THEATREFIRST’S 2018 – 2019 SEASON

Dec. 6th – 22nd

Written by Everybody

Facilitated by Awele, Anthony Clarvoe and Cleavon Smith

Directed by Jon Tracy

After grief destroys the world, three teenagers find themselves the unwilling guardians of humanity’s detritus. Surrounded by the  ghosts of the past, they are forced to become the architects of the future. The People’s History of Next, developed with Bay Area  high schools, colleges, and community centers through listening circles, writing workshops, and media foraging, will be a play that explores ownership of the past, present, and future through one’s relationship to their bloodline.

Feb. 14th – Mar. 3rd, 2019

by Cleavon Smith

Directed by Michael Gene Sullivan

When injustice takes your power, how will you reawaken? What must you leave behind? What might you need to become?

College friends Danielle and Adrian had very different upbringings, yet with a shared love of music, and aspirations to change the world they became music stars on the rise. Just as their second album of socially-centered hip-hop goes platinum, Danielle’s brother is shot and killed by police in her parents’ backyard. Grieving her brother’s death and facing what seem to her as the limits of pop culture activism, Danielle is muted for years. Danielle comes out of her reclusive state with a new name, Sister Imani, and a new spiritualism that quickly leads to the formation of an organization called The People. Around the same time, Adrian wins a seat in Congress and separately the two rise in stature. As Adrian is running a strong US Senate campaign and it seems as if the party of the left can win a majority, The People and Sister Imani are seen as pushing potential swing votes to the right. In their first meeting in six years, with a sense that the fate of the country will be decided in this conversation, Adrian and Sister Imani try to win the other over to their way of seeing the world and the course of action needed for a truly just society.

Apr. 27th – May 19th, 2019

By Geetha Reddy

Directed by Katja Rivera

A Co-Production with Shotgun Players

What do women owe each other? Far, Far Better Things tells the tale of two women – Pilar, a Latina domestic worker, and Zoe, a young South Asian doctor – separated by class, race and the unspoken rules of modern womanhood. During a political period not unlike our own, the two women struggle to balance their responsibilities to their children, to themselves, and to each other. In the end they must decide if they are on the same or different sides of the struggle.