Announcing the Fall 2024 CA$H Theatre Grantees
We are proud to announce the following recipients of the Fall 2024 CA$H Theatre Grants. Learn more about CA$H Theatre.
CA$H Performs
CA$H Performs is a $5,000 grant that supports fully produced performances of theatre projects that are open to the public.
Marc Abrigo
Scared Stiff is an anthology collection designed to explore various topical issues through the lens of horror. Inspired by the rich history of Philippine horror mythology, Scared Stiff aims to not only redefine the genre for Filipino and Filipino American audiences, but push the boundaries of what’s possible for live theatre.
Eric Avery
The Pla[y/n] for Reparation$ is a multidisciplinary interactive performance that provides participants an opportunity to learn about, discuss, envision, and practice individual and collective healing. The interactive experience is intended for an audience of diverse identities and opinions whose choices will guide them through various chapters of the piece, much like a choose-your-own-adventure book, punctuated and/or interwoven by discrete moments of performance by Eric Avery, a musician, and self-selecting participants.
Allan Samson Manalo
Staged in theatrical standup comedy form, standup comic and theatre artist Allan Samson Manalo explores his core journey to find his Filipino identity as an American which leads him to Manila, where he falls in love with his soul mate Joyce Juan. Twenty-nine years later he deals with the transformations of grief after losing her to cancer. Samson is calling his solo performance In Bituin, a play on the words “in between” using the Pilipino word “bituin” meaning “stars” to describe the space of his cultural identity as “in between” being Filipino and being American. Bituin was a favorite word of his wife Joyce and now he finds himself looking “between the stars” hoping to find her.
Pinecones and Portals Hiking Theatre Company
Pinecones and Portals Hiking Theatre Company’s 2025 production of Alice in Wander Land builds on their experience of producing immersive, roving, interactive children’s theatre to ensure it will also be accessible to adults and children using wheelchairs and other mobility aids without compromising what makes their productions unique. As a Deaf-led company with disabled company members, they have a strong commitment to expanding access for more of their community to experience their work and feel the benefits of expanding their imaginations and creating lasting memories in the outdoors. Rather than create a new script this year, their goal is to retain the joy of their physical production in a format that can be enjoyed by all.
(Photo of Pinecones and Portals’ Alice in Wander Land)
Baruch Porras Hernandez
Solo performer Baruch Porras Hernandez unveils his Love in the Time of Piñatas Project 2025. Join comedian, solo performer, and writer Baruch Porras Hernandez as he does the next phase of this theatrical solo work blending theatre, comedy, and poetry into one heck of a gay show to inspire immigrants to stop being scared and fight back, exploring not just immigrant joy and survival but immigrant RAGE, with some cute song and dance numbers. The solo performers will explore the parts of the brain that make people hate immigrants, and the parts of the brain that make immigrants hate immigrants. There will be piñatas, immigrant wins, campy performances, and moving storytelling to explore how a fat chubby gay immigrant can inspire all immigrants to rise up against unusually ugly hate.
Monica Slater
Monica and her collaborators, Ben Chau-Chiu and Megan Soledad, are self-producing a production of Two Sisters and a Piano by Nilo Cruz, a Pulitzer winning Latinx writer. There will be live music and moments of heightened story telling. Like a musical, there will be motifs of music and poetry that signpost specific moments for the audience. This play is about how one finds escape and freedom through love and the creation of art, and how one can be so close to that freedom yet unable to pursue it for themselves. The two sisters are guided, sustained, and liberated by their art, and ultimately, by their love for one another.
CA$H Creates
CA$H Creates is a $2,500 grant that supports the development of artistic theatre projects or capacity-building projects not directly tied to a fully produced performance of a piece.
