Playwright Star Finch Premieres Comedic Drama “Josephine's Feast” at the Magic Theatre
Directed by legendary director Ellen Sebastian Chang, with award-winning Bay Area performer Margo Hall to play the lead
‘Josephine’s Feast’ showtimes will begin August 2nd - 20th, 2023, Wednesdays through Saturdays 8p, Sundays 3p at the Magic Theatre (Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina Blvd., Landmark Building D, Third Floor, San Francisco, CA 94123)
San Francisco, CA - July 18, 2023 - Centered on the bouts of unprecedented change and excitement for a new future, the play Josephine’s Feast is about a Black matriarch who decides to share a pivotal decision with her family over a birthday celebration feast. In the story, Josephine embraces her present reality as a seasoned parent and divorcee in post-pandemic life while discovering her new calling. Powerhouse playwright Star Finch centers the intersection of motherhood, legacy, identity, and spirituality through the lens of candid intergenerational family dynamics. This premiere is directed by theater legend Ellen Sebastian Chang with Josephine to be played by renowned actress, Margo Hall. Co-produced by Campo Santo, showtimes will begin August 2nd - 20th, 2023, Wednesdays through Saturdays 8p, Sundays 3p at the Magic Theatre (Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina Blvd., Landmark Building D, Third Floor, San Francisco, CA 94123). The opening party performance and press opening will take place on Saturday, August 5th at 8p. Tickets are available here.
“Star Finch is an artist, a leader, and a visionary. Campo Santo began working with Star more than a decade ago, and now she is our long time Playwright In Residence. Leading with Star and her writing keeps us connected to our cultural and ancestral roots, and manifests a healing future, civically and culturally,” shares Magic Theatre’s Lead Director Sean San José.
“We need to not only reflect our world, but pose new ways to exist and evolve. Star's work does that. It challenges us in new ways: ways of narrating multi-generationally; ways of listening, where we hear from the inside of the issue, the “problems of the past” mixed with the “newness of the next.” We are excited by Star’s insistence that all collaborators center the Black community in her work and her inherent urge that we operate with a deeper integrity in our art-making. We are most inspired by the ambition for this project to place the Black Woman’s Voice at the center.”
An All-Star Intergenerational Team of Theater Legends
Josephine’s Feast features “the Queen of Theatre in the Bay”- Margo Hall - in the title role of Josephine. The Black six-cast play includes multi-talented actors, directors, comedians, creators and many members of the Campo Santo performance company including: Britney Frazier, Donald E. Lacy, Jr., Jasmine Milan Williams, along with Tierra Allen, and Tre’Vonne Bell. The design team is comprised of: Russell Champa, Tanya Orellana, Joan Osato, Lana Palmer, Brittany White, Kyo Yohena, with graphic design by Osige Creative; included in the Creative Collaborative team are: Dave Gardner, Leah Hamos, Christina Hogan, AeJay Marquis Mitchell, Lauren Quan, Christopher Sauceda.
Dress rehearsal from a scene in Josephine’s Feast. Photo credit Joan Osato.
Surrounded by theater legends devoted to uplifting the next generation of playwrights creates a unique moment for Star to take her career to greater heights. This premiere also serves as a pivotal 30 year reunion in collaboration with director Ellen Sebastian Chang and the Magic Theatre dedicated to extending the legacy of Black Theater in the Bay. With Sean San José, co-founder and Program Director of Campo Santo, and Lead Director of the Magic Theatre, he has amplified its vision to becoming a home to more people by centering Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.
This expansion includes a Residency Program comprising Home Resident Company Campo Santo, resident artists Star Finch and Ellen Sebastian Chang, alongside the historic Lorraine Hansberry Theatre led by Margo Hall - who is also a founding member of Campo Santo. Hailing for 55 years as a prominent local stage with a history that includes premieres of over 200 new works, the Magic Theatre provides a voice to playwrights, develops, and promotes the work of rising and seasoned theater artists. This theater is a place that has helped shape the careers of this team making it a fitting reunion to host this premiere play.
Bay Area’s Rising Playwright
Star Finch is a native San Franciscan, Mellon Foundation playwright in residence at Campo Santo and Crowded Fire Theater, who has blazed a valiant trail of dynamic works. Star gives voice to unspoken narratives that effectively engage the Bay Area community and recently received an inaugural Launch Award from Playwrights Foundation, as an alumni of the Resident Playwrights Initiative (2018-2022). Star Finch represents all that is excellent in the Bay Area. She is a bold Black woman writer in the Afro-surreal aesthetic. Soulful and hilariously human at the same time, Finch is fiercely committed to reaching for a sense of empowerment and freedom with her characters. Josephine’s Feast shows a complex and crafted picture of family onstage. The play follows a matriarch on the verge of a new future. The character, a Black Mother, is ready to make an inspired and somewhat unknown change as she steps into the future. Finch balances issues of legacy and spirituality and family dynamics with great humor and wit.
