About Currency

Currency smashes open The Merchant of Venice and places Shylock at the center of our world, not as a caricature but instead as a reflection of the immigrant, working class, citizens of our port cities. Through a series of theatrical music videos that showcase their unique love of theatre and rap, the multi-talented artists of the Bay Area Theatre Cypher visit the marketplaces of West Oakland, Hong Kong, Managua, Downtown LA, and Venice to connect those “othered” by society with the larger issues of place, race, privilege, ownership, violence, and revolution.

This presentation will include Parts 1 & 2 of a three part series of theatrical music videos. Part 1 was created at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in January 2021 and Part 2 is being created through this Rough Reading Series at Playwrights Foundation.

DelinaDream (she/her, Writer/Performer) is a multi-hyphenate whose work has been commissioned/presented by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, National Performance Network, CounterPulse Theater, The Black Choreographers Festival, LA Women’s Theater Festival, Dance Brigade’s D.I.R.T Festival, AfroSolo Festival and more. She’s toured the U.S. and Western Europe with The Living Word Project and Youth Speaks, and choreographed and danced for Nas & Damian Marley, Kanye West’s Sunday Service at Coachella and Chance the Rapper on SNL among others. Delina recently transitioned into the TV/Film industry, supporting EP’s with shows on HBO, Fox, Hulu, Disney/Freeform, ABC and NBC.

RyanNicole’s (she/her, Writer/Performer) most fulfilling experiences intersect art and activism, using her career in media to empower community. Ryan is featured on Alphabet Rockers’ Grammy-nominated album The Love, TEDx San Francisco, ESPN’s “NBA Christmas” with Daveed Diggs and has performed for President Barack Obama. The California State Assembly-recognized artist is the Founder of The HAVEN Project, a cultural media housing justice initiative, and FITTRIP, a travel fitness and wellness guide. She was Executive Director of Youth Movement Records, where she supported the aspirations of thousands of young people seeking careers in the arts. Ryan has been a playwright-in-residence at New York’s Public Theater through the BARS workshop, and has been selected to present original works for the National Performance Network & National American Musical Theater Festival.

Juan Amador (he/him, Writer/Performer) is an actor, emcee, DJ, and member of Campo Santo. Regional Credits: Between Riverside and Crazy (San Jose Stage); Quixote Nuevo (Cal Shakes); Oedipus El Rey, A Lie of the Mind (Magic Theatre); Candlestick (ACT Costume Shop); Casa de Spirits (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts); To The Bone (Ubuntu Theater Project); Babylon is Burning (Z Space); Superheroes (Cutting Ball Theater). National Tours: Quixote Nuevo (Hartford Stage/Huntington Theatre Company/Alley Theatre); Nogales (Borderlands Theater/Magic Theater); Tree City Legends (Living Word Project). Web Series: East WillyB. Film: Side Effects (Campo Santo). Awards: Connecticut Critics Circle; Grammy Award nominee.

Dan Wolf (he/him, Writer/Performer) is a hip-hop artist who works with rap, theatre, personal narrative, and history to give voice to the problematic world we live in. His multi-sensory work draws its power from years of experience working, teaching, and performing with the critically acclaimed hip-hop music and theatre collective Felonious. His projects have travelled all around the world from concert halls to museums to schools and memorial sites where he engages history and culture as a prompt to make vital music and theatre that can only live in this moment. He is a Resident Playwright at the Playwright Foundation in San Francisco and is the co-founder of the Bay Area Theatre Cypher, a collective of performers who live on the cross fader of hip hop, theatre, activism, and community.

Phil Wong (he/him, Writer/Performer) is a theatre artist, writer, and musician from Oakland, CA aka xučyun (unceded Chochenyo Ohlone land). He is a graduate of Oberlin College, a member of the first Bay Area #BARS Cohort, and received physical theatre training at the Accademia dell’ Arte in Arezzo, Italy. Phil is also co-founder of Bay Area Theatre Cypher. He has been active in his community since he was very young and is constantly working to make his art more conscious, empathetic, relevant, and revolutionary.

Sean San José (he/him, Director) is a writer, director, performer, and co-founder of Campo Santo, a new performances company for People of Color in San Francisco. Founded in 1996, Campo Santo is an award-winning group committed to developing new performance and to nurturing People of Color centered new audiences and has premiered nearly 100 new pieces. He is hyped to return to work with longtime collaborators on Dan Wolf’s piece.

