The San Francisco Neo-Futurists

The San Francisco Neo-Futurists are a prolific ensemble of writer/director/performers who produce performative work that is non-illusory (meaning: we don’t ask you to suspend your disbelief), rooted in chance and chaos, and seeks to directly respond to the world around us.

The SF Neo-Futurists

Founded in 2013, the SF Neo-Futurists joined two sister companies in Chicago (est. 1988) and New York (est. 2004). The companies performed their first weekly flagship show, Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, through 2016. Starting in 2017, all three companies began collaborating on a new weekly show format, which they named The Infinite Wrench.

When Bay Area theaters were closed due to COVID-19 containment measures, the San Francisco Neo-Futurists continued to make work in a brand-new show called The World Wide Wrench, a free, weekly missive of digitally-available performances.

The Infinite Wrench

The Infinite Wrench is a weekly, ongoing, ever-changing show during which we attempt to perform 30 plays within the time constraint of one hour.

All the plays presented are non-illusory, meaning that the ensemble never asks the audience to suspend their disbelief.

Each week, the performing ensemble cuts a randomized number of plays (between 2 and 12) and each individual writes new plays to pitch to the group for the next week. So, the show is a constantly-changing endeavor: a fusion of living newspaper and sport that aims to tell stories of the world as it is now.

The WORLD WIDE WRENCH

In March 2019, the SF Neo-Futurists indefinitely suspended performances of The Infinite Wrench in compliance with the Bay Area’s shelter-in-place order. However, we were dedicated to producing new work in spite of our new limitations. So (in the great tradition of Bay Area start-ups), we pivoted and created The World Wide Wrench.

The World Wide Wrench is a weekly collection of new digitally-available art founded in the tenets of our stage show: we are who we are, where we are, doing what we’re doing, and the time is now. All work is shared for free every Friday with our audience.

The World Wide Wrench varies greatly from week to week. We experiment with and incorporate audio, video, livestream, video conferencing, and interactive elements (and whatever else we can imagine into existence). We aim to make work that is just as weird, wonderful, and WTF as what audiences have come to expect from us for years. Just a little more high-tech.

You can find an archive of all the work created for The World Wide Wrench HERE.

WHAT THEY SAY WHEN THEY SAY OUR NAME

“For a conceit as contrived and blatant as a race against the clock, the San Francisco Neo-Futurists are the least stagey group on Bay Area stages. For their ferocious commitment to the new, their openness to the imagination, their unvarnished honesty and can-do pep, they’re an underground power generator in an art form no one should ever deride as “dying” so long as they’re fighting the seconds ticking by.” – Lily Janiak (SF Chronicle)

“Each night will have a tiny play that makes you cry, howl with laughter, question your assumptions and feel a little uncomfortable.” – Heather Robinson (Broke Ass Stuart)

Best Theater Company – SF Bay Guardian’s Best of the Bay 2019, 2017 & 2016 Readers Poll

Best Live Theater – SF Weekly Best of San Francisco 2017 Readers Poll

Featured on Buzzfeed

Founding ensemble member (2013-present)

I was cast as a founding ensemble member of the San Francisco Neo-Futurists in October, 2013. Since then, I have performed at least 25 weekends a year as an active ensemble member and produced hundreds of plays for both Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind and, now, The Infinite Wrench.

In addition to the regular show, I have produced a number of specialty shows for the Neo-Futurists, including 2 Infinite 2 Wrench in September 2019, which was a two-nights-only performance wherein we tried to (and succeed in) performing 60 plays in our usual 60 minutes.

You can find a list of all my play titles, along with links to selected play scripts, HERE, or you can watch a few of my favorites HERE.

In addition to performing, I helped create the SF Neo's first education program: monthly pay-what-you-can workshops and annual Intro to Neo-Futurism courses. This program has since grown, and now encompasses 8-week classes with Endgames Improv and in-school workshops around the Bay to bring performance practice to high school students.

Co-Artistic Director (2016-2019)

I was elected as co-artistic director for the San Francisco Neo-Futurists in 2016 and stepped down in 2019. In this role, I worked with my co-AD to provide additional administrative support to the company, established guiding artistic principles, promoted avenues for ensemble artistic growth both inside and outside of our weekly performances, and served as an external representative to the company. My co-AD and I were also ambassadors for the SF Neo-Futurists in communications with our sister companies in New York and Chicago.

During my tenure, my co-AD and I grew the ensemble’s annual operating budget by 90% through pursuing grant opportunities, building out a robust specialty show schedule, and strategic budgeting.