Writers with Scripts
24 May 2006

Jesus, Satan and the American Soul,
part of Campo Santo’s 10th anniversary.

Why are there so few great writers for the stage today? Of all the questions posed by the theater community over the last few decades, this has to be one of the most common. While directors and literary managers lament the loss of the playwright to sitcoms and reality TV, Campo Santo, now celebrating its 10th anniversary with a series of projects, is busy proving that the stage is the medium of choice for some of the most daring and influential writers around.

The company's list of collaborators reads like a literary who's who. Since longstanding ensemble members Sean San José, Margo Hall, Luis Saguar, Michael Torres, and executive director Deborah Cullinan founded the Mission District-based group in 1996, Campo Santo has staged roughly 30 plays by the likes of Denis Johnson, Dave Eggers, Naomi Iizuka, and Jessica Hagedorn. Given that many of these productions were world premieres and most garnered multiple awards and grants, the company has earned a place among the most venerable performing arts organizations in the Bay Area, taking an engrossing, deeply collaborative approach to the creation of new work. Its relative youth, bite-sized budgets, and tiny 80-seat theater (located on a particularly scruffy block of Valencia Street at Intersection for the Arts) don't seem to deter literary heavyweights. Johnson has premiered all seven of his plays with Campo Santo, and the company has produced three plays each by Octavio Solis, Erin Cressida Wilson, and Iizuka.

Writers of clout keep coming back to Campo Santo not just because of its radical approach to storytelling and its belief in text as the fundamental component of theater, but also because of its atypical approach to play development. "What I have found most rewarding is the company's adherence to a long development process," says Solis, whose play Santos y Santos launched Campo Santo a decade ago. In an age of four-week rehearsal periods dictated by shrinking finances, the average three- to five-year gestation time for Campo Santo projects is nothing short of remarkable. Equally appealing is its ability to reach broad audiences; performances consistently lure mixed crowds, from twentysomething hipsters and middle-aged arts buffs to at-risk teens and drop-ins from the single-room occupancy hotel next door.

The 10th anniversary celebrations fittingly reflect Campo Santo's writer-centric approach. Saturday's Jesus, Satan and the American Soul looks back at Johnson's work, from 1999's Jesus' Son to this year's Haze. Tonight's Myths, Mysteries, and Disrupted Histories is devoted to Iizuka, and features insights into the forthcoming October premiere of Hamlet: Blood in the Brain, the author's transportation of Shakespeare's Hamlet to 1980s East Oakland, developed in partnership with California Shakespeare Theater and Oakland community members. A June 10 celebration of Ntozake Shange's work, Finding the Future, fuses experimental music, poetry, and theater. For those interested in a more hands-on experience, authors Hagedorn, Solis, and Philip Kan Gotanda are running workshops on the craft of playwriting.

The 10th Anniversary Gala promises the biggest literary fix. On June 3, Johnson, Iizuka, Gotanda, Solis, and others share their words and works with the actors, designers, directors, volunteers, and audience members who have made the past decade possible. Punctuated with live music by DJ Sake One, dancing, food, drinks, and performances, the event should demonstrate that playwriting is alive and well -- at least in San Francisco.