the MAGIC THEATRE ANNOUNCES 2025 PERFORMANCES PASSES are AVAILABLE NOW

SAN FRANCISCO, CA October 24, 2024 – The Magic Theatre is pleased to announce that 2025 Performance Passes are now available for purchase. The programming for the calendar year 2025 will include the World Premiere plays the boiling by Sunhui Chang (April 4 – April 20, 2025), Aztlán by Luis Alfaro (June 25 – July 13, 2025), and Jerry Garcia in the Lower Mission by Richard Montoya (October 29 – November 16, 2025).  These World Premieres plays continue the Magic Theatre’s legacy of premiering bold, new plays and highlight resident company Campo Santo, among their many amazing Residencies of groups ranging from Lorraine Hansberry Theatre to Play On! Shakespeare. The 2025 Performance Year and Performance Pass will have even more premieres, projects, and collaborations- making this Pass an even better deal than before- accessible and affordable.

2025 will also continue to bring new events from the Magic Theatre’s Resident Companies, Resident Artists and Community Collaborators, including Home Resident Company, Campo Santo; Resident Companies Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, TigerBear Productions, BACCE, the legendary Saint John Coltrane Church and Play On! Shakespeare, with these collaborative projects to be announced, as well as unveiling new Residency announcements. Resident Artists and Collaborators in 2025 will include Ellen Sebastian Chang, Sunhui Chang, SFBATCO and more! 

Play Development Reading Seriesres

We continue our Martha Heasley Cox Reading Series with our Campo Santo inspired Open Process- sharing projects on their development path to premiere with the lead artists, designers, and the communities, all of the premieres will feature special Open Process events with invites to these intimate gatherings for Performance Pass holders.

Post show parties and special events continue to abound in the new year. 2025 Programming year ups the energy and excitement of 2024. Performance Passes give priority and exclusive access to workshops, readings, talkbacks and special events, plus discounts to resident and collaborative programs. Performance Passes are the only way to reserve seats! Don’t miss the chance to get first dibs on everything Magic with a 2025 Performance Pass, available at the incredible price of $120!

The Magic Theatre’s 2025 Performance Pass includes a ticket to all three Magic-produced World Premiere plays AND the only way to get reserved seats!

2025 Performance Passes are on sale at  $120 and are available starting October 23rd at www.magictheatre.org.  The true value of a single ticket is $75, so the price of $120 for 3 performances and the ability to choose your own seat is a true bargain.  Our Performance Pass is about offering the most exciting array of artists and performances, while making it accessible and welcoming to all, true to our mission.  At the same time, all our actions and initiatives are also focused on creating a new structure in the theatre world by redefining non-resonant structures and strictures and allows for a reinvention and reinvigoration for audiences and artists. 

We are building the year around these new plays and exponentially exploding the offerings by filling the year with Residency Productions, Plays, Performances, and Programs.  

the Magic Theatre-produced 2025 World Premieres are:

the boiling
by Sunhui Chang

Directed by Ellen Sebastian Chang

April 4 – April 20, 2025

Conceived originally as a screenplay, SunHui’s now-play keeps the cinema’s ability to shatter time and narrative and bats around the pieces like a cat with a ball of string. The story concerns Brian, a Korean-American virologist and former homicide detective; and Vee, a black woman in the Pacific Northwest. These two characters are thrust together to track David, a white, nihilistic carrier of a feverish virus called “the boiling”: the search reveals the intersections of science, identity, home…and birding within an American landscape made of our histories and traditions of redemptive violence. 

This truly innovative and inventive theatre and filmic hybrid piece will feature the Magic Theatre’s highlighted Resident this year- Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe amongst the cast, including favorite Donald E. Lacy, Jr, and Jeannie Anderson, Lawrence Radaker, Jesse Vaughn, and other to be confirmed who will be performing live on film and a combination of both! as created with designers Carlos Aceves, Joan Osato, Christopher Sauceda, Maximiliano Urrezmendi, Kyo Yohena.

Atzlán

by Luis Alfaro

Directed by Kinan Valdez, with dramaturgy by Doctora Karina Gutierrez

June 25 – July 13, 2025

MacArthur Genius Award Winner Luis Alfaro returns to work with Campo Santo and the Magic Theatre!

The success of his last world premiere here- The Travelers- is still resonating: Theatre Bay Area Glickman Award for Best New Play; accolades from the Los Angeles Times and more for the production in Los Angeles; and most recently featured and published in American Theatre Magazine.  The amazingly talented author of Oedipus El Rey and countless more epic plays is creating his next world premiere here- Atzlán.  This play is a journey back to the mytho/spiritual/geographic home of Aztlán- and operates at once in mythology of Goddesses and God and simultaneously in the reality of Highway 99, the droughts, the prisons. 

