Announcing Fall 2022 CA$H Theatre Grantees
Theatre Bay Area is proud to announce the Fall 2022 awardees of our flagship grant, CA$H Theatre. This marked the inaugural year of CA$H Sustains, which funds the general operations of small theatre companies in the Bay. CA$H Sustains will be open to applications in the fall round of CA$H Theatre going forward.
CA$H Performs
CA$H Performs is a $5,000 grant that supports fully produced performances of theatre projects that are open to the public.
Dazié Grego-Sykes, Oakland
The original multidisciplinary solo play, The Changer And The Changed, is a 90-minute memoir exploring Grego-Sykes’ journey to ignite and hold control of his fate. By redefining the lens through which he shares the traumas that each irreversibly changed his life’s path, Grego-Sykes will model ways to let go while guiding Oakland’s Black Queer audiences forward to claim their rightful future. The grant will fund artist wages.
Violeta Luna, San Francisco
Bodies in Transit is a performance piece inspired by the complex issue of migration and forced displacement. The main themes center on stories and testimonies of women who have had to leave their places of origin and migrate to the US because of the pain caused by drug trafficking, gender violence, and state/institutional oppression. The grant will fund artist and designer wages.
Tan Sang, Fremont
An Artist’s Love and Success is a new musical based on the story of the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin. It will be produced in two parts: a staged reading with limited blocking and movement to be presented at Los Altos Stage Company in March 2023, and a full production to be presented in Alameda County in August 2023. The grant will fund artist wages, space rental, and production materials.
Kathryn Seabron, Oakland
Angry Black Woman 101 is a solo show that takes an introductory dive into the microaggressions, tropes, and misogynoir Black women handle in the workplace and in society at large. The show uses vignettes, stories, poetry, and media pieces to illustrate this topic. The grant will fund artist and technician wages, space rental, and production materials.
Hector Zavala, San Francisco
Buscando al Ultimo Hombre Gay is the Spanish version of the solo show Seeking the Last Gay Man, which focuses on the Queer Latinx experience. The show will be performed with English supertitles. The grant will fund artist and crew wages, and Spanish language outreach.
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.
Amal Bisharat, San Francisco
Bisharat is developing Mornings in Jenin, the Musical, the epic, emotional journey of a bright Palestinian refugee and her fractured family, forcibly removed from their olive farming village by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948. Across several pivotal chapters of her life, the protagonist, Amal, comes to terms with her own humanity and manages to find love, hope, and forgiveness despite war, exile, and devastating loss. The grant will fund artist wages.
Toni Cannon, San Francisco
Cannon is creating a solo circus show about the struggles he had when coming to terms with realizing he is transgender, the journey it took him on when finally coming out, and how he feels so much better just being himself. The grant will fund equipment, training, and artist wages.
Daniel Duque-Estrada, San Francisco
Using the techniques of cinema and theater to create its environment and tell its story, Duque-Estrada is developing Mima. Mima follows Lupe, a Cuban-American woman now in her 60’s, who is packing up her mother’s home a year after her death and over 50 years of her family history with it. As she waits for family members to claim some of the items, Lupe encounters a series of visitors who bring with them reminders and expectations of who she has been to them and why, threatening that no matter who she wants to be, she will never leave behind what she’s always been trying to leave. The grant will fund artist wages.
Ai Ebashi, San Francisco
Throw Away Temple is a full-length multidisciplinary theater piece. Ebashi will research and develop puppet and shadow-puppet making, and build mechanically-sophisticated bunraku puppets and shadow puppets. The grant will fund research, development, and materials for puppet construction.
Juliana Frick & James Sundquist, Berkeley
Juliana Frick and James Sundquist will devise a highly engaging, sensory rich piece of comedic physical theatre designed for a Deaf audience. The production will be a solo show performed by James Sundquist, directed by Juliana Frick. The grant will fund artist wages and administrative costs, and production expenses.
Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko, San Francisco
Mwaluko is developing They / Them / Theirs, a play about the multiple forms of homelessness that come with the Queer Black experience. The non-binary transmasc protagonist, Sam (pronoun: hix) moves from place-to-place as part of hix transition but must also navigate the history-transtory-hixstory of hix other body when entering certain spaces so that self-acceptance becomes a deadly, disruptive, radical act of self-love. The grant will fund artist wages.
CA$H Sustains
CA$H Sustains is a $5,000 grant that provides general operating support for small companies that develop and/or produce theatre in the Bay Area.
Formerly Incarcerated People’s Performance Project, Oakland
Created with a CA$H Grant in 2019, FIPPP features formerly incarcerated and justice-involved performers working with professional theater directors to develop and perform stories about their life experiences. With the pressing issues of mass incarceration, solitary confinement, reentry, and justice reform on both the local and national agendas, these stories of incarceration and reinvention give an invaluable insight into the conditions in prison, the post-prison experience, and life behind bars for the people who serve time and their families that serve along with them.
Play Cafe, Berkeley
Play Cafe supports the creation and development of new works by San Francisco Bay Area playwrights and composers.
Stage Werx Theatre, San Francisco
Stage Werx produces, co-produces, and supports incoming shows, seeking out queer, BIPOC, and AAIP performers and performance groups while offering discounted or free tickets to anyone in need.