The Director’s Collective
The Director’s Collective is a group of early career directors looking to hone their skill sets and artistic voices through self-organized workshops. Their plan is to create a support system for emerging artists without the pressure of a ticketed performance; a community space where volunteers can come together to network, create art, experiment, receive feedback, and have fun. They will begin with scene study nights with actors, bringing in professional directors to lead short discussions and conversations, and increasing opportunities for local designers by incorporating them into the creation process.
Aidaa Peerzada
Adj Ka Din (Today’s Day) is a bilingual interactive mobile performance project with puppets for toddlers, elementary-age children, and families. Adj Ka Din explores how to build strong social-emotional skills, empathy, curiosity, and patience. Performances will feature short scenes, songs, and interactive sketches that can be performed in an extended sequence, independently, or broken up by other activities. The show includes five puppet characters that will act alongside adult non-puppet characters who will be interchangeably played by the creators, father and daughter team Aidaa and Imraan Peerzada. During dialogue and songs, characters switch back and forth between Hindi/Urdu and English, working to normalize multi-lingual families for kids in the South Asian Diaspora. At the same time, through multi-lingual expression, Adj Ka Din presents something that all English-speaking children can understand, normalizing the presence of non-English languages for all.
Lisa Sniderman
The Grieving Project is a hybrid, disability-centered musical blending live and virtual theatre to make performances accessible to chronically ill and disabled communities. Using immersive technology, The Grieving Project bridges physical and virtual spaces with a virtual lobby, interactive elements, and live-streamed performances. Set before the pandemic, The Grieving Project follows four disabled artists competing on “Disabled’s Got Talent” in Indiana. Battling physical/mental illnesses, they navigate transformation and grief through competition rounds. When the pandemic halts the contest, Lis, a game developer, leads them to continue in Wonderhaven, her virtual carnival-game. Each character must confront their heart—through love, acceptance, or darkness—finding only by facing their true selves can they embrace their dreams.
(Photo via Washington Post, credit Jessica Wallach. Suzanne Richard, the artistic director of Open Circle Theatre in D.C., talks with Lisa Sniderman, who is participating remotely through a robot.)
Phaedra Tillery Boughton
Tillery Boughton is producing a work-in-progress production of her play, SistaFriend, followed by a talk-back session. SistaFriend explores themes of Black women uniting to cook, commune, and heal. Tillery Boughton plans for this showing to embody those very themes, creating an environment that reflects the spirit of the play. Her goal is to gather at least 50 Black women at the event, inviting community organizers, leaders, and fellow artists to ensure the feedback is rich and authentic.
Livian Yeh and Ely Sonny Orquiza
Fresh American Sharks focuses on the women detained on Angel Island in 1925, the wives of Chinese laborers whose names and stories are frequently superseded by other identities. Their immigration journeys are tied to their identities as wives, and they’re often footnotes in their husbands’ immigration and civil rights stories. Yeh and Orquiza plan to develop a full-length version of Yeh’s ten-minute solo piece, highlighting the diversity of the women. To be American is to be hyper-aware of who’s kept in or out, and this tension between who can be part of this nation of immigrations continues a century later.
CA$H Sustains
CA$H Sustains is a $5,000 grant that supports the general operating costs of a Bay Area theatre company.
ArtPärdē
ArtPärdē is a dance, theatre, and performing arts non-profit that promotes community-based artists for curated performances and residencies in all artistic mediums. The artistic vision for curation centers around experimental ideas from diverse artists with the majority of proceeds funding the artists and future performances. ArtPärdē serves as a window into the diverse San Francisco arts community, creating a meeting place to entertain and educate the public on current cultural topics while also fostering artist cross-collaboration.
Awesome Theatre
Awesome Theatre is a 501(c)(3) Non-Profit Arts Organization based in San Francisco, CA. They are dedicated to producing new, relevant, stylized, theatrical, live multimedia entertainment that appeals to people who never thought they’d like theatre (or that they’d feel welcome) and also is a breath of fresh air to even the most regular theatregoer. They strive to create work that is fun, accessible, creative, unique, and knowing without being pretentious. They are committed to creating opportunities for emerging artists and exclusively producing new plays by local writers. Every artist they work with is encouraged to be creative, try different things, and be weird. Awesome Theatre’s goal is to create a lasting and original adventure for every audience member and collaborator, a shared escapade of experience that is often timely and poignant while indulging our human need for fun, escapist entertainment.