This road play follows Aztlán in the fight to keep away the underworld darkness in ourselves, our families, and our lineage. This play also marks the return of Sean San José to the Magic stage, the first in a Magic Theatre production since the anniversary production of Alfaro’s Oepidus El Rey in 2019? This play has been in development since the 2023 touring production of Alfaro’s The Travelers from the Magic Theatre premiered in Los Angeles. The project will feature many of the highly successful The Travelers collaborators of that premiere play, which won The Glickman Award for Best New Premiere Play and was published and featured in American Theatre Magazine among its many rave accolades.  The all star Alfaro cast in addition to San José, includes: Juan Amador, Catherine Castellanos, Gabriela Maldonado Pelayo, Ogie Zulueta, and the Magic Theatre’s Producing Director Daniel Duque-Estrada in the title role. The impressive Alfaro design team, in addition to Valdez and Gutierrez, includes: David Arevalo, Leah Hammond,  Ashely Mendez, Patricia Barretto Ong, Tanya Orellana, Joan Osato, Christopher Sauceda, Lauren Quan.   

Jerry Garcia in the Lower Mission

a tribute play with live music
by Richard Montoya

Directed by Rotimi Agbabiaka, with dramaturgy by Edris Anifowoshe-Cooper

October 29 – November 16, 2025

A brand new music theatre piece from Richard Montoya of the iconic satire group Culture Clash. Richard Montoya continues his years-long collaboration with new performances group Campo Santo, creating this new performance piece especially for the Magic Theatre. This is an original creation uncovering the roots of Jerry Garcia in the Mission.  A Tribute to the formative years in our own City of an American Icon and local legend- Jerry Garcia.  A special piece of storytelling and live music, San Francisco history, Grateful Dead Lore wrapped into an intimate theatre concert. This theatrical exploration goes to the earliest roots (1947-48) of this hero, Jerry Garcia. We go on a time trip journey into Garcia’s early life as it plays out in our City, in the Mission District of yore. Before the Dead, we reach back to Jerry, an imaginative and sensitive child who witnesses the drowning of his Spanish father and must now navigate the length of Mission Street and his memory of a strong Irish Mother, owner of a Merchant Marine and Navy saloon, right in the heart of the Lower Mission.  

This truly San Francisco experience will include a performer and singing ensemble centered around the unique talent of Richard Montoya. Montoya returns to the Bay last starring in the hit play he co-conceived/wrote/starred in Still CC, with Culture Clash that was enjoying a sold-out extened run at Berkeley Repertory Theatre before being shut down by the pandemic. Montoya starred in his own creation with Campo Santo, Nogales, to open the Magic Theatre’s 50th Anniversary Season, and now will return with a concert level crew of collaborators.  The performance company includes: Lisa Hori-Garcia (recently sang and performed in David Byrne’s America), Dena Martinez (long time Mime Troupe and El Teatro Campesino performer and singer), Aidaa Peerzada (seen last year in the Magic Theatre’s N* Lovers wildly performing and singing), Brian Rivera (performer on Broadway and “The King” in The King and I National and UK Tour), Sharon Shao (the Princess who sang and performed at the center of the Presidio Theatre’s Panto and more recently on tour in an original show at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival), joined by a live band led by performance maverick J. Raoul Brody along with guitarist extraordinaire Joshua Icban, and multi-instrumentalist Rachel Lastimosa. Colloborative team who will create the movie theatre/ bar/heaven stage include: Russell Champa, Leah Hammond, Joan Osato, Christopher Sauceda, Brittany White, Lauren Quan, Kyo Yohena, and Executive Produced by local filmmaker Aidan Stone.

About the 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 theatre, 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 Lead Director in 2022.  With this new leadership Magic is dedicated to making the Magic Theatre a home to more people by rightfully centering People of Color throughout the organization. The Magic Theatre, while continuing to premiere bold and new plays as it has done for 57 years, has expanded its vision and programming such as, TigerBear Productions, Play On! Shakespeare and ?; new Performances Program, telling theatrical stories in dance, poetry, and music led by San Francisco Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin; and Resident Artists, which is highlighted by  Playwright In Residence Star Finch and Resident Curator Juan Amador, Resident Producer Jerome Gentes, and designers Russell Champa, Tanya Orellana, Joan Osato, Christopher Sauceda, and Brittany White, Hybrid Program by Ashley Smiley.  In addition to the new Leadership Team and Staff, the Magic Theatre has launched its new branding by an otherwise co., and has energetically, artistically, and aesthetically shifted the whole space in ethos and activation, a redesign of the spaces (lobby, cathedral, and theatres, including multiple new wall sized murals by local artists Mister Bouncer (Miguel Perez) from the Trust Your Struggle collective, Adrian Arias, Cece Carpio, 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 now for engagement and entertainment, arts and activation from the plays to the people- the Magic Theatre is Home for bringing the City inside.

The Magic Theatre is located in the Marina District of San Francisco, at the historic Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (Fort Mason, 2 Marina Blvd., Building D, 3^rd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94123). For more information, visit magictheatre.org or call the box office at (415) 441-8822. The performance schedule is Wednesday through Saturday at 8:00pm and Sundays at 4:00pm.