History of the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, From Mill Valley to Today
For half a century, playwrights have brought unfinished scripts to a summer festival in the Bay Area and left with better ones. The history of the Bay Area Playwrights Festival runs from a director’s idea in 1976, through August months on a Marin high school campus, to San Francisco stages and a list of alumni that includes Pulitzer winners.
Quick answer
What is the Bay Area Playwrights Festival?
The Bay Area Playwrights Festival is a summer festival of new plays in development, founded by director Robert Woodruff in 1976 and run by San Francisco’s Playwrights Foundation. Each chosen writer gets two readings a week apart. Sam Shepard was among its first writers; later alumni include Annie Baker and Nilo Cruz.
Woodruff, Shepard and a summer forum
The director Robert Woodruff founded the festival in 1976. The American Repertory Theater’s biography of Robert Woodruff calls it “a summer forum for the development of new plays that is still flourishing.” The Playwrights Foundation, also founded in 1976, said it wanted “to create a venue for vanguard playwrights to experiment with new ideas”.
Sam Shepard was among the first writers, and Woodruff’s long partnership with him began there, on a libretto called The Sad Lament of Pecos Bill. For the next five years, the ART biography says, “Woodruff was virtually the sole director of Shepard’s work,” including the first productions of Buried Child and True West. Shepard came back to the festival in 1983.
Julie Hebert produced the first festival, and the Foundation later called it “one of the first new play festivals in the US”; the Chronicle in 2017 called it “One of the nation’s oldest festivals celebrating new plays.” One curiosity: the edition numbers start later than 1976, with the fourth in 1981 and the fortieth in 2017. The safest summary is that Woodruff founded it in 1976 and it has run as a numbered summer festival ever since.
A month at Tam High: the Mill Valley summers
Almost nothing online says that the festival once lived in Marin County. Reviews reprinted on Antenna Theater’s old website fill the gap. In August 1981 Sylvie Drake of the Los Angeles Times reported that “The fourth Bay Area Playwrights Festival concluded at Tamalpais High School here over the weekend,” after “a month-long working session”.
A year later the Mill Valley Record described the festival “bringing writers, directors, actors and stage technicians together for a month of creative synergism in Mill Valley for the third year in a row, and offering an awesome variety of public performances at Tam High throughout August.” Antenna’s chronology places the 1983 festival in Mill Valley too. For the campus itself, see the history of Tamalpais High School.
The early festival took “new plays” broadly. The 1981 bill included Surface Tension by Nightfire, Laura Farabough’s group, and Antenna; the two companies had formed when Snake Theater split into Antenna and Nightfire.
Antenna’s three commissions
Over three summers the festival commissioned three works from Antenna Theater, none of them a conventional script. Each is told in full elsewhere on this site, so here is the short version.
| Year | Piece | What the audience did |
|---|---|---|
| 1981 | High School | Walked Tam High with a Walkman, a former student as guide |
| 1982 | Pink Prom | Danced at a benefit prom while performers followed taped instructions |
| 1983 | Amnesia | Followed memory paths through a slotted-wood maze |
Drake picked High School, the 1981 festival commission, as a highlight: “When it carries to unconventional approaches that work, though, it was hard to beat Chris Hardman’s ‘High School.’” It was performed on campus again in 1982.
Pink Prom opened the 1982 festival as “a benefit for the Bay Area Play-wrights Festival,” with student performers in prom dress following Walkman-cued instructions. Bernard Weiner of the Chronicle enjoyed it, yet wrote: “What this Walkman technique added to the verisimilitude of the piece is unclear.” The Mill Valley Record counted “several hundred” adults who had “dressed up like kids”. In 1983 came Amnesia, shown at the 1983 festival, by the chronology’s account.
How the festival works
The Playwrights Foundation describes the core of it: each writer gets “two readings of their play over the course of two weeks,” each after a week of rehearsal with a director, a dramaturg and actors. The point is to hear a play in front of an audience, change it, and hear it again, so the audience at this new play festival in San Francisco is watching a draft, not a finished show.
The playwright George Brant summed it up for the Chronicle: “to start with a retreat outside the city … and then have your play in front of an audience twice, with a week off in between to tinker.” In 2012 artistic director Amy Mueller put it more simply: “The playwright is in the leadership position during our festival.”
The alumni
By 2007 the Foundation counted “nearly 300 playwrights over three decades,” led by “Sam Shepard (Festival 1) and Nilo Cruz (Festivals 15, 16 & 17)”. That year’s winners included Annie Baker and Samuel D. Hunter. Others on its lists include David Henry Hwang, Paula Vogel, Maria Irene Fornes and Peter Nachtrieb.
At the fortieth festival in 2017, the Chronicle listed “Pulitzer Prize-winners Nilo Cruz, Annie Baker and Paula Vogel, MacArthur Award winner Anna Deavere Smith, Tony recipient David Henry Hwang”. Katori Hall brought The Mountaintop in 2008, and George Brant’s Grounded, read in 2012, later reached Broadway.
The Bay Area Playwrights Festival by edition
The festival left Marin for San Francisco stages: the Magic Theatre for the 2007 anniversary, Thick House in 2012 and Custom Made Theatre in 2017. Its records from 1976 to 1993 are held by the Bay Area Playwrights Festival collection at UC Davis, including “Playwright files, promotional materials, audio tapes, and video recordings”. The editions below are those the sources date; it is not a complete list.
| Year | Edition | Where | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1976 | Founded | Not stated | Robert Woodruff; Sam Shepard among the first writers |
| 1981 | 4th | Tamalpais High School, Mill Valley | “a month-long working session” |
| 1982 | 5th | Tam High, Mill Valley | Third year in Mill Valley; Pink Prom benefit |
| 1983 | 6th | Mill Valley (Antenna’s chronology) | Shepard returns; Amnesia |
| 2007 | 30th anniversary | Magic Theatre, San Francisco | 10 new plays, including Annie Baker’s |
| 2012 | 35th | Thick House, San Francisco | Readings led by the playwright |
| 2017 | 40th | Custom Made Theatre; retreat in Bolinas | 6 plays from 500 submissions |
The festival was one of several that gave Antenna an early stage in those years; another is traced in the history of Spoleto Festival USA.
Frequently asked questions
Who founded the Bay Area Playwrights Festival?
The director Robert Woodruff founded it in 1976. It is run by the Playwrights Foundation, also founded in 1976.
Where was the festival held?
It spent its early-1980s summers at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, and later used San Francisco stages such as the Magic Theatre (2007) and Thick House (2012).
Which well-known playwrights came through it?
Sam Shepard at the first festival, then writers including Nilo Cruz, Annie Baker, Paula Vogel, Anna Deavere Smith and David Henry Hwang.
What did Antenna Theater make for the festival?
Three commissions: High School (1981), Pink Prom (1982) and Amnesia (1983).
All three commissions have their place in Antenna’s full chronology.