Established in 1967 to cultivate bold new plays and playwrights, and we are dedicated to centering People of Color on stage and beyond.
2024 Programming
GARUDA’S WING
WRITTEN BY NAOMI IIZUKA
Directed by Margo Hall
Garuda’s Wing is a new play by Naomi Iizuka. This is a ghost play of interpersonal intimacy and international investigation. This mystery, intergenerational, global spellbinder is an exploration, shrouded in mystery, entangled in the effects of colonization. Garuda’s Wing is magical in that it is a play that is both a spellbinding trance and one that spans continents and time. This play begins in Borneo. It takes us to Jakarta. And in the midst, we travel through generations, histories, and bloodlines. The play involves a search, unearthing, murder, on the personal familial intimate level as well as connecting to the large global colonial plane. Iizuka possesses the ability to create intimate human portraits, while simultaneously evoking the layers of revolution and colonial effects - a stunning and magnetic feat, even in reading alone.
TRANSLATED BY NAOMI IIZUKA
DIRECTED BY DR. KATRINA GUITERREZ
Richard II is Shakespeare’s examination of the destructive powers of privilege. In the second half of the Iizuka Repertory - the company from the world premiere of Garuda's Wing will perform a new, lean production of Iizuka’s Play On version of Richard II shaped to this company. Not modernized, just new. This will be the first Shakespeare produced by the Magic Theatre in decades, but this is new!
JERRY GARCIA IN THE LOWER MISSION
CREATED AND WRITTEN BY RICHARD MONTOYA
DEVELOPED WITH SEAN SAN JOSÉ
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 and Presidio 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. The performance will be surrounded by video in the former movie theatre space of the beautifully refurbished Presidio Theatre! 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.
We continue to require that all patrons wear a mask in the theatre during productions. You can still bring drinks in we just ask that masks are worn between sips. Thank you for helping us keep our cast, staff and audiences safe and healthy.
Spotlighted Artists
Ashley Smiley (She/Her), Playwright, is a full spectrum creator with a focus on the living written word, currently serving as the Theater Manager for the Bayview Opera House: Ruth Williams Memorial Theater in the Bayview/Hunters Point neighborhood in San Francisco’s newly minted African American Arts and Culture District.
Naomi Iizuka is a Japanese-born American playwright. Iizuka's works often have a non-linear storyline and are influenced by her multicultural background.