Fall 2022 CA$H Panelists
Erica Andracchio, CA$H Sustains
Erica Andracchio (she/her) is the Executive Director of Left Coast Theatre Co, which produces mostly original LGBTQ+ works by local and international playwrights, and the General Manager of Awesome Theatre, where she’s helped produce some of the first productions back on our local stages since the pandemic, including trying her hand at film producing with Awesome Theatre’s THEM. Erica also works as an Office Manager for the San Francisco office of Ambassadors Theatre Group, an internationally renowned theater organization. Outside of a life in the arts, Andracchio is the co-founder of a nonprofit organization Roanne’s Race, an annual 5K/10K race that raises awareness and funds for early onset colorectal cancer in honor of Roanne Cariel.
Matt Casey, CA$H Sustains
Matt Casey is a producer, director and teaching artist based in San José. He is a founding member and co-director of More Más Marami Arts, which works to develop and create new works with emerging artists based in the South Bay. He developed SJ Sounds, an immersive sound installation with SoundPlay.Media and created the Bay Area Story Archive, a growing story archive of the Bay Area. Matt is an SV Mindshare alumni, and a GenArts Movers and Shakers awardee. He is currently producing More Más Marami’s fourth Writers Launchpad, an annual writer script incubator, which will host a series of staged readings by emerging writers in late February.
Matt Kizer, CA$H Creates and Performs
Matt Kizer is a proud member of the Wasiw (Washoe) Tribe of Nevada and California, and the Artistic Director of Native Writers’ Theater. Kizer most recently produced, acted, and sang in An Evening Of New Native Works for PlayGround’s Innovator Incubator Showcase. Kizer is most proud of the fact that he assembled 15 Native/Indigenous playwrights, actors, singers, and musicians for this staged reading. Currently Kizer is the Music Cultural Consultant for Alter Theater’s Native Rom-Com, Snag!, and will be appearing in the World Premiere of Cashed Out, written by Claude Jackson Jr, at SF Playhouse. Connect with Matt Kizer at nativewriterstheater@playground-sf.org, follow @nativewriterstheater and @matt.kizer on Instagram, and Native Writers’ Theater and Matt Kizer on Facebook.
Erin Merritt, CA$H Creates and Performs, CA$H Sustains
Erin Merritt is an award-winning theater maker and the founding Artistic Director of the Bay Area’s renowned all-female Shakespeare company, Woman’s Will (1998 – 2009). In 2009, she began specializing in new work, serving most notably as dramaturg for George Brant’s multiple award-winning Grounded; directing countless World and Regional premieres; and producing two Bay Area Playwrights Festivals, three TBA Awards shows, and the 2022 Bay Area Women’s Theatre Festival. During the pandemic, she created Neighborhood Stories, a series of safely-distanced live city tours that featured site-specific performances paired with a contextual soundtrack between sites; directed Jen Coogan’s Women In Theater song cycle (available soon); and wrote and directed the voices of the diorama statues at Richmond’s Rosie the Riveter WWII Homefront. Learn more at ErinMerritt.com
Alicia M.P. Nelson, CA$H Creates and Performs
Alicia M.P. Nelson (she/her) is an award-winning Bay Area based actor, clown, and arts educator. She has acted across the country at SF Mime Troupe, WAMTheatre, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, SF Playhouse, Marin Theatre Company, Berkeley Rep, and more. As a teaching artist, she specializes in working with students in preschool and kindergarten. She is a member of the Red Ladder Theatre Company where she works to bring arts to at-risk populations, and holds a BFA in Acting from Boston University. She has trained in classical theatre in Greece and Commedia dell’Arte in Italy. Nelson is an avid believer in playing pretend, making a fool of yourself, diving in head-first, and increased diversity in theatre. Learn more at AMPNelson.com.
Alan Quismorio, CA$H Sustains
Alan S. Quismorio is a Co-Artistic Director of The Chikahan Company, a Filipinx American theatre company based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He formerly served in an Artistic Director role as well for AlchemySF (at the Jon Sims Center), Asian American Theater Company, and Bindlestiff Studio. An alumni of Crowded Fire Theatre Company, he appeared in their productions of 49 Mile, Slaughter City, and One Big Lie. As a director, his works include Dooley; Thunder Above, Deeps Below, and, most recently, Theatre Rhino’s inaugural pop-up theatre production of The Underpants Godot. He was last seen in Theatre Rhino’s World Premiere of Boni Alvarez’s Driven and will be directing Ken Urban’s A Guide for the Homesick, playing late-February to mid-March 2023.
Princess Washington, CA$H Creates and Performs
Princess Washington is a 2011 graduate of Solano College’s ATP Conservatory. She is represented by MDT Agency of San Francisco for film, television, and stage work. She is a 2022 Theatre Bay Area RHE Artistic Fellowship nominee and a proud member of Campo Santo. Washington is a City Councilmember and Mayor Pro-Tem for the City of Suisun City.
Silk Worm, CA$H Creates and Performs
Silk Worm’s research-based and interdisciplinary work commingles the worlds of drag, theater, and dance. Silk has presented her work at CounterPulse, Berkeley Art Museum, the Cantor Center for the Arts, 2727 California Street, Fierce! Festival, and the Pittsburgh Performance Art Festival. Her practice emerges from eight years of engagement with the Bay Area’s queer nightlife as a drag queen, producer, and barfly. Silk is known as a very good sport. Learn more at SilkWormQueen.com