Fuse Theatre
Fuse Theatre creates meaningful theatre experiences that expand perspectives, connect communities, and foster civic engagement. Fuse Theatre is based in San Mateo County and Alameda County, but has performed all over the Bay Area and beyond.
La Lengua Teatro en Español
La Lengua de-centers the English language and promotes language equity for theatre artists, playwrights, and audiences. They provide a space to create and perform theatre in Spanish in the San Francisco Bay Area, give Spanish-speaking artists paid professional opportunities to practice their craft, bring contemporary Latin American theatre to the US, and commission and produce original work in the different languages of the Americas. They give audiences of all backgrounds the unique opportunity to experience pieces in their original Spanish, always with English translations. Beyond its core objective of fostering language equity, two other core principles of La Lengua are to prioritize the representation of women and people of color in all aspects of theatre-making and to always financially compensate artists for their work.
(Photo of La Lengua’s Doméstica Realidad, credit Constanza Hevia H.)
More Más Marami Arts
More Más Marami Arts develops and creates new works with emerging artists through creative collaborations and community engagement. They create theatre in community, for community. More Más Marami Arts is based in the South Bay.
Play Cafe
Play Cafe is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support the creation and development of new works by San Francisco Bay Area playwrights and theatre composers. Play Cafe is based in Berkeley, CA.
Plethos Productions
Plethos Productions uses theatre as a tool to unite communities and create opportunities for unheard voices, untold stories, and reimagined classics. They believe everyone should have access to live performing arts that are affordable, local, and representative of the community. Plethos Productions is a hyperlocal-focused organization dedicated to a five-city area in Alameda County. Between Castro Valley, Hayward, San Leandro, San Lorenzo, and Union City, there are fewer than one community theatre per city. Plethos Productions aims to fill that gap.
San Francisco Recovery Theatre
The San Francisco Recovery Theatre (SFRT) is a community-based organization that leverages its founders and prolific actor volunteers as well as its partners to provide vulnerable community members with access to theatrical arts training, paid experience, and career mentorship. SFRT’s mission is to meet people where they are, to provide them with a medium of communication, and to deliver a message of hope, consequences, and solutions. Their team consists of natives to San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, where homelessness, poverty, drugs, and the misfortunate have congregated due to poor infrastructure and a lack of systemic city support. SFRT focuses on the issues, concerns, and events of the Tenderloin community. While many people are still battling substance abuse, mental health, or housing problems, it becomes a formidable task for Recovery Theatre to assist those in need to transcend them to a healthier, progressively positive life.
Fall 2024 CA$H Panelists
Jax Blaska, Creates & Performs
Jax Blaska (they/them) is a queer creative maker with an emphasis in theatre direction, dramaturgy, and production management. Their collaborations span devised theatre, immersive experiences, dance, installation, and performance art, and they’ve worked with companies such as Cutting Ball Theater, EyeZen Presents, Detour Productions, FACT/SF, Take 3 Presents, and Walking Cinema. Jax holds a BA with honors from Yale University and is proud to be a born-and-raised San Franciscan. Their original immersive musical Wonderland, about cults, artist communities, folk music, and the climate crisis will be developed in residence at the Winslow House Project next year.
Esther de Monteflores, Creates & Performs
Esther de Monteflores (she/her) is a performing artist and arts administrator based in San Francisco, CA. Esther has toured extensively, performing and creating work in circus, puppetry, and physical theater. As an arts administrator, Esther has worked with organizations in circus, theater, film, architecture, music, dance, and opera. Esther is the office manager at the Medical Clown Project, and she can be seen onstage this winter in Circus Bella’s Kaleidoscope.
