spring 2012 Reading Series

This page contains events that are part of the later-development developmental and staged reading series, programs for plays that are closer to theater-ready, having progressed beyond scene nights. and the Sunday Read-Through series.

  • Staged readings are reheased with a director and produced by Ann Thomas. They are $10 to $20 sliding scale for non-members.
  • Developmental readings are read by actors and produced by Brady Brophy-Hilton. They are $5 to $10 sliding scale for non-members.

All readings are free to PCSF members.

Monday, April 2, 2012
Studio 250
965 Mission, Fl. 2
San Francisco
7:30 p.m.
$5-10 SL; members free

Samuelson & Lyla
by Candice Benge
Developmental Reading

Samuelson & Lyla is a modern adaptation of the Samson and Delilah story set in the football-obsessed town of Judah, Texas. J.R. Samuelson is expected to carry the Lions to the state championship with his super-human strength. His mother and his best friend are going to make sure no one gets in his way.

Candice Benge has been writing plays since 2005 and her work has been seen across the U.S. and in Zurich, Switzerland. Her interest lies in theater’s ability to replace our culture’s tendency towards judgment with a tendency towards empathy. Currently, she pursues this mission as founder of Transient Theater, a traveling theater cooperative based in San Francisco. Transient Theater will produce The Egg Play this summer and take it on tour across the United States. To find out if it will be performed in a town near you visit transienttheater.com. To learn more about Candice’s other plays and her strange writing technique, “language inundation,” visit candicebenge.com.


Monday, April 9, 2012
Studio 250
965 Mission, Fl. 2
San Francisco
7:30 p.m.
$5-10 SL; members free

The Medea Hypothesis
by Marian Berges

The Medea Hypothesis is a modern take on the Medea story, told as a surreal descent into a nightmare.

Marian Berges has written two plays, a novel or two, and is a member of the Central Works Playwright's Group. This is her first reading.


Monday, April 16, 2012
Studio 250
965 Mission, Fl. 2
San Francisco
7:30 p.m.
$5-10 SL; members free

My Visit To America
by Chas Belov

Developmental Reading

In a world of today that is not our world, Eurasia is run by the Mongolian Empire and America is run by indigenous Americans. Jochi, a London bureaucrat, tries to cheat and bully her way into a trade deal between London and Miami. Instead, she encounters an interrogation in America; a test of friendship back home; and the discovery of where she fits in the scheme of race, class, and world politics.

Chas Belov's full-length plays Rice Kugel and Hemlock have had staged readings at PCSF. His 10-minute play On the Last Day of the Week in the Seventh Month of the Year in the City of Brotherly Love was produced by PCSF as part of its Sheherezade short play festival. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild. Visit his playwriting blog at chasbelov.com.


Monday, April 23, 2012
Studio 250
965 Mission, Fl. 2
San Francisco
7:30 p.m.
$5-10 SL; members free

Fish
by Pat Pfeiffer

Developmental Reading

In this docudrama about the 1980's shrimp wars on Galveston Bay, a Vietnamese refugee fisherman is pitted against local Texans by market manipulators and the KKK.

Pat Pfeiffer's plays have been produced from coast to coast, from the Magic Theatre in San Francisco to the Vital Theatre in New York. They have won numerous national awards, including a Writers Guild Fellowship, which funded research in Kemah, Texas, for the new script, Fish.


Monday, April 30, 2012
Studio 250
965 Mission, Fl. 2
San Francisco
7:30 p.m.
$5-10 SL; members free

Hope's Last Chance
by Rod McFadden

Developmental Reading

While staying a weekend in a secluded Bed and Breakfast Inn, Stan and Angela Armstrong are awakened to screams in the night. As they investigate, they learn that the inn was the site of a brutal multiple homicide decades earlier, and the ghosts of this event are still seeking revenge, redemption and god knows what else! Unable to leave until the mystery is solved, the Armstrongs struggle to separate what is real from imagined, and wonder who they can trust. The answers to those questions are literally a matter of life or death. Theirs! Hope's Last Chance is part comedy, part ghost story and part mystery.

