PRODUCTIONS
Mosaic
Mosaic elevates the often unheard voices of local communities
Mosaic features one full professional production each year of scripts written by adults in Playwrights Project 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, with a director, actors, and designers (costumes, props, lights, sound and minimal sets).
Writers work closely with a dramaturg to support revisions throughout the production process and gain valuable insights from questions posed by the production team. Each performance is followed by a talkback with the writer and members of the production team.
The talkbacks provide an opportunity for audiences to respond to and process the work, sharing their responses to the work.
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.
Informative and heartfelt conversations between the audience and the panel often reveal personal connections to the characters’ journeys, gratitude at having felt heard, and a reminder personal experiences have value.
A human connection that transcends differences is achieved and inspires a sense of awe. Audience comments in talk backs and responses to post performance surveys also help guide the writers in further developing their new work.
COMPONENTS
- Mosaic is produced once each 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 are presented at the City Heights Performance Annex and often in partnership with other theatres and have included New Village
- Arts Theatre, Diversionary and Moxie
- 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.
MOSAIC PRODUCTIONS HAVE INCLUDED:
Our inaugural production, Soul Fire written by Lisa Kirazian and directed by Delicia Turner Sonnenberg, wove together oral histories, music, movement, and connecting text to illuminate the actual and spiritual journeys of immigrants from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Viet Nam, China, Haiti and Poland. (City Heights Performance Annex, 2018)
MOSAIC PRODUCTIONS HAVE INCLUDED:
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)
The TAG Project, conceived by Thelma Virata de Castro, directed by Tori Rice, and filmed and edited by Chris Boyd, featured short video/plays theatre centered around the mouth of the San Diego River as it meets Ocean Beach explored themes of belonging and connecting with nature as the world emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic. Writers included: Thelma Virata de Castro, Tony Curtis, Shawn Khalifa, Isabella Quevedo, Ruben Radillo, and Robert Wood. (Presented online, 2021)
The Cell Plays is an intimate, immersive, site-specific play was written by theatre artists in Playwrights Project’s Out of the Yard Programs at Donovan and Centinela prisons and directed by Yolanda Franklin. The script included writing by twenty-three incarcerated playwrights and was devised by Playwrights Project’s Teaching Artists along with six Returned Writers Circle alumni, advising on the script development and production. The play was presented in La Jolla Playhouse’s Without Walls Festival 2023. (The Jail Museum in The Headquarters at Seaport, Spring 2023)
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 characters who are lesbian, gay, or transgender. (Diversionary Theatre, New Village Arts, and City Heights Performance Annex, Fall 2023).
Artists Everywhere conceived and directed by 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 by filmmaker Chris Boyd. The films range in style and subject and raise awareness that artists are all around us. Writers 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 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)
Audience member