Keith Pinto (he/him, Composer) is a multi-disciplinary artist from the peninsula. He is a graduate of the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts. As Ken Primo he has produced music for The Bay Area Theatre Cypher’s “Episode One: Community” and “8 Bars for the Reckoning” videos as well as 3 “Just the Facts” videos inspired by 2020 California Ballot Measures for KQED’s Ballots and Brews. With Emcee Infinite (Carlos Aguirre) he produced “White Boy, Black Keys, Brown Rapper” a hip hop album sampled from the music of the rock duo The Black Keys as well as the remix album “WhiteBlackBrown – the Remixes”. He is co-founder of the award-winning hip hop band and theatre company, Felonious.

Ashley Smiley bka (better known as) Smiley (she/her, Dramaturg/Production Assistant) is a full spectrum creator with a focus on the living written word. Smiley finds her creative home in the Campo Santo Familia. Smiley is a 2020 YBCA100 Honoree and currently serves as the Theater Manager for the Bayview Opera House. She is currently working on “Oh Really?!” a 12-week radio series with CCA Wattis that will also debut The Dub Notes. Smiley holds a B.A. in Performing Arts and Social Justice (University of San Francisco) and an M.A. in Drama (San Francisco State University), and will begin her doctoral program at the Graduate Theological Union joining the Historic and Cultural Studies in Religion Program with a concentration in Art and Religion. 

About The Great Khan

The Great Khan is either a comedy with dramatic overtones or a drama with lots of comedy about two working-class, Black American teenagers – Jaden and Antoinette –  who are struggling with the same issue: how to grow up Black in a country that treats them like criminals-in-training at best or a runaway slave at worst, a country that sees them as either precocious perpetrators or pieces of meat.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just fulfill the nation’s stereotypical view of them? 

Then Genghis Khan shows up.

About Michael Gene Sullivan

Michael Gene Sullivan (he/him) is award-winning playwright, director, and actor based in San Francisco. Michael’s plays have been produced and performed at theaters throughout the United States, and in Greece, England, Scotland, Spain, Columbia, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Argentina, Canada, Mexico, as well as at the Melbourne International Arts Festival (Australia), the International Festival of Verbal Art (Berlin), The Spoleto Festival, (Italy), and The Hong Kong Arts Festival. 

Michael is been Resident Playwright for the Tony and OBIE award-winning (and despite its name never, ever silent) San Francisco Mime Troupe, where he has written or co-written over 20 plays. He is also a Resident Playwright for the Playwrights Foundation, and was awarded a 2017 artist residency at the Djerassi Arts Center. Michael’s non-Mime Troupe plays include the award-winning all-woman political farce Recipe, Red Carol, his critically-acclaimed one person show, Did Anyone Ever Tell You-You Look Like Huey P. Newton?, and his stage adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984, which opened at Los Angeles’ Actors’ Gang Theatre under the direction of Academy Award winning actor Tim Robbins. 1984 has since been produced nationally (most recently at the Alley Theatre in Houston and national tour with New York’s Aquila Theatre) and in 14 countries around the world, translated into 5 languages, and is published in the United States, Canada, and Spain.

Michael and his wife, Velina Brown, were also recently profiled in American Theatre Magazine: http://www.americantheatre.org/2017/02/14/michael-gene-sullivan-and-velina-browns-political-partnership/

Elizabeth Carter (she/her, Crystal) is a long time Bay Area actor/director. Her theatre credits include You Never Can Tell, Othello, Richard II, for California Shakespeare Theater, The Crucible and The Convert for Marin Theatre Co. where she was nominated for both SFBATCO and TBA Awards, Fences, Joe Turners Come and Gone at Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, Nickel and Dimed at TheatreWorks, Trouble in Mind, Wittenberg where she was nominated for a SFBATCO Award, The Heir Apparent and the acclaimed Eureka Day! Winner of the TBA Award for Best World Premiere and the Aurora Theatre Co. She most recently directed King Lear for SF Shakespeare Festival.

Michael A. Curry (he/him, Jaylen) is currently working towards his MFA at UCONN. He’s grateful to be apart of this reading and would like to thank his family and friends who have supported him along his journey so far. Continue to wear your masks, wash your hands, and doing your best to stop the spread! Follow him on Instagram @Kingcurry0730.

Safiya Fredericks (she/her, Ant) was seen most recently onstage as a company member at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival performing in Hairspray and How to Catch Creation, and was set to do I Get Restless at South Coast Repertory before shutdown. She is the recipient of the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Best Featured Actress for her work in Black Odyssey at CalShakes, and has been seen onstage at Yale Rep, A.C.T, Berkeley Rep, and more. She is featured in the films ‘Sorry To Bother You,’ ‘Bitter Melon’ and the upcoming ‘I’m Charlie Walker.’

