Announcing the Spring 2026 CA$H Theatre Grantees
We are proud to announce the following recipients of the Spring 2026 CA$H Theatre Grants. Learn more about CA$H Theatre.
CA$H Performs
CA$H Performs is a $5,000 grant that supports fully produced performances of theatre projects that are open to the public.
Ramon Abad
The Big Whoop Dee Do is a new family-friendly, multimedia theatre performance featuring an ensemble of puppeteers creating large-scale puppet characters. The Big Whoop Dee Do is a humorous story with the theme of resilience through life’s challenges, specifically designed for young audiences to laugh and to be inspired. The show will be presented at SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco in August 2026.
Keiko Carreiro
Continuance (working title) is a new solo theatre performance using bunraku, shadow puppets, and stop motion animation, featuring sound design by Julian Kenji and directed by Lisa Hori Garcia. In 2026, reawakenings of racism, colonialism, sexism, and classism have fired Carreiro’s need to tell a story about survival and continuance, of “lasting” despite oppressive forces, and to represent herself as an older Asian American artist at this difficult juncture for arts in the United States. Continuance will be presented at the San Francisco International Arts Festival in Spring 2027.
Jamie Coventry
Clown Down, The Misadventures of Futz is a 60-minute solo show featuring music, circus, comedy, and shadow puppets. A North American original, the Tramp clown archetype arose in the late 19th century after the Civil War and had a resurgence during the Great Depression. Now is the perfect time to bring this character back into the conversation. How does the Tramp survive today? What does the Tramp have to teach us about ingenuity when presented with a lack of resources? How does the Tramp retain dignity in the face of hardship? Clown Down, The Misadventures of Futz creates a unique experience for audience members to see a modern twist on a historical figure. Clown Down will be presented in San Francisco at Z Below and in the East Bay (location TBD) in March 2027.
Charles Hawthorne
The Making of a Diva is a music and character-driven immersive theatre project unfolding in The White Horse Inn over a single evening. The Making of a Diva centers on the concept of the “diva” as a starting point for building character-driven performance rooted in queer nightlife. This piece aims to blur the lines of queer dance party and performance art to create an engaging evening-length experience. The Making of a Diva premieres in August 2026.
Anthony Jefferson
The Bumpy Road Less Traveled is a solo performance that chronicles Jefferson’s childhood in Hermosa Beach, Southern California until his release from incarceration in 2015. This play is a legislative work of theatre rooted in the belief that a single tragedy should not define an entire life. Its purpose is taking accountability while showing that the American promise of a second chance should extend to everyone who has encountered the prison-industrial and carceral system. The Bumpy Road Less Traveled will perform at the Marsh in September 2026.
Antonio Lee
Adrienne’s Draguation: Homecoming is a drag revue created to expand access to LGBTQ+ performance and inclusive spaces in the city of Fairfield in Solano County. The project blends drag, theatre, and community celebration, using performance as a way to honor personal milestones while uplifting the local arts community. Adrienne’s Draguation: Homecoming will be presented in August 2026 at the Downtown Theatre in Fairfield, CA.
Allan S. Manalo
TAGALOG 2026 is a festival of one-act plays written and performed entirely in Tagalog, one of the national languages of the Philippines, and presented with integrated English supertitles to ensure language access. The festival will be staged at Bindlestiff Studio, an 89-seat black box theatre located in San Francisco’s SOMA Pilipinas Cultural District and the only community-based venue in the United States dedicated exclusively to showcasing performing arts of the Philippine diaspora. TAGALOG 2026 was created to reclaim Tagalog as a living theatrical language and to affirm Filipin@ stories, humor, and emotional truth in a space where language is often lost through migration and assimilation. The festival centers work by contemporary playwrights living in the Philippines and brings them into dialogue with Filipin@ American artists and audiences in the Bay Area, fostering cultural exchange across generations and geographies. TAGALOG 2026 will be performed in October 2026.
San Francisco Recovery Theatre
Tales from the Fentayloin is a world-premiere production that draws its story, its performers, and its moral authority directly from people who have lived the realities the work depicts: addiction, incarceration, displacement, grief, and the hard-won determination to survive and transform. Tales from the Fentayloin will be presented at accessible venues in the San Francisco Civic Center in Fall 2026.
(Photo of San Francisco Recovery Theatre)
Underground Rainbow Experiment
The First Time I Saw Me: Stories of Black Trans Emergence is a three-day interdisciplinary theatre production centering Black Trans artists, exploring self-love as transmutation while piloting a collaborative creation model pairing emerging artists with mentors to build community and care. TFTISM will perform in Oakland in September 2026.
CA$H Creates
CA$H Creates is a $2,500 grant that supports the development of artistic theatre projects or capacity-building projects not directly tied to a fully produced performance of a piece.
Edith Castorena
Named for My Mother is a magical realist play exploring the impacts of immigration from the global south to the United States through the lens of gender, family, and intergenerational memory. Blending humor, vulnerability, and a Chicana feminist perspective, the play examines how migration, silence, and survival shape family narratives across generations. CA$H Creates will fund work focusing on refining the script, deepening the theatrical language of magical realism, and testing the play through workshops.
