Join over a hundred Bay Area writers, directors, actors, and fine artists to become a part of one of San Francisco's most exciting new theater festivals!
Who are you?
The San Francisco Olympians Festival is an annual event that lasts for twelve nights (thirteen, if you count our opening party!) with a focus on the creation of new scripts for the theater in addition to providing a showcase for Bay Area fine artists, actors and writers.
The Festival was started in 2010 by Stuart Bousel, and featured 12 new full length plays, each one based on one of the twelve Olympian gods of Ancient Greece. In 2011 the festival returned with 32 plays, ranging from five minute shorts to full lengths, each one based upon an Ancient Greek sky god or mythical figure who had become a constellation, moon, etc. In 2012 we debuted 25 one acts, each night pitting a play about an Olympian god against a play about a Titan, the race of gods who sired the Olympian gods, and were then overthrown by them.
This year we are excited to premiere 36 new plays by 30 local writers- 16 of whom will be contributing work to the festival for the first time! The plays range from shorts to one acts to full lengths, and each one explores a different aspect of the Trojan War, the apocalypse of Ancient Greece. It will play 12 nights, November 6-23, at the Exit Theatre in San Francisco, and if previous years are indicative of a trend, (every year we've broken our own records), we expect this to be the largest festival yet in terms of participants and audience!
Why do you need so much money?
Well, a bigger festival requires a bigger base of support and this year we're looking to raise $10,000- a really big number! Why so much? Well...
- 40% of the money we raise goes to keeping the doors of the theater open, the lights turned on and the water running- all really necessary! The rest of the money we raise is split two ways...
- The first half goes to marketing and materials: postcards, posters, programs, high quality printings of the work created by our fine artists, the catering for our opening night party and of course, all the photocopies of these brand new scripts we need for the readings.
- The second half goes towards achieving this year's lofty goal of paying everyone who works on the festival a stipend of some kind. In previous years actors and writers were paid, and we held raffles to raise some funds for the artists, but our entire production team and crew, including our box office manager and all of our directors, were volunteers. This year we'd like to change that by creating enough funds to offer everyone a small thank you for the hours, days and weeks they'll put into this project. If we meet our goal, we'll be able to do this, and maybe even have enough left over to put some money away for next year- something else we've never been able to do before!
Most importantly, if we manage to raise all of our funds, we'll be able to keep our ticket price (which is only $10) low, ensuring that the wide variety of audiences looking to experience these new works can do so affordably.
Okay, but why should I support you?
When you support this festival, you're not just supporting the 30 writers whose work will be presented this year, but also the 80+ actors we predict this festival will use (last year we hit 91- a new record for us!), a dozen directors and a dozen fine artists, the staff of the festival and the theater where we work, the theater itself, the neighborhood it is located in, and the cultural life of the city that is our home. Events like the San Francisco Olympians Festival are part of what make the Bay Area a unique and inspiring place to be, a leader in the arts and a center for intellectual experiment and advancement.
But our impact is not just local- it's national. The San Francisco Olympians Festival has been quickly gaining momentum since its first year, with six plays that were first given a public reading in the festival having gone on to full productions: 2010’s Hermes (No Nude Men Productions, Dramaworks, Bread and Water Theatre), Juno En Victoria (Wily West Productions), and Salty Towers (Thunderbird Theater Company); 2011’s Cassiopeia (Eat Street Players), Chronus (Bread and Water Theatre), and You’re Gonna Bleed (DivaFest). Many others have received additional readings on local and national stages: 2011’s Joe Ryan (Impact Theatre), Pleiades (Atlantic Stage) and Selene, or Someone Like The Moon (Exit Theatre); 2012’s Caenis and Poseidon (Playwrights’ Center of San Francisco). Additionally, Exit Press has released a collection of five plays from year one of the festival, Songs of Hestia, now available for purchase on Amazon.com and at bookstores across the country. So when you support our festival you're also supporting American Theater, Literature and Art and adding to the cultural heritage of generations of artists and audience yet to come.
Thank you for giving whatever you can give, for passing this campaign on to others you know who may want to support us, and for helping this festival continue to grow and make the world a better place through art!
This year's line up:
November 6: Greeks Bearing Gifts
AJAX MAJOR by Charles Lewis III
AJAX MINOR- Barbara Jwanouskos
NESTOR- Robert Estes
DIOMEDES- Joel Street
TEUCER- Marissa Skudlarek
PATROCLUS- Daniel Hirsch
THERSITES- Daniel Hirsch
NEOPTOLEMUS- Barbara Jwanouskos
November 7: The Brothers (Part One)
MENELAUS- Annette Roman
AGAMEMNON- Anthony Miller
November 8: The Brains
ODYSSEUS- Megan Cohen
November 9: The Brawn
ACHILLES by Rachel Bublitz
November 13: Trojan Women
HECUBA- Patsy Fergusson
LAODIKE- Marissa Skudlarek
ANDROMACHE- Sarah McKereghan
POLYXENA- Peter Hsieh
CRUESA- Tonya Narvaez
CHRYSEIS- Carol Lashof
BRISEIS- Carol Lashof
OENONE- Ashley Cowan
November 14: The Brothers (Part Two)
PARIS- Kirk Shimano
HECTOR- Bridgette Portman
November 15: The Seer
CASSANDRA- Claire Rice
November 16: The Survivor
AENEAS- Colin Johnson
November 20: The Tools
GOLDEN APPLES I- Helen Noakes
THE SHIELD- Meg O'Connor
THE HELMET- Meg O'Connor
THE SPEAR- Neil Higgins
THE SWORD- Tracy Potter
THE SHIPS- Tracy Potter
THE BOW- Sunil Patel
GOLDEN APPLES II- Allison Page
November 21: The Battlefield
THE WALLS- Madeline Puccioni
THE PLAINS- Jeremy Cole
November 22: The Problem
HELEN- Sam Hurwitt
November 23: The Solution
THE HORSE- Stuart Bousel