Rod McFadden earned his BA from UCLA's Playwriting program in 1982, and then took a 26 year hiatus from writing to have a tragically successful career in retail management. In early 2009, he returned to writing full time, again focusing on playwriting. Since then, his plays have been well-received by Bay Area audiences of Broadway West, The Playwrights Center of SF, Wily West Productions, The Eugene O'Neill Foundation, Fringe of Marin, and PlayGround SF. His short plays, Counting on Love, Love Birds and Getting the Message, have been selected as finalists in a number of national playwriting competitions. Rod serves on the Board of Directors for the Playwrights Center of SF, as well as teaches in the masters program at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.


Monday, June 4, 2012
Studio 250
965 Mission, Fl. 2
San Francisco
7:30 p.m.
$10-20 SL; members free

The Fantasy Club
by Rachel Bublitz
Directed by Tracy Held Potter
Staged Reading

Who says men own the monopoly on sex fantasies? Pull the sheets off of one stay-at-home-mom's dirty little secret with The Fantasy Club. You'll never look at housewives the same again.

Rachel Bublitz is a Southern California transplant currently living in Oakland. Rachel's short play Her Special Day is being produced with Playwright Center of San Francisco's Sheherezade 2012. Another short play, Bill and Kelly was published in the Rockford Review's Winter 2011 edition Underneath. Bublitz is currently a script reader for Berkeley Repertory Theatre and spends the majority of her time chasing after her two children. Visit her website at www.rachelbublitz.com.


Monday, June 11, 2012
Studio 250
965 Mission, Fl. 2
San Francisco
7:30 p.m.
$10-20 SL; members free

Friar Lazaro, Or The King Of Terrors
by Bridgette Dutta Portman
Directed by Joy Brooke Fairfield
Staged Reading

Set in a Spanish mission in 19th-century California, Friar Lazaro tells the story of a young padre whose religious doubts lead him to madness and murder. Lazaro, tormented by the possibility that that nothing lies beyond death, begins to murder ill Indians in order to witness their dying visions. Unsatisfied, he turns on the other inhabitants of the mission, including the Indian woman he once loved. Can anyone stop "the King of Terrors" before it is too late?

Bridgette Portman joined PCSF in Fall 2009. Her first full-length play, The Widow of Sisyphus, received a staged reading through PCSF in Spring 2010 and was a finalist in the 2011 O'Neill Playwrights Conference. La Fee Verte, Friar Lazaro, and Croesus received developmental readings in Fall 2010 through Fall 2011. Her short comedies Necromance, Support Group for the Mortally Challenged and Paul der Krake have been staged by PianoFight Productions in San Francisco; Shelterbelt Theatre in Omaha, NE; and PCSF's Sheherezade festival, respectively. Her one-act play, Jinshin Jiko, is a finalist in the 2012 Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival.


Monday, June 18, 2012
Studio 250
965 Mission, Fl. 2
San Francisco
7:30 p.m.
$10-20 SL; members free

Arches, Balance, and Light
by Mary Spletter
Directed by Lucinda Alipio
Staged Reading

Julia Morgan is one of California's most remarkable architects, designing more than 700 buildings including Hearst Castle. In her first play, Arches, Balance and Light, Mary Spletter combines historical fact with her own fantasy explanation of how this elusive and private individual designed her own success---one brick at a time.

Mary Spletter retired from a career of medical and science writing throughout the University of California system. She combined her love of writing, research and theatre to write Arches, Balance and Light. A theme of her career is translating technical information into easy-to-understand material for the general public.


Monday, June 25, 2012
Studio 250
965 Mission, Fl. 2
San Francisco
7:30 p.m.
$5-10 SL; members free

Les Fantomes
by Chris Holbrook

Developmental Reading

Will, a struggling writer in his early 40s, moves to Paris in the wake of a messy separation from his wife. Yet the more he tries to move on with his life, the more the specter of his ex-wife and his failed marriage haunts him. To help him, Guillaume, his best friend, sets him up on a blind date—a seemingly innocent evening that leads to an explosive confrontation with his own past and present.

Chris Holbrook is the director and producer of a number of documentary shorts and features, including more recently, as a producer, "After Happily Ever After," which examines the history and future of marriage; and, as a director, "Foie Pas," about the controversy over the French delicacy foie gras. He has worked for ITVS (Independent Television Service), in addition to the AFI and Los Angeles Film Festivals; and he is the founder and director of Rough Cuts, a documentary work-in-progress series in San Francisco. Les Fantômes is his first full-length play.