“This work explores the roles we all play within our families and the chaos that often ensues whenever someone steps outside of their assigned script. The titular character in Josephine's Feast is a middle-aged mother who desperately craves a new adventure, yet she knows that speaking her truth out loud will spark a domestic uprising. This play asks- How long must a mother wait to finally reclaim herself and her time?” said playwright Star Finch.
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‘Josephine’s Feast’ World Premiere Play Production
Show Dates:
August 2 - 20, 2023
*Opening Party and Press Opening on Saturday, August 5, 2023 at 8p
Showtime Days and Times:
Wednesdays - Saturdays, 8p
Sunday, 3p
Ticket Price: $30 to $70 (your choice, All General Admission Seating)
Tickets: Online: MagicTheatre.org Phone: (415) 441-8822
Running Time: Approximately 95 minutes
Location:
Magic Theatre at Fort Mason Center
2 Marina Blvd.
Landmark Building D, Third Floor
San Francisco, CA 94123
About Star Finch
Star Finch is a 2nd generation San Franciscan trying her best to hold ground amidst the erasure of gentrification. She is currently the Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence at Campo Santo and Crowded Fire Theater. She’s also an alumni of the Resident Playwrights Initiative (2018-2022) at Playwrights Foundation. Finch’s plays include H.O.M.E. [Hookers on Mars Eventually] and BONDAGE (Relentless Award honorable mention). Her multidisciplinary collaborations include Campo Santo’s ETHOS DE MASQUERADE (with Global Street Dance Masquerade) and Crowded Fire’s DEATH BECOME LIFE (with Ensemble Mik Nawooj and AXIS Dance Company). Her play BONDAGE is available via Broadway Play Publishing Inc. The Feast was a ritual performance gathering that Star conceived and curated as the first public act of her Mellon Residency with Crowded Fire Theater and Campo Santo. This performance gathering came out of and in response to being in COVID shut down- at that point- for more than a year and half. The event gathered 50 artists together outdoors to celebrate and come together through food and performance. In many ways, the component parts are instilled in this play Josephine’s Feast.
About Ellen Sebastian Chang
Ellen Sebastian Chang is a director and writer. Through her art practices, she advocates for human rights as in her Creative Capital project, House/Full that documents sex trafficking in Oakland. Sebastian Chang was co-founder and artistic director of LIFE ON THE WATER, a national and internationally known presenting and producing organization at Fort Mason Center from 1986 through 1995. In 2015 she collaborated with artist Maya Gurantz to create A Hole in Space (Oakland Redux), an underground public art project. Her 1982 directorial/ writing debut Your Place Is No Longer With Us created in a Victorian mansion, served to the audience a meal of black-eyed peas, mustard greens and cornbread at the performance’s end. Amid work on her artistic practice, she served as the proud co-owner and general manager of FuseBOX Restaurant in West Oakland created by chef Sunhui Chang in West Oakland, California until 2017 when the restaurant closed.
Ellen is a storied figure and a legend in Bay Area Theater history from Blake Street Hawkeyes, in the performing arts, as a director and arts educator whose career spans 45 years. Her current projects include an ongoing collaboration with AfroFuturist Conjure artist Amara Tabor Smith and the Deep Waters Dance company’s House/Full of BlackWomen, a multi-year site-specific dance theater work that addresses the displacement, sex trafficking, and the creative well-being of Black women and girls in Oakland. It is now a special podcast series, co-produced by Ellen with the award winning Kitchen Sisters. She has worked as an arts educator for over 40 years: with technical direction/design classes at the Urban School of San Francisco, Magic Theatre’s Young California Writer’s Program, as an artist in Bay Area Public Schools via Young Audiences of Northern California and for the past 15 years with The World as it Could Be Human Rights Education Arts Program. Back at the Magic Theatre after becoming the first Black Director in 1993; to working again with Campo Santo since directing the premiere of Bennett Fisher’s Candlestick in 2019. She and her husband Sunhui Chang are part of the current Magic Theatre Residency Program and will premiere a new play written by Sunhui, directed by Ellen in 2025 - The Boiling.
She is a recipient of awards and grants from Creative Capital, MAP Fund, A Blade of Grass Fellowship in Social Engagement, Art Matters, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, NEA, Creative Work Fund, California Arts Council, Mazza Foundation, and Zellerbach Community Arts Fund.
About Margo Hall
Margo Hall is an award winning actor, director, activist, educator, and Artistic Director of the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre (LHT). She has graced Bay Area stages for 30 years as a performer and director. She recently appeared in the hit film BLINDSPOTTING with our own Oakland native Daveed Diggs and All Day and a Night on Netflix. She was last seen onstage in Exit Strategy at The Aurora Theater. She just completed an extended run of the first play she commissioned and produced as Artistic Director of LHT. It is Hall’s mission for LHT to focus on Black Women playwrights, and the recent hit In the Evening by the Moonlight, is the first of this new direction. The play written by Traci Tolmaire and co-created by Margo just closed a successful run at the Magic Theatre. Prior to that, during Covid shutdown, Hall directed a filmed version of the play {hieroglyph} by award-winning writer Erika Dickerson-Dispenza for LHT and SF Playhouse. She previously directed Barbecue (which she also starred in) also for SF Playhouse.
