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 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.

In the summer of 2009, 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.

GRANTS AWARDED

In 2010, the Foundation supported God’s Plot, a new play by Mark Jackson weaving together several stories in the life of a puritanical American community whose religion and politics vie for their values.