Support our Indiegogo campaign to premiere VALUE OVER REPLACEMENT, a new play about baseball, drugs and sports-radio!
Value Over Replacement
At five-foot-seven, one-hundred-sixty pounds, light-hitting shortstop turned drive-time sports radio host, Edward “Chip” Fuller is hardly the poster-boy for baseball’s steroid era. But when he learns his name will appear on a list of players linked to performance enhancing drugs, Chip is forced to explain his choice to colleagues, his listeners, and his family. In doing so, he must choose between a bland public apology and a much more difficult confession: that if he had it to do over again, he wouldn't change a thing.
Written by Ruben Grijalva and directed by PlayGround Artistic Director Jim Kleinmann, Value Over Replacement explores the power of childhood dreams, and what we're willing to do to make them come true. Though immersed in the cultures of baseball and sports talk radio, we think the show will speak to anyone who's ever aspired to do big things in the world.
The Back of Our Baseball Card
The play was commissioned by PlayGround and received a staged reading in the Best of PlayGround Festival in May of 2014. It has since been named an O'Neill National Playwrights Conference Finalist and won an Edgerton Foundation New Play Award.
The cast includes Jomar Tagatac*, who portrayed "Chip" in the short version of the play in Best of PlayGround 2013, as well as Martha Brigham*, Christian Haines*, Melissa Ortiz*, Stephanie Prentice*, and Alex Shafer* (* An Equity-approved project).
This production will cost $20,000 and we've already secured $15,000 so we just need your help with the final $5,000 to make this dream of a play a reality! Your tax-deductible donation helps to pay these wonderful artists, as well as cover the costs of the costumes, sets, props, and other artsy stuff that helps us bring the world of Chip and the San Francisco Knights to life. Improve your karmic batting average and earn wonderful perks for a steal while helping us round the bases with this important new play!
Season Schedule
- The Thick House in San Francisco's Potrero Hill.
- PREVIEWS: JUNE 12th - JUNE 13th
- OPENING: JUNE 15th - CLOSING: JULY 10th
- Purchase your tickets through the campaign at discounted rates, and we'll hook you up with the dates you want! For the complete performance schedule, visit http://playground-sf.org/vor.
Performance Enhancement
We are excited to bring you the first play that dramatizes baseball's steroid era, and does so with a distinct point of view. By viewing the PED scandal through its effect on one family, we hope to humanize the dark choices made by so many. Thanks for your contributions to this one-of-a-kind project.
About the title: Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) is a sabermetric statistic that attempts to measure the marginal utility of a given baseball player by comparing him to a "replacement-level" player, described as an average fielder and below average hitter.
Value Over Replacement is a fiscally-sponsored project of PlayGround (94-3336399) a California non-profit corporation. All donations to Value Over Replacement are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.