Kina Kantor (she/her, Gao-Ming) is beyond honored and thrilled to be joining the Playwrights Foundation.  After living another existence as a cellist abroad, she has since returned to the Bay Area.  Selected acting credits include: Letter #2: Tiny Beautiful Things at SF Playhouse, U/S Leiko: The Great Wave at Berkeley Rep, Nancy Wake (aka Madame Andree): Madame Andree for Stage to Screen Productions, U/S Vanessa: Significant Other at SF Playhouse, Young Playwright’s Project at TheatreWorks, A.C.T MFA production of Las Meninas at the Rueff.

Brady Morales-Woolery (he/him, Mr. Adams) is a Bay Area based actor. Favorite roles include: Andrej in Once (42nd Street Moon), Josh Watson in The Watson Intelligence (Shotgun Players), Paul in Bright Shining Sea (SF Playground), and Paul in Barefoot in the Park (Willows Theatre Company). He originated the role of Mario Savio in FSM, a musical about the free speech movement at UC Berkeley. Onscreen he has appeared in Quitters, Pushing Dead and The Internship. He holds a B.A. in Theatre from U.C. Berkeley.

Brian Rivera (he/him, Temujin) last performed onstage in Campo Santo Theatre Company’s Translating Selena. He made his Broadway debut in the Tony Award winning revival of The King and I at Lincoln Center & subsequently traveled in its First National Broadway Tour. Brian’s other credits include the US Premiere of The Orphan of Zhao at ACT & La Jolla Playhouse, Major Barbara at ACT & Theatre Calgary, Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Yellowjackets, and California Shakespeare Theater’s American Night. Brian can be currently heard in Tales of the Resistance, a series of San Francisco Mime Troupe radio play episodes available to hear at www.sfmt.org, which recorded this past summer in lieu of live work. He can also be heard online in Word for Word’s The Machine Stops. He can be seen as a principal character in the dark Christmas comedy Bitter Melon, available to rent on Amazon Video and Google Play. Brian is a proud member of AEA & SAG/AFTRA.

Delicia Turner Sonnenberg (she/her, Director) is pleased to return to Playwrights Foundation. Delicia is a founder and the former Artistic Director of MOXIE Theatre where she helmed 12 acclaimed seasons receiving The Des McAnuff New Visions Award for “Risk Taking Leadership and Body of Work” and a “Director of the Year” from the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle. She has also directed plays for Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival, San Diego REP, The Old Globe Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Cygnet Theatre, and Diversionary Theatre. Some honors include: Theatre Communications Group’s New Generations Program, San Diego Theatre Critics Circle Awards, Women’s International Living Legacy Award, Van Lier Fund Fellowship (Second Stage Theatre) and the New York Drama League’s Directors Project.

Scott Horstein’s (he/him, Dramaturg) freelance dramaturgy credits include Greenway Court Theater, Native Voices at the Autry, Denver Center, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Rep, South Coast Rep, San Diego Rep, and the Old Globe, among others. He was formerly staff dramaturg for Cornerstone Theater Company. He is currently Professor in Contemporary Theatre and Dramaturgy at Sonoma State University, where he created the campus Arts Integration Program, which brings 2,000 college students to campus arts events each year.

Ashley Smiley (she/they, Production Assistant), better known as Smiley, is currently the Theater Manager for the Bayview Opera House: Ruth Williams Memorial Theater in San Francisco. She holds a B.A. in Performing Arts and Social Justice from the University of San Francisco, an M.A. in Drama from San Francisco State University, and she is an active collaborator and member of the Campo Santo performance collective.

About Shelter

In the winter of 2020, a young Bay Area couple retreat to the Sierra mountains to take shelter from the pandemic and repair their fracturing relationship. When a stranger arrives at their door seeking help after an accident, they are forced to weigh their personal safety against the desire to assist someone in crisis. A radio play for the age of Covid-19, Shelter explores the limits of empathy, the suspicions we have about one another, and the terror of living in a world where threats can take any form.

About Ben Fisher

Bennett Fisher is a member of Campo Santo and the Playwrights Foundation’s Resident Playwright Initiative, as well as a former Artistic Associate and and Shank Fellowship Playwright in Residence at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago.  His plays include Candlestick, Damascus (Samuel Goldwyn Award, BAPF, O’Neill Conference finalist), Borealis (Alliance/Kendeda Prize finalist), Don’t Be Evil, Campo Maldito, and the dialogue for the immersive theater experience The Speakeasy. He is currently developing film and TV projects with Gosh Films, Pandemonium Films, and Constantin Films. He received his MFA from UC San Diego. More at bennettfisher.net

Juan Amador (he/him, Hector) is excited to be reading with Playwrights Foundation again for this great piece. 

