The Best Bay Area Theater We Saw In 2023

Bay Area theater in 2023 often went in woeful directions. Audiences still haven’t returned to bustling pre-pandemic levels, and too many theaters closed, unable to balance their high levels of artistry with financial solvency.

Still, there are encouraging signs for live storytelling as the calendar marches toward 2024. Some critical Bay Area festivals returned, carrying national repercussions, and many bold theatermakers chose this year to reveal transcendent passion projects — with no shortage of local world premieres.

Here, Bay Area theater critics and regular KQED Arts contributors Nicole Gluckstern and David John Chávez reflect on the region’s significant theater news, events and premieres of 2023.

Not Sorry to Bother You

‘The Ni¿¿er Lovers’ was a breakthrough hit

To say that Marc Anthony Thompson’s debut play The Ni¿¿er Lovers at Magic Theatre pulled no punches would be to massively understate its gleeful fearlessness. Its focus, the story of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped from slavery in 1848 by dressing Ellen up as a white man traveling North, with William posing as her servant. But rather than taking a somber bio-pic approach to their heroic flight the play went for satirical gusto, casting its daring protagonists as unrepentant kinksters (impeccably performed by Aidaa Peerzada and Rotimi Agbabiaka), and presenting their story in a series of vignettes punctuated by music, monologues, comic sketches, and sharply-honed, go-for-the-jugular irreverence that felt decades in the perfecting.—Nicole Gluckstern

Tabard Sings ‘Once’ More

Goodbye to a popular South Bay company

The Tabard Theater production of Once in March was a warm delight, but will mostly be remembered as the last production of the venerable 22-year-old downtown San José company. Tabard’s longtime home, formerly known as the Theatre on San Pedro Square, is one of the most quaint, charming spaces in the entire South Bay, with flickering candles atop cabaret tables and a plentiful bar with a rustic feel. The area is also a happening spot, with lots of trendy restaurants and plentiful parking surrounding the second story theater. Adding to the melancholia more recently, the company lost their lease on the building, leaving both the company (which moved away from theater productions and focused on live events) and the space itself up in the air. Despite all that, the company remains resolute and optimistic to find new places to program their engaging, community-centered events.—David John Chávez

Hello/Goodbye

‘Forgetting Tree’ gave grace to Queer Cat Productions’ final bow

Modeling important values in and out of the theatre such as consent, access, and emphatically queer joyfulness, Queer Cat’s performance offerings throughout these pandemic times have been thoughtfully crafted and boldly imaginative. Thankfully they left us one last production to remember them by—the gorgeously-rendered Forgetting Tree, co-produced and directed by Jes DeVille of Openhaus Athletics. Combining the creative gifts of cellists, clowns, acrobats, dancers, permaculture designers, and the fierce love of a Living Altar (Rawiya Tariq), Forgetting Tree offered remembrance, ritual, and catharsis to those of us fortunate enough to experience it—both in the room and virtually.—Nicole Gluckstern

‘English’ Speaks All Languages

‘My accent is a war crime’

In the first week of May, Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s wonderful, poignant West Coast premiere production of English closed. The day after the final curtain, playwright Sanaz Toossi’s script, about a group of four Iranian adults preparing for a daunting English language exam near Tehran in order to come to other parts of the world, won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The production was significant for its stewarding by local director Mina Morita, the longtime artistic director of San Francisco’s Crowded Fire Theater Company. Morita is moving away from the company this month to focus more on her directing career, and will be in Australia late next year directing Yoga Play by Dipika Guha at the National Theater of Parramatta.—David John Chávez

You Gotta Believe

Change Your Mind (or don’t) with ‘Say Nothing and Leave’

I may have entered the bustling Say Nothing and Leave-designed Change Your Mind clinic a Guarded Contrarian, but I left it…a Guarded Contrarian. Ok, so some personality types are more resistant to change than others, but in this tone-perfect immersive experience, the promise of personality editing is presented with such matter-of-fact aplomb you will almost certainly find yourself wondering if it could really be done. Whether you actually choose to change or not, the experience playfully and thoroughly raises the question of what could be gained through said deletion—and what could be irretrievably lost.—Nicole Gluckstern