Other acting credits include: Marin Theater Company - JAZZ, Skeleton Crew, Gem of the Ocean, Fences and Seven Guitars. California Shakespeare Theater- Good Person of Szechwan, Black Odyssey, Fences, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Raisin in the Sun, A Winter’s Tale, American Night: the Ballad of Juan Jose and SPUNK. American Conservatory Theater - Ah, Wilderness!, Once in a Lifetime and Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet. Aurora Theater - Trouble in Mind. Her writing credits include The People’s Temple at Berkeley Repertory Theater, which won the Glickman award for best new play in the Bay Area for 2005, and, Be Bop Baby, a Musical Memoir, a semi-autobiographical piece at Z Space, featuring the Marcus Shelby 15 piece Orchestra.
She is a founding member of Campo Santo, and has directed, performed and collaborated on several new plays with artists such as Naomi Iizuka, Phillip Kan Gotanda, Sean San José, Octavio Solis Luis Saguar, and Jessica Hagedorn. She is also a professor at UC Berkeley and Chabot College in the Theater Department. Margo was one of the four Inaugural recipients for the prestigious Rainin / USA artist fellowship. This project reunites Margo with director Sebastian Chang after first collaborating - at the Magic Theatre - in 1993.
About Campo Santo
Founded in 1996, Campo Santo is an award-winning new performances group by and for People of Color, committed to developing and premiering new performance works and to nurturing diverse new audiences for the performing arts. The longer-term goal is to model a way to generate new communities of theater participants, creators, audiences and more- rather than singular experiences. Working in this process and model has allowed Campo Santo to have a diverse and dynamic audience and family of collaborators throughout their 25+ year existence.
The multi-cultural ensemble have developed and premiered more than 100 World Premieres pieces with a wide range of writers including Luis Alfaro, Junot Diaz, Jessica Hagedorn, Naomi Iizuka, Denis Johnson, Richard Montoya, and Ntozake Shange, to name a few, and nurturing the first works of writers Sharif Abu-Hamdeh, Dave Eggers, Star Finch,Chinaka Hodge, Dennis Kim, and Luis Saguar. Campo Santo has a new home, as the first Home Resident Company of the Magic Theatre, providing them a community base again after orbiting with residencies and collaborations since their long-term residency dissolved after 15 years with Intersection for the Arts (who remain as their fiscal sponsor.)
About Magic Theatre
Since the company’s founding in 1967 by visionary John Lion, the Magic Theatre has identified and cultivated writers on the cutting edge of American theater, serving as a vital center for the creation and performance of new American plays. 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.
The Magic Theatre has entered a new Golden Age with the appointment of Sean San José as the new Artistic Director in June, 2021. With this new leadership, the team is dedicated to making the Magic Theatre a home to more people by rightfully centering People of Color throughout the organization. While continuing to premiere bold and new plays as it has done for 55 years, The Magic Theatre have expanded the vision with these new programs: new Residency Program- which includes Home Resident Company Campo Santo, the historic Lorraine Hansberry Theatre (Artistic Director Margo Hall), along with Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience (Co-Artistic Directors Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe and Rotimi Agbabiaka), Ellen Sebastian Chang/ Sunhui Chang, Saint John Coltrane Church, TigerBear Productions, and the incoming Play On! Shakespeare; new Performances Program, telling theatrical stories in dance, poetry, and music led by San Francisco Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin; and Resident Artists, highlighted by Playwright In Residence Star Finch and Resident Curator Juan Amador, and designers Russell Champa, Tanya Orellana, Joan Osato, Christopher Sauceda, and Brittany White.
In addition to the new Leadership Team and Staff (Daniel Duque-Estrada, Michael Ferrell, Brechin Flournoy, Stephanie Holmes, Sara Huddleston, Kevin Nelson, Sean San José, Christopher Sauceda, Liam Vincent), Magic Theatre have energetically, artistically, and aesthetically shifted the whole space in ethos and activation, a redesign of the spaces (lobby, cathedral, and theatres, including multiple wall sized murals by local artists Mister Bouncer (Miguel Perez), Cece Carpio from the Trust Your Struggle collective, Adrian Arias, Ka’ala, and a space filled with legendary Black art from the Saint John Coltrane Church by Emory Douglas, Mark Roman, and Deacon Mark Doox. The space is open year round for engagement and entertainment, arts and activation from the plays to the people - the Magic Theatre is Home for bringing the City inside.