When the plague steals 11-year-old Hamnet from his loving parents, Agnes and William Shakespeare, they must each confront their loss alone. And yet, out of the greatest suffering, something of extraordinary wonder is born. Experience the U.S. premiere of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “elegant and beguiling” (London’s Evening Standard) stage adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s best-selling novel, adapted by award-winning playwright Lolita Chakrabarti (Life of Pi, Red Velvet) and directed by Erica Whyman.

Hamnet

Toni Rembe Theater

Four highly-gifted teens collab and collide one pivotal summer at a prestigious Berkeley girls’ music program. They improvise and crack wise atop a steadily thrumming undercurrent of disaster and emergency. This world premiere play with music comes from A.C.T.-commissioned playwright Eisa Davis, the singular writer-musician-actor whose keen ear for the language and inner lives of adolescent women brought us the Pulitzer finalist Bulrusher. At turns hilarious and melancholy, raucous and poetic, ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| is an exquisite and achingly true story of friendship, self-discovery, and the salvation of art-making.

||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||

The Strand Theater

Z Space and Word for WordPLAY present a bold new stage adaptation of Dave Eggers’ The Eyes & the Impossible (Chapters 1-6). The novel, a winner of the 2024 Newbery Medal for excellence in children’s literature, is described as "a lyrical, soulful book full of wit and passion...a timeless story for readers of all ages." The story takes you to the inner world of Johannes, a free and fast dog—and his job as the "eyes" of an urban park by the sea. Join him in his trials and tribulations as the equilibrium of the park is upset by an influx of humans, construction, and other animals. Experience the fully staged production on Z Space’s Steindler Stage, presented in classic Word for Word style.

EPSG:4326

The Eyes and the Impossible

Z Space

James and Lou move from Chicago to London to escape the past… but they soon discover that places aren’t haunted, people are. An original story set in the world of the terrifying Paranormal Activity film franchise, this thrilling new play from celebrated Chicago playwright Levi Holloway (Broadway’s Grey House) and Punchdrunk’s Felix Barrett (Sleep No More) with illusions by Tony Award winner Chris Fisher (Stranger Things: The First Shadow, Harry Potter & The Cursed Child) will haunt you long after you get home. Experience the horror of this North American premiere. Can you even believe your eyes?

Paranormal Activity

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFe6mW6x9pc

The Artelize Podcast: 'Amplifying What Makes Us Human'. A conversation with Zuly E. Inirio

Podcast link: https://youtu.be/4hagYvrYbuM

The Artelize Podcast and Kasper Holten - Pedefining Opera for the modern world

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d36M5Hi6O80

The Artelize Podcast - A legacy of innovation in Opera: Celebrating Marc A. Scorca

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59E40S_EQSY

The Artelize Podcast: A love letter that was never sent

Men on Boats is a witty, fast-paced retelling of the 1869 expedition of ten explorers navigating the uncharted American West. With sharp dialogue, Men on Boats offers a fresh and engaging take on historical narratives combining entertainment with thought-provoking insight. Energetic and clever, it encourages audiences to reflect on the ways stories are shared and remembered and is filled with merriment, camaraderie, and unstoppable momentum.

Men on Boats

Black Box Theatre (McGuire Pavilion)

This production of A Streetcar Named Desire has an intimate staging, featuring seating in the round by utilizing onstage seats. Take advantage of this rare opportunity to sit on the Toni Rembe stage and experience Streetcar from a unique perspective. To book the onstage seating online, simply select "Stage" as your section, and choose your specific seats from there.

A Streetcar Named Desire

When a well-meaning group of educators sets out to devise a culturally sensitive Thanksgiving pageant, their efforts quickly spiral into a hilarious unraveling of assumptions, egos, and misunderstandings. As their plans grow increasingly misguided, The Thanksgiving Play spotlights the often absurd attempts to “get it right” without doing the deeper work. With biting wit and sharp satire, playwright Larissa FastHorse delivers a fast-paced, self-aware comedy that exposes the pitfalls of performative gestures. Clever, thought-provoking, and unapologetically funny, the play invites audiences to laugh, reflect, and consider how stories are shaped—and who gets to shape them.

