s Project, where she was proud to help launch the careers of Liesl Tommy, Anne Kauffman, Lisa D’Amour, and Annie Dorsen, and as the Associate Director/Resident Producer at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton.  She received her MFA from Catholic University, her BA from Loyola University, New Orleans. She is the recipient of Bay Area Critic's Association Awards, two Drama League Fellowships, a Princess Grace Award, a Sundance/Luma Director's fellowship, and the 2018 Zelda Fichandler Award.

ABOUT MAGIC THEATRE

Magic Theatre is dedicated to the cultivation of bold new plays, playwrights, and audiences – and to producing explosive, entertaining, and ideologically-robust plays that ask substantive questions about, and reflect the rich diversity of, the world in which we live. For 53 years, Magic’s belief in supporting the writer’s vision has manifested in a rigorous artistic home where a full body of work can be imagined, developed, and produced. By adding innovative, challenging new voices to the canon, Magic ensures the future vibrancy of the American theatre.

Since the company’s founding in 1967 by visionary John Lion, Magic has identified and cultivated writers on the cutting edge of American theatre, serving as a vital center for the creation and performance of new American plays. The hiring of scholar Martin Esslin as the first resident dramaturg at an American theatre company had a resounding impact on the field.

Beat poet-playwright Michael McClure created 22 works for Magic. Sam Shepard developed and premiered his Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child, True West, and Fool for Love during his decade-long Magic residency (1974-84), forever altering the shape of American drama. Paula Vogel, Soon 3, Athol Fugard, Mark O’Rowe, Nilo Cruz, Octavio Solis, Claire Chafee, Jon Robin Baitz, Anne Bogart, Stephen Belber, Basil Twist, Rebecca Gilman, and many others also called Magic home through the 1990s and 2000s.

Since Loretta Greco assumed leadership 2008, 21 of Magic’s 26 most recent world premieres have received between 2 and 72 subsequent productions throughout the United States and beyond – in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Ashland, Seattle, Portland, Tucson, Minneapolis, Williamstown, Nashville, Boulder, and San Diego as well as Winnipeg, Vancouver, Edmonton, London, and Sydney, and in translation in Seoul and Manila. In New York City alone, Magic premieres from the past decade have gone to The New Group, The Vineyard, Ma-Yi, INTAR, The Play Company, Playwrights Horizons, and The Public Theater.

Magic remains a national leader in new play development through Greco’s commitment to a core group of writers as they build their groundbreaking bodies of work. These writers currently include Lloyd Suh,

Taylor Mac, Linda McLean, Jessica Hagedorn, John Kolvenbach, Sharr White, Christina Anderson, Joshua Harmon, Mfoniso Udofia, Barbara Hammond, and Luis Alfaro.

Magic plays have received numerous honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, Obie Awards, Kennedy Center Awards, PEN-West Awards for Drama, Glickman Awards, Bay Area Critics Circle Awards, Los Angeles Drama-Logue Awards, and NAACP Image Awards. Magic playwrights have gone on to be recognized with MacArthur Genius Grants, Tony Awards, Outer Critics Circle Awards, the Herb Alpert Award, Drama Desk Awards, Harper Lee Awards, Academy Awards, New York Drama Critics Circle Awards, Drama League Awards, Guggenheim Fellowships, Rockefeller Grants, NEA Grants, Alfred Jarry Awards, and many more.

Beyond the walls of our San Francisco performance space, Magic conducts a robust educational program, Making Magic: Arts and Community. A cornerstone of the program is Magic’s more-than-decade-long partnership with Oakland’s Laney College, which establishes a bridge between the college theater curriculum and professional theater practice: Laney students attend designer presentations, rehearsals, and performances at Magic, and Magic playwrights and directors visit Laney classrooms to discuss play content and production. Each Magic production is presented at a free matinee performance at Laney that is open to the community.

Since 2018, Making Magic has also worked in partnership with Tenderloin Elementary School, Southeast Asian Development Center, Code Tenderloin, Antonia Manor, and Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, extending the program’s reach to engage underserved community members of all ages with curriculum that centers around mindfulness, self-esteem, legacy, literacy, writing, and performance. More recently, Magic has added community performances of both main stage productions and additional plays in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, at Exit Theatre and the Tenderloin Museum, expanding access to Magic’s artistic programming.

Ms. Greco recently announced her departure from Magic Theatre at the conclusion of the 2019-2020 season. A search committee is currently being formed to find a new Artistic Director. 

Magic Theatre’s 2020-2021 season features:

MONUMENT, or FOUR SISTERS (A SLOTH PLAY)

By Sam Chanse

Fall 2020

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. 

THE KIND ONES

By Miranda Rose Hall

Winter 2021

Nellie Dougherty is tired of this shit. In a mythic now, 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 Bay Area luminary Anne Darragh. 

THE BROKEN MACHINE
By Liz Duffy Adams

Spring 2021

Ex-coder Mac has fled modern civilization for the coastal woods. With the clock running out she fastidiously composes lists from memory—Endangered Animals, States of Mind, Things Lost—with a wisecracking gray fox as a frequent companion. Beloved by Bay Area audiences since before her Magic smash-hit Or, Liz Duffy Adams returns in this world premiere that asks the big questions through soaring language and physical comedy only she can deliver.

Specific production dates, complete creative teams and casting will be announced at a future date.

SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION:

Subscriptions for the 2020-2021 season range from $60.00 - $300 and are now available for purchase. Subscribing is the best (and most cost-effective) way to ensure your spot on the front lines of exciting theatre. Subscriptions also come with a number of perks: free ticket exchange up until 24 hours before the performance, guaranteed best seating, exclusive pre-show dramaturgy – all in addition to receiving a 35% discount when compared to purchasing single tickets. Current subscribers can renew online or by phone and will receive priority access to their current seat locations. New subscribers can purchase subscriptions and will receive the best available seats within the requested sections.

Subscriptions are available for purchase online at MagicTheatre.org; by calling Magic Theatre at (415) 441-8822. During non-performance dates, the Box Office is open Tuesday through Friday from 11am-3pm. On performance dates, the Box Office is open Tuesday – Friday from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. and two hours before each performance. On weekends the Box Office is open two hours prior to each performance. Magic Theatre is located in the Marina District of San Francisco, at the historic Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (Fort Mason, 2 Marina Blvd., Building D, 3rd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94123). For more information, visit magictheatre.org or call the box office at (415) 441-8822.