Collaboration is Key

Crowded Fire restructures, premieres ‘Edit Annie’

Crowded Fire has always been a highly unified company, with a commitment to tell stories and present opportunities for all marginalized groups. While many companies follow a structure with an artistic director at the top of the pyramid, Crowded Fire instead turned one leader into seven, cross-pollinating everyone’s institutional knowledge into all aspects of the company. The first production of this new regime was the highly regarded west coast premiere of Edit Annie by Mary Glen Fredrick, which kicked off in October.—David John Chávez

New Roots Meets Old School

SFBATCO’s annual festival gave center stage to exciting collaboration

Making space for experimentation, innovation, and camaraderie, this year’s New Roots festival lineup included the breathtaking, capoeira-inspired De Mangangá written by mother-son team Tania Santiago and SeQuoiia, Shidaiqu, an intriguing new musical by Jord Liu, revealing the intersections of Jazz and Communism in 1920s Shanghai, and a stunning revival of Zaccho Dance Theatre’s Dying While Black and Brown, choreographed by Johanna Haigood with music by Marcus Shelby. By focusing attention on BIPOC-centered creation at every stage of development, these New Roots festivals are nurturing some of the most exciting theatrical collaborations in the Bay Area, including SFBATCO’s own Sign My Name to Freedom, The Unheard Songs of Betty Reid Soskin, which will receive its full world premiere in 2024.—Nicole Gluckstern

ReOrient-ing at Golden Thread

Festival of Middle Eastern works has run since 1996

When Sahar Assaf took over in 2021 from Golden Thread Productions’ artistic director and founder Torange Yeghiazarian, she knew there were massive shoes to fill. She also learned quickly that the company’s ReOrient Festival is beloved as one of the longest running theater festivals of new work in the Bay Area. With incubators disappearing nationally, such as the Lark and the Humana Play Festival, new playwrights have fewer places to develop their work. More than 100 scripts were submitted for consideration this year. Six were selected. The company has also worked to expand Middle Eastern narratives, and how those stories impact Middle Easterners who make the Bay Area and beyond their home. For the first time in the festival’s history, all of this year’s plays were set in the United States. —David John Chávez

Big Things in the East Bay

Oakland Theater Project’s world premiere of ‘Exodus to Eden’

Setting foot inside the Flax Art & Design building for an Oakland Theater Project show means knowing you’re in for some highly charged theater that’s not to be missed. The company has a great sense of how to present a classic text (their 2018 A Streetcar Named Desire and the more recent Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, featuring associate artistic director Lisa Ramirez and co-artistic director William Hodgson, were both phenomenal), but have also dove headfirst into world premieres. This year, co-artistic director Michael Socrates Moran made his playwriting debut with Exodus to Eden, which he also directed. The intimate Flax space provided the production some spatial limits, yet the show still featured a sizable cast of 17 performers. Whether it’s a world premiere or a tried-and-true play, Oakland Theater Project has strategically found a formula that melds the potential of people with a sky-high commitment to artistry.—David John Chávez

New Spaces for Fresh Faces

It’s been an incredibly tumultuous time for small performance venues in the Bay Area, and the list of spaces we’ve lost feels like it just keeps growing. But incredibly and inspiringly, a new crop of venues and multi-use spaces have blossomed in their wake. This is just a small sampling of the marvelous specificity and neighborhoods being served by some of our newest artistic homes.—Nicole Gluckstern

Church of Clown, 2400 Bayshore Blvd., San Francisco
Eclectic Box, 446 Valencia St., San Francisco
BAM House, 1540 Broadway, Oakland
Theatre Rhinoceros, 4229 18th St., San Francisco
447 Minna, 447 Minna St., San Francisco
Geneva Powerhouse, 2301 San Jose Ave., San Francisco
Sealevel, 4331 Irving St., San Francisco