The Thanksgiving Play

A searing and heartfelt story of family, legacy, and the weight of history, Tony-nominated playwright Dominique Morisseau’s Sunset Baby follows Nina—a sharp, determined woman carving out her path in present-day Brooklyn. When her estranged father, a former Black Panther and political prisoner, suddenly reappears seeking redemption, their collision sparks a reckoning over grief, betrayal, and the generational scars of revolution.

Lorraine Hansberry Theatre presents Sunset Baby

Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture

Harvest is a powerful futuristic drama exploring organ donation, poverty, and the commodification of human bodies. Set in a dystopian society, it follows a family on the brink of financial ruin who become targets of a shadowy organ-harvesting corporation. Confined to a single, dilapidated room, the family’s survival depends on the youngest son’s forced sale of his body, while their lives are upended by an unseen power that monitors their every move. As the lines blur between safety and surveillance, Harvest poses urgent questions about autonomy, ethics, and the cost of desperation. With sharp dialogue and a gripping narrative, the play offers a chilling look at the choices people make under pressure—and the systems that shape them.

Harvest

Roland, a bee keeper, and Marianne, a theoretical physicist, meet at a party. In that single moment, an unfathomable multitude of possibilities unfold. Their chance meeting might blossom into a meaningful relationship or a brief affair - it might lead to nothing at all. What happens next defies the boundaries of the world we think we know—delving into the infinite possibilities of their relationship and raising questions about the difference between choice and destiny.

Constellations

The Pear Theatre

In Aztlán, Chicanx playwright Luis Alfaro Aztlán uses humor, mitos, and teatro to tell a contemporary California story about the search for the resonance of the cultural, mythical, and political remnants of Aztlán in our modern world. Subtitled "A Chicano Califas Triptico" Aztlán links 959 years of history through three playlets. The story travels over hundreds of years using mythic Mayan and Mexica imagery to tell a contemporary tale of a young man on parole, attempting to reimagine a new future for himself. In a land once stricken with drought and now drowning in empire, Aztlán battles with a series of real and mythic demons that haunt his journey toward making a new life for himself. This play also marks the return of Sean San José to the Magic stage.

Magic World Premiere Aztlán by Luis Alfaro

15-year-old Christopher has an extraordinary brain: He is exceptional at mathematics but ill-equipped to interpret everyday life. He has never ventured alone beyond the end of his road, he detests being touched, and he distrusts strangers. Now it is 7 minutes after midnight, and Christopher stands beside his neighbor’s dead dog, Wellington, who has been speared with a garden fork. Finding himself under suspicion, Christopher is determined to solve the mystery of who murdered Wellington, and he carefully records each fact of the crime. But his detective work, forbidden by his father, takes him on a thrilling journey that upturns his world.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

San Francisco Playhouse

After an insult from the French Dauphin, King Henry V of England invades France to claim the throne he believes should be his. Henry stops an assassination plot, gives powerful speeches, and wins battles against the odds. In the end, he woos and marries the Princess of France, linking the two nations.

Henry V and She Who Dared

Shakespeare’s quintessential comedy, this farcical tale of separated families and mistaken identities delights audiences young and old. Antipholus and his servant, Dromio, travel in search of a long-lost family member, only to get mixed up in a madcap race against the clock, love-at-first-double-take, run-ins with local law enforcement, and double trouble—times two. Christina Anderson’s translation maintains all we love about Shakespeare’s language even as it updates the jokes and wordplay, breathing new life into the double (and triple) entendres. This madcap whirl through bawdy adventures, mad scientists, romance, heartfelt reunions, and even a few happy endings will excite and titillate any audience. Additional support for The Comedy of Errors is provided by the Hitz Foundation and Play On Shakespeare.

