2022
Circle Mirror Transformation
by Annie Baker
Directed as the first play in Custom Made’s 2022 Season, this play is an exploration on how to reconnect. Written in 2010, this story shines a light on humanity now: emphasizing themes of loneliness, isolation, self-discovery, transition and growth. The silences in this play are forced stillnesses, the tension of being on the precipice of connection, but instead being forced to be alone with only our own psyches.
In this play, I used moments of color, music, and movement as a representations of internal conflict that has no choice but to bleed out into the world around them.
2022
The Speakeasy SF
by Bennet Fisher
Visual Video Example
Photo Example: https://www.thespeakeasysf.com/photos-videos/
A three-hour, twenty-five actor immersive 1920’s experience, running since 2016.
2021
Every Brilliant Thing
by Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe
Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan Macmillan: A sacred space play, this piece took place in the round in a redwood forest clearing. An intimate look at mental health and familial relationships, this play encourages the audience that even the smallest things in life can make life worth living. The piece was set in a natural setting, such as a redwood forest form to encourage regrowth and healing. It was interactive as intended by the playwright, and we used found objects and mismatched chairs to simulate comfort and brilliant things.
2021
The Children’s Farm
by Sean Dunnington
A sweet play about growing up queer in a toxically religious environment, found family, and mental health, this play traverses a decade and a half of role-playing and therapy, this drama weighs forced family, roots, and finding freedom on the farm.
A new work developed at Magic Theatre, Custom Made Theatre, and produced in the New Voices series at Town Hall Theater.
2017
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992
by Anna Deveare Smith
This immersive piece simulated the street of L.A. during the chaos of the Watts riots. We took the piece and divided the characters between 10 actors. When audience arrived they would wandered the space and listened to up to 5 actors monologues at a time. The actors would be on repeat and do their monologues 2-4 times depending on timing and then switch out with the other actors and change into their next character. We used all pieces of the theatre from the crawlspace under the seating banks to the catwalk.
2016
The Waiting Room
by Lisa Loomer
A dark comedy about the timeless quest for beauty—and its cost. Three women from different centuries meet in a modern doctor’s waiting room. Forgiveness From Heaven is an eighteenth-century Chinese woman whose bound feet are causing her to lose her toes. Victoria is a nineteenth-century tightly corsetted English woman suffering from what is commonly known as “hysteria.” Then there is Wanda, a modern gal from New Jersey who is having problems with her silicone breasts. Husbands, doctors, Freud, the drug industry and the FDA all come under examination. The play is a wild ride through medical and sexual politics, including the politics of the ever-present battle with breast cancer.
2022
Mystery at Roland Manor
by Brennan Pickman-Thoon
Written in the height of COVID, and simulating in-person promenade theatre, this virtual murder mystery production was interactive using the 8-bit videogame system called Gather.Town. Audience would create their virtual character and wander into different rooms in the castle, finding actors to talk to, and a mystery to solve!
2021
3030 Visions
Shotgun Players asked for Bay Area artists to create short video of what theatre and the world could look like in the next 30 years using one of the 150+ plays we’ve created over the last three decades as their creative spark.
Video 1: Tonight We Feast
Can skip to 0:51 seconds
Grab a seat at the table because you’re invited to the feast! San Francisco based band Lentil stars in a music video inspired by Sheila Callaghan’s “Women Laughing Alone With Salad.”
Video 2: Faust: Alt Shift Control
Based off the Faustian concept of selling your soul, we used screen capture to create a piece analyzing the radicalization of young people through the YouTube rabbit hole. Our central goal is to make the audience wonder, “could that have been me?”
Ciera Eis 