More Más Marami Arts
More Más Marami Arts, a South Bay theatre collective that develops and creates new works with emerging artists through creative collaborations and community engagement, is going to finalize incorporating into a workers theatre collective nonprofit, with the bylaws and policies to ensure an equitable, community-oriented, and successful theatre company. CA$H Creates will support incorporation fees, lawyer payments, initial general insurance payments, and the labor involved in finalizing the paperwork.
(Photo of Sanctuary City at More Más Marami Arts photo by Iliana Karbowski)
Montserrat Nava
Following the closure of the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in December 2025 due to a financial crisis, Nava, together with the other members of the Mission Cultural Center’s Spanish-language theatre program, are forming an independent theatre company, Del Barrio Teatro. CA$H Creates will support fees and expenses related to creating this new company as an independent entity and developing a collectively created showcase that explores migrant identity, premiering in September 2026 in San Francisco.
Torange Yeghiazarian
Yeghiazarian is working on translating a collection of Iranian plays written and produced after the 1979 revolution. In contrast to their depiction in mainstream American media as villains or victims, ordinary Iranians live rich lives that have more in common with ordinary Americans than we might imagine. Yeghiazarian intends for this collection to be published, making the plays widely available to theatre artists and students to read, stage, and produce, and specifically selected plays that she felt would resonate with American audiences. The plays are: A Moment of Silence by Mohammad Yaghoubi, Roya’s Room by Afrouz Forouzand, After Never by Hale Moshtaghi Nia, Blackout Dreams/Nightmares of Silence by Sanaz Bayan & Amir Kianpour, The Voice Room by Reza Soroor, The Language of Wild Berries by Naghmeh Samini, and The Tank by Jalal Tehrani. The readings will take place between November 2026 and March 2027.
CA$H Sustains
CA$H Sustains is a $5,000 grant that supports the general operating costs of a Bay Area theatre company.
The Chikahan Company
The Chikahan Company (ChikaCo) is a Filipinx American theatre company rooted in the belief that authentic storytelling is an act of cultural survival and communal joy. Their mission is to explore Filipinx history, politics, psychology, and diaspora through the craft of theatre and the performing arts, developing the unique voices of Filipinx artists, uplifting the full breadth of Filipinx narratives and artistries, and advocating for their rightful place within the American theatre landscape. https://www.chikahancompany.com/
Oakland Public Theater
Oakland Public Theater is a “different kind of Black Theatre.” OPT expands notions of culture, encompassing often invisible roles of African Americans and other marginalized communities. From OPT’s beginnings at Mills College in-residence with the African-American Shakespeare Company to their current development of a Trans coming-of-age musical, they continue to pursue and expand that mission. OPT produces shows on both sides of the Bay, creating original works, exploring new playwrights, and revisiting classics.
Put Ur Play On Productions
Put Ur Play On Productions’ mission is to introduce theatrical art through thought-provoking stage plays/events with a social conscience while combatting social issues within communities through education, outreach, and advocacy. PUPO is a Black-led organization dedicated to serving diverse and traditionally underserved communities through the transformative power of theatre. Their work engages individuals and families affected by a broad range of social issues, including domestic violence, HIV/AIDS awareness, colorism, and systemic inequities. https://puturplayon.com
(Photo of the cast of Shades at Put Ur Play On Productions)
CA$H Theatre is grateful to have the generous support of our funding partners, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Gerbode Foundation and the Campbell Foundation.
Spring 2026 CA$H Panelists
Tierra Allen (Creates and Performs)
Tierra Allen is a multi-hyphenate artist and activist creating for collective liberation from her home in Occupied Huchuin/Oakland, CA. As a theatre artist and cultural producer, they have co-created spaces braiding performance, activism, healing, and critical consciousness-raising at theatres, community-based organizations, schools, and parks, behind prison walls and in the streets. They recently performed in Shipping & Handling (Crowded Fire Theater), House/Full of Blackwomxn: This Too Shall Pass (Deep Waters Dance Theater), Josephine’s Feast (Campo Santo/Magic Theater), Babes in Ho-Lland (Shotgun Players), Sign My Name to Freedom (SFBATCO), and a workshop production of ALAA: A Family Trilogy (Golden Thread Productions). She’s won an Isadora Duncan “Izzie” Dance Award, earned award nominations from Theatre Bay Area, directed for 3Girls Theater, Playwrights Foundation, and PlayGround, and choreographed for the National Queer Arts Festival, Spectrum Queer Media, and TheatreFIRST. Their speculative abolitionist short film THE REMEMBERING TIME screened at the 18th International Queer Women of Color Film Festival. Listen to her podcast THE REAL WORK: A PODCAST ABOUT THEATER CULTURE AND TRANSFORMATIVE JUSTICE, co-produced with We Rise Production, on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. In partnership with Cal Shakes & Youth Speaks, Tierra co-curated & co-produced the theatre stage at the Life is Living Festival for six years. They hold a B.A. in Theater & Dance from Amherst College.
Chloë Angst (Sustains)
Chloë Angst (they/she) is a Bay Area vocalist, multidisciplinary artist, and stage and screen actor. They founded B.A.D. Musical Theatre and serve as Associate Artistic Director of Calico Theatre Company. Local credits include roles with City Lights Theater Company, Theatre Rhinoceros, 6th Street Playhouse, Berkeley Playhouse, Palo Alto Players, and Hillbarn Theatre, among many others. They maintain a side career