PRODUCTIONS
Mosaic
Mosaic elevates the often unheard voices of local communities
Mosaic features one full professional production each year of scripts written by participants in Playwrights Project’s community programs. The program bookends our Plays by Young Writers Festival, which annually features full productions of work by youth.
With Mosaic, program participants work closely with a production team to stage their play. This includes a director, actors, designers (costumes, props, lights, sound and minimal sets), and a dramaturg who helps them revise their works during the production process. The production team not only helps bring each work to light, but they also give valuable insight to the writers about the vision for their pieces.
The productions are offered free of charge to eliminate barriers to attendance and to draw audiences from underprivileged communities, especially those who have a close tie to the content presented.
Each performance is followed by a talkback with the writer and members of the production team. The talkbacks provide an opportunity for audiences to process and respond to the work. Informative and heartfelt conversations between the audience and the panel often reveal personal connections to the characters’ journeys, gratitude at having felt seen, and a reminder that personal experiences have value.
Audience comments in talk backs, as well as responses to post performance surveys, also help guide the writers in further developing their work.
COMPONENTS
- Mosaic is produced once a year
- A play or a group of short plays is fully produced
- The program typically runs about 45 minutes, followed by a talkback
- The production is minimally produced to keep costs low and to allow for the possibility of touring to other locations
- Performances have gone up in various venues across San Diego, often in partnership with other theatres such as New Village Arts, Diversionary, MOXIE, and The Old Globe
- Admission is free of charge
HISTORY
In 2018, we initiated Mosaic, which presents an annual professional production of plays written in our community programs, validating the experiences of adults from disenfranchised communities and showcasing their creative talents.
Initial support for the program was provided to honor the spirit of the former Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company, a renowned San Diego theatre that embodied a similar mission.
Our inaugural production, Soul Fire, was written by Lisa Kirazian and directed by Delicia Turner Sonnenberg. It wove together oral histories, music, movement, and connecting text to illuminate the journeys of immigrants from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Vietnam, China, Haiti and Poland. (City Heights Performance Annex, 2018)
MOSAIC PRODUCTIONS HAVE INCLUDED:
Shifting Perspectives was a showcase of staged readings featuring scripts from across Playwrights Project’s various playwriting programs. It was designed to bring together a mix of audiences and communities, including youth, justice-impacted individuals, and those navigating addiction and recovery, and theatre enthusiasts. Plays included: The Art of People, by Sriya Indlamuri, Save the Drama, by Al Clark & Robert (Ishmiel) Smith, Waiting Without Hope, by Peter Crates, Blind, by KM McNeel, and group writings from Taft Middle School and ALBA Community Day School.
Artists Everywhere, conceived and directed by filmmaker Chris Boyd, was a hybrid of theater and film experienced in silent disco/art gallery format, where audiences viewed each film on an individual screen with headphones. The films were originally written as plays by justice impacted individuals and adapted to the screen. The films range in style and subject, and raise awareness that artists are all around us. Scripts included: Homecoming by Arturo Medina, A Mother’s Promise by Vanessa Romero, The Fate of Man by Jason Ritchie, Criminal Adaptations by Robert Wood, and Red America by Mikey Trotter. The program was part of Far South/Border North, a California Creative Corps program created by the City of San Diego and its regional partners. (Casa Familiar’s El Salon Theater and Black Contractors Union, 2024; La Jolla Playhouse’s WOW Fest at UCSD and San Diego City College 2025; additionally films aired in a traditional movie theatre as part of the Fallbrook Bonsall Film Festival, 2024)
What Goes Unsaid featured four short plays by Black playwrights, directed by T.J. Johnson. Plays included: Roses are Red by Mariah Cenea, A Father’s Transformation by Maalik Euring, Forever for Always, for One Moment Out? by Willie Lang, and Family by Dea Hurston. Themes centered on parenting, family, acceptance, and LGBTQ+ characters. (Diversionary Theatre, New Village Arts, and City Heights Performance Annex, 2023).
The Cell Plays was an intimate, immersive, site-specific play directed by Yolanda Franklin and written by theatre artists in Playwrights Project’s Out of the Yard programs at Donovan and Centinela prisons. The script included writing by 23 incarcerated playwrights and was devised by Playwrights Project’s teaching artists, along with six Returned Writers Circle alumni who advised on the script development and production. The play was presented at La Jolla Playhouse’s Without Walls (WOW) Festival. Click here to view the program and watch the full performance on our YouTube! (The Jail Museum in The Headquarters at Seaport, 2023)
The TAG Project, conceived by Thelma Virata de Castro, directed by Tori Rice, and filmed and edited by Chris Boyd, featured short videos/plays centered around the mouth of the San Diego River as it meets Ocean Beach. It explored themes of belonging and connecting with nature as the world emerged from the COVID-19 lockdown. Writers included: Thelma Virata de Castro, Tony Curtis, Shawn Khalifa, Isabella Quevedo, Ruben Radillo, and Robert Wood. (Presented online, 2021)
Finding Our Way, written by playwrights in our program at Donovan Correctional Facility and directed by Ruff Yeager, provided a kaleidoscopic view of the journey of addiction, from causative factors to dependency, recovery and relapse. (MOXIE Theatre, San Bernardino Valley College for San Bernardino County’s Department of Behavioral Health, the Westin Hotel for the U.S. Attorney’s Western States Opioid Summit, and on four yards at Donovan Correctional Facility, 2019)
Audience member