Lauren Doyle, Creates & Performs
Lauren Doyle (they/she) is a disabled, neurodivergent, and queer playwright, actor, and director who works primarily in the South Bay. They are a collaborative team member of More Más Marami Arts and serve on the Advisory Council of Silicon Valley Shakespeare‘s Board of Directors. Lauren’s scripts tackle themes and subjects including fantasy and horror, women’s health, mental health, LGBTQIA+ stories, disability stories, and the supernatural. They really like cats . . . a lot.
LeShawn Holcomb, Sustains
LeShawn Holcomb (he/him) is an educator/artist in Marin, CA. Serving as Dean of Students at Tamalpais High School, he fosters belonging within a diverse community. As Artistic Director of Griot Theater Company, he promotes equity for students of color through intergenerational theater and entrepreneurial leadership. Holcomb holds a BA in Human Services from CSUF and an MA in Urban Education from USF. He aims to bridge education and theater for healing and social change.
Sinjin Jones, Sustains
Sinjin Jones(he/him) is a storytelling artist and the outgoing Executive Artistic Director of The Pear Theatre. Over the past five years, he’s been honored to direct many productions and design for many more. He loves the intersection point of media forms and the intimacy of theatre. You can find information about him at www.SinjinJones.com or explore the intersection point of media at www.FoundryofAether.com.
Nicole Jost, Sustains
Nicole Jost (she/her) is a playwright, theatre producer, and educator. For six years, she and Syr Beker ran Queer Cat Productions, a queer theater company dedicated to consent-forward, accessible, and immersive experiences. With Queer Cat, Nicole is the co-writer of four interactive plays, including THE GAY DIVORCE PLAY (Potrero Stage, 2019) and FELIX B. LOVE IS NOT ALONE! (virtual, April 2020). Nicole has been writing plays for nearly fifteen years, and she’s currently working on her first musical: LOVE U. It’s a rom-com about lies, love, and college, and it’s full of queer joy. Learn more at grabmeierandjost.com or follow @grabmeierandjost.
Rebecca Pingree, Sustains
Rebecca Pingree (she/her) holds an MFA in Collaborative Theatre Making from Rose Bruford in London and co-founded the SF-based Analog Theatre Collective.Recent acting credits include Dromio in Comedy of Errors at Marin Shakespeare, Molly in Jacob Marx Rice’s A Thousand Natural Shocks at PlayGround, As You Like It with SF Shakes on Tour, May in Anthony Clarvoe’s People Where They Are at San Jose Stage, Sulla/Alquist in Chris Steele’s adaptation of R.U.R. at Cutting Ball, and Judith in Lauren Smerkanich’s The Dignity Circle at Central Works. She is a longtime member of PlayGround’s Acting Company, a regular deviser/performer for Analog Theatre’s Mask Monday series at Standard Deviant Brewing, and, whenever possible, you can find her prototyping masks and puppets at the Compound Gallery Studios in Emeryville.
Veneita Porter, Creates & Performs
Veneita Porter (she/her) spans well over 50 years of work on stage, screen, and film. She is a long-time resident of the Bay Area theatre community. She is a hard worker and a full-bodied actor who enjoys doing original work as well as the classics. Her nickname is “the Black Judi Dench.”
Tanya Telson, Creates & Performs
Tanya Telson (she/her) was recently a Communications Director for 3Girls Theatre Company and is currently part of the Stage Management team at Club Fugazi for the circus show, Dear San Francisco. Past collaborations include Gravity (SFBATCO), The Pajama Game, Snoopy!!!, and Sugar (42nd Street Moon), Jerry Springer the Opera, Baby (Ray of Light Theatre). She is a member of Actors’ Equity Association and has a BFA in Technical Theater from Emerson College in Boston. Social Media: LinkedIn.com/in/tanya-telson/