The Comedy of Errors

Critically-acclaimed playwright James Ijames reinvents Shakespeare’s masterpiece with his new drama, Fat Ham. Juicy is a queer, Southern college kid, already grappling with some serious questions of identity, when the ghost of his father shows up in their backyard, demanding that Juicy avenge his murder. It feels like a familiar story to Juicy, well-versed in Hamlet’s woes. What’s different is Juicy himself, a sensitive and self-aware young Black man trying to break the cycles of trauma and violence in service of his own liberation. From an uproarious family barbecue emerges a compelling examination of love and loss, pain and joy.

Fat Ham

From One to Another: Homage to the Legacy of Dr. Angelou is a new, electrifying choreopoem that pays homage to the life and words of Dr. Maya Angelou. Written by playwright, Leelee Jackson, From One to Another brings key moments from Dr. Angelou’s esteemed life to the theatrical stage. Through music, poetry, and dance, this show aims to reflect the lasting impact of Dr. Angelou inspiring words and empowering voice.

From One to Another

San Francisco War Memorial & Performing Arts Center

Daphne and Ralph are young classics professors who have just made a discovery that is sure to turn them into academic superstars. But something goes disastrously wrong, and Daphne cries out in a panic, "Save me, gods of ancient Greece!" And the gods actually appear! The Ivy League will never be the same as a pair of screwball deities encounters the carnal complexity of college coeds, campus capers, and conspicuous consumption.

The Gods of Comedy and Everybody

Join us to finally experience the full production of our Kyogen adaptation of Volpone, the 17th-century British satire about human greed, lust, and manipulation set in Venice.

Volpone (The Fox) is a Venetian gentleman who pretends to be on his deathbed after a long illness in order to dupe Voltore (The Vulture), Corbaccio (The Raven) and Corvino (The Crow), three men who aspire to inherit his fortune. Each of them visits Volpone's house bearing a luxurious gift, intent upon having his name inscribed to the will of Volpone as his heir. Mosca (The Fly), Volpone's parasite servant, encourages each man in turn to believe that he has been named heir to Volpone's fortune. However, the scheme spirals out of control as greed and deception escalate. Mosca’s manipulations cause chaos, leading to betrayals and unexpected twists in this biting satire of human folly.

Volpone

Theatre of Yugen

It’s 1999, and Ami is an awkward Asian American high schooler whose world comes crashing down with a terrible discovery: her family is responsible for manufacturing MSG, the mysterious ingredient getting all the kids hooked! Meanwhile, a cool new girl arrives from Japan, and she’s not playing by the rules. In Keiko Green’s new play, Ami vows to redeem her family name and save the world from MSG. This whimsical, time-traveling adventure is a riotous and hilarious romp through wild teenaged crushes, family legacies, and the magical properties of instant ramen!

Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play

Based on George Bernard Shaw’s play, Candida, A MINISTER’S WIFE tells the story of a successful, popular and upright Anglican minister, his loving and devoted wife, and a young poet who attempts to come between them.

Play events in San Francisco, CA

Hamnet

American Conservatory Theater

||: Girls :||: Chance :||...

American Conservatory Theater

The Eyes and the Impossib...

Theatre Bay Area

Paranormal Activity

American Conservatory Theater

The Artelize Podcast: 'Am...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast and ...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast - A ...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast: A l...

Artelize

Men on Boats

University of Florida School of Theatre ...

A Streetcar Named Desire

American Conservatory Theater

The Thanksgiving Play

University of Florida School of Theatre ...

Lorraine Hansberry Theatr...

Magic Theatre

Harvest

University of Florida School of Theatre ...

Constellations

The Pear Theatre

Magic World Premiere Aztl...

Magic Theatre

The Curious Incident of t...

San Francisco Playhouse

Henry V and She Who Dared...

The Pear Theatre

The Comedy of Errors

American Conservatory Theater

Fat Ham

San Francisco Playhouse

From One to Another

African-American Shakespeare Company

The Gods of Comedy and Ev...

The Pear Theatre

Volpone

Theatre of Yugen

Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG...

San Francisco Playhouse

A Minister’s Wife

Lamplighters Music Theatre