OUR STORY
Shotgun Players exists to create fearless, provocative, relevant theatre. Founding Artistic Director Patrick Dooley started the company in 1992 with four eager actors and a bucket of paint. Now approaching our nineteenth year, nothing pleases us more than to tackle projects other companies believe would be too expensive, too unwieldy or just plain impossible. For our first thirteen years we performed in 44 different spaces then in 2004 we found a permanent home at The Ashby Stage in South Berkeley. Rather than becoming complacent, we have a passionate hunger for bigger challenges. Audiences have come to expect astonishing theatre from Shotgun Players.

A FOCUS ON NEW WORK
A key accomplishment has been our focus on long term relationships with playwrights and composers. To back that up we produce at least one commissioned play each season and many of the commissions also feature original music. To celebrate our 20th anniversary in 2011 we will present an entire season of commissioned new works. Keeping with the spirit of innovation and challenge we encourage our playwrights to write the epic, sweeping plays they've always dreamed of.

We support those efforts with a commitment to funding workshops so that the play has the necessary time and space for development. Obie Award Winner Adam Bock serves as an artistic advisor for new play development for our company and will return in 2011 with a commission for our 20th anniversary season.

 We are proud that many of our most successful productions have been original works. In the last five years we have been awarded The Will Glickman Award for Best New Play for Dog Act in 2004 and Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage in 2008. In April 2009 we achieved a key goal by moving that production to New York City where the New Yorker Magazine named Beowulf one of the twelve best off-Broadway productions of the year.  

This summer Jon Tracy created The Farm a hip-hop version of George Orwell's classic that had audiences clamoring for more.  One audience member wrote: "I'm not a hip hop fan (and I am an Orwell fan) so I went to The Farm warily. It was STUNNING! FABULOUS!  I've recommended it to everyone! Thank you for once again dazzling me!".  Shotgun Players production of Faust Part 1 by Mark Jackson was named as one of the top ten productions of 2009 by both the San Francisco Chronicle and the East Bay Express.  

Other playwrights that have enjoyed successful productions with our company include Liz Duffy Adams, Pulitzer Prize Finalist Eisa Davis, and Marcus Gardley.

OUR COMMUNITY
We also believe that it is not enough to create exceptional works of theatre; but also to make a difference in your community. How we interact with our neighbors, who we support with our business, and how we use materials all have an impact on our community. In 2007 Shotgun Players' theatre, The Ashby Stage, became the first 100% solar powered live theatre in the country. Now we are a Green Certified Business! For more information, please see the Green Business website: http://www.greenbiz.ca.gov/. Shotgun Players is also dedicated to keeping our ticket prices affordable. We offer pay-what-you-can performances for each production so that persons of all income brackets can experience the vitality of live theater. Our annual outdoor free admission production in John Hinkel Park has become a much loved summer tradition in the San Francisco Bay Area.

COMING UP
In 2010 we are presenting two commissions, one world premiere and two local premieres.  In addition to Jon Tracy's The Salt Plays we will present A Seagull in the Hamptons, an adaptation by Emily Mann of Chekhov's classic; God's Ear by Jenny Schwartz and Mary Stuart, an original adaptation by Mark Jackson.  It's the kind of ambitious season our audience has come to expect from Shotgun Players.  That is why San Francisco Chronicle Theatre Critic Robert Hurwitt wrote:  "Leave it to Berkeley's intrepid little Shotgun Players to step in where others fear to tread."