Regional Credits: Between Riverside and Crazy (San Jose Stage); Quixote Nuevo (Cal Shakes); Oedipus El Rey, A Lie of the Mind (Magic Theatre); Candlestick (ACT Costume Shop); Casa de Spirits (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts); To The Bone (Ubuntu Theater Project); Babylon is Burning (Z Space); Superheroes (Cutting Ball Theater). National Tours: Quixote Nuevo (Hartford Stage/ Huntington Theatre Company/ Alley Theatre); Nogales (Borderlands Theater/ Magic Theater); Tree City Legends (Living Word Project). Web Series: East WillyB Film: Side Effects (Campo Santo) Awards: Connecticut Critics Circle; Grammy Award nominee.

Catherine Castellanos (she/her, Eunice) In five seasons with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival: Bring Down the House, parts I and II; Mother Road, La Comedia of Errors; Destiny of Desire, The Book of Will; The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Odyssey; Roe(Helen Hayes nomination), Richard II. Bay Area: Associate Artist with California Shakespeare Theatre appearing in 21 productions; Company member with Campo Santo since 2001, creating premiere works with renowned and award winning writers Denis Johnson, Luis Alfaro, Naomi Iizuka, Octavio Solis, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Jessica Hagedorn, Luis Saguar, Sean San Jose, Greg Sarris. Regional credits include: A.C.T., Magic Theatre, Shotgun Players, San Jose Rep, Berkeley Rep, Yale Rep, La MaMa, Arena Stage, Portland Center Stage. Teaching: California Shakespeare Summer Conservatory, Jean Shelton Actor Lab, and restorative justice through theatre art with Community Works West-Rising Voices, and with the men in blue in San Quentin.

Brian Rivera (he/him, Tom) can be currently heard in Tales of the Resistance, a series of San Francisco Mime Troupe radio play episodes available to hear at www.sfmt.org , which recorded this past summer in lieu of live work. Brian last performed onstage in Campo Santo Theatre Company’s Translating Selena. He made his Broadway debut in the Tony Award winning revival of The King & I at Lincoln Center & subsequently traveled in its First National Broadway Tour. Brian’s other credits include the US Premiere of The Orphan of  Zhao at ACT & La Jolla Playhouse, Major Barbara at ACT & Theatre Calgary, Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Yellowjackets, and California Shakepeare Theater’s American Night. Brian can also be heard online in Word for Word’s The Machine Stops. He can be seen as a principal character in the dark Christmas comedy Bitter Melon, available to rent on Amazon Video and Google Play.  Brian is a proud member of AEA & SAG/AFTRA.

Lauren Spencer (she/her, Sophie) is a San Francisco based theater artist focused on art that invites us to grow into right relationship with ourselves, each other, and the environment. She has performed with Campo Santo, Crowded Fire, American Conservatory Theater, Kansas City Repertory Theater, Berkeley Rep, San Francisco Playhouse, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival among others.

Omar Metwally (he/him, Director) is an actor and director. He has performed on and off Broadway and in theaters around the country, as well as in numerous film and television projects. Omar has a long relationship with San Francisco theater company Campo Santo, one of his first artistic homes. He attended UC Berkeley and is a graduate of the American Conservatory Theater.

Ashley Smiley (she/they, Dramaturg), better known as Smiley, is currently the Theater Manager for the Bayview Opera House: Ruth Williams Memorial Theater in San Francisco. She holds a B.A. in Performing Arts and Social Justice from the University of San Francisco, an M.A. in Drama from San Francisco State University, and she is an active collaborator and member of the Campo Santo performance collective.

Miranda Erin Campbell (she/they, Production Assistant) earned their Bachelor or Arts in Theatre Design & Production from Purdue University. She served as a Stage Management Fellow at American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) during the 2017-2018 season and joined the production staff at A.C.T. as the Conservatory Production & Stage Management Coordinator for the subsequent two seasons. Some of their favorite productions to have worked on include Cabaret directed by Amy Lynn Budd, Head Over Heels directed by Michael Mayer (pre-Broadway), Three Sisters directed by Lavina Jadhwani, and Into the Woods directed by Ken Savage. Miranda resides in San Francisco, CA with her partner and two cats, Robin and Ronnie.