SF Olympians

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. This year the festival will be composed of 24 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.

In addition to the usual showcase of work by this exciting group of San Francisco Bay Area writers, the festival will also include a contest component- each night the audience will be asked to vote on which play they prefer, the Olympian play, or the Titan play.

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, or slated to be produced in the next year (2010’s Hermes, Juno En Victoria, and Salty Towers, and 2011’s Cassiopeia, Selene or Someone Like The Moon, and Hyperion to a Saytr). Additionally, Exit Press has recently 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.

The festival this year occurs in December (we couldn’t resist 12 Titans vs. 12 Olympians in the Twelfth Month of the year 2012) and will return to its home at the Exit Theater (156 Eddy Street in San Francisco). Tickets will remain a very low $10.00 per night and can only be purchased at the Theater, starting half an hour before the show begins. More information about the festival, including artist statements and bios for this year’s participants, can be found at www.sfolympians.com. Press inquiries or other questions can be directed to [email protected].

The full schedule for the festival is as follows:

December 5 @ 8 PM

Hestia by James Kierstead, directed by Keshuv Prasad
Not all homemakers are created equal.

Dionysus, or Die oh! Nice, us! by Lily Janiak, directed by Anthony Miller
The party god is re-imagined as a deeply unpleasant nerd in a feminist play that hates its own feminism and wants to die.

December 6 @ 8 PM

Mnemosyne and Themis, or The Broken Frame by Larissa Archer, directed by Neil Higgins
A matriarch’s death pits two sisters against each other in a battle of passion versus pragmatism, the past versus the future, and instinct versus intelligence.

Mnemosyne and Themis, or Leaving Earth by Susan Sobeloff, directed by Neil Higgins
Facing their waning Titan powers, two sisters Mnemosyne and Themis gather their respective daughters for a last family reunion.

Athena, The Musical by Roberta D’Alois and Marilyn Harris Kriegel, with lyrics by Roberta D’Alois and Marilyn Harris Kriegel, and music by Roberta D’Alois, directed by Rebecca Longworth
Even goddesses buy elections. But will Twenty-five million get Marley Nathena what she wants?

December 7 @ 8 PM

Phoebe & Theia, or How to Get to Tartarus by Amy Clare Tasker, directed Annie Paladino
The Titan goddesses of light are plunged into darkness as they struggle to understand why they have been banished to Tartarus, the metaphysical gloom deep inside the earth. In this Beckettian landscape, Phoebe and Theia wrestle with their culpability in the defeat of the Titans.

Aphrodite, or The Love Goddess by Marissa Skudlarek, directed by Sara Staley
A gorgeous starlet, a sexy war hero, a cuckolded sap of a husband. The Aphrodite-Ares-Hephaestus love triangle as you’ve never seen it before — in 1940s Hollywood!

December 8 @ 2 PM

Iapetus by Neil Higgins, directed by Amanda Ortmayer
A mysterious man appears at the doors of an asylum. Is he delusional or is he, as he claims, an immortal Titan who wants to teach the doctors a lesson?

Hermes: The Computer That Wanted To Love by Kirk Shimano, directed by Amanda Ortmayer
A computer seeks to find his place in a land without wi-fi hotspots.

December 8 @ 8 PM

Prometheus: Playing With Fire by Jeremy Cole, directed by Jeremy Cole
Mythology repeats itself when a scientist working with genetically-altered clones takes pity on them and helps them against the Administration’s wishes.

Hephaestus or Heffy by Colin Johnson, directed by Colin Johnson
A deformed, disgruntled man of power attempts to solve the problem of his philandering wife.

December 12 @ 8 PM

Coeus and Creos or 12.12.12 by Evelyn Jean Pine, directed by Karen Offereins
Two rebellious Titans, twins who despise each other, are thrown by blood-thirsty Zeus into the depth of into Hades’ underworld. Coeus and Creos, one scientist, one poet, vow to use Hades’ power of invisibility to destroy the Olympians, god by god, experiment by experiment, line by line.

Hades by Robert and Benjamin Cooper, directed by Tracy Held Potter
The Underworld: a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to die there.

December 13 @ 8 PM

Tethys or In The Deep by Meghan Kathleen O’Connor , directed by Annie Paladino
When Tethys and Oceanus are replaced by a lustful, hot-headed Olympian, Tethys must come to terms with her new life. But are a loving husband and 3,000 daughters enough? And can she drown out the voices lost at sea, calling for her help?

Demeter or In the Silence of Tangerine Groves by Patricia Milton, directed by Michaela Goldhaber
A high-powered perfume executive, stressed to the point of exhaustion, has a nervous breakdown in the middle of a product pitch. Yanked from the land of men, she journeys to the land of women — where she struggles to come to her senses.

Decemeber 14 @ 8 PM

Oceanus or The Death of All Dolphins by Evan Winchester, directed by Cristy Crowley
Two Sea Desk employees struggle to write a press release explaining the freak airborn death of Sharky, the star bottlenose dolphin. But what if Sharky’s collision was only the first sign of some greater calamity gliding up from the deep?

Poseidon or Caenis and Poseidon, by Bridgette Dutta Portman, directed by Katja Rivera
Set in classical Greece, Caenis and Poseidon is the story of a defiant young woman who transforms into a man — and the vengeful god determined not to let her get away with it.

Decemeber 15 @ 2 PM

Atlas, or Do a Good Turn Daily by Charles Lewis III, directed by Charles Lewis III
A cranky old man, an obnoxious teenage boy, and a precocious nine-year-old girl. It’s a hot summer day in 1995. Who knows where they’ll go from here?

Ares and Eris, or The Upper Hand by Claire Rice, directed by Karen Offereins
An anarchist and a Tea Party leader walk into a bar, they both order car bombs.

December 15 @ 8 PM

Hyperion by Seanan Palmero & Clint Winder, directed by Xanadu Bruggers
Hyperion is reincarnated as the apex of a bootlegging empire during Prohibition. Shit happens, hilarity ensues and miscommunication among well meaning underlings jeopardizes the family business.

Artemis and Apollo or Twins by Stuart Eugene Bousel, directed by Xanadu Bruggers
Artemis is a loner, Apollo is a golden-boy, both as dangerous as they are beautiful, but will we ever truly know why they come together to murder fourteen children?

December 19 @ 8 PM

Rhea by Maria Leigh, directed by Rebecca Longworth
On December 21, 2012 the Maya calendar ends and the apocalypse begins. At the end of the world, as buildings crumble and are washed away, there is only one thing to pray for: may I be the water and not the rock.

Hera by Barbara Jwanouskos, directed by Amy Clare Tasker
Hera is sick of Zeus impregnating mortals, so she impregnates one of her own…

December 20 @ 8 PM

Chronus by Christian Simonsen, directed by Stuart Bousel
Chronus is the Father of Zeus, and the Father of Time. Both will turn against him.

Zeus by Megan Cohen, directed by Stuart Bousel
The ruler of the universe travels the Earth knocking up women and seeking existential redemption, using a mélange of texts from Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Top 40 pop songs, all lovingly re-imagined by the Bay Area’s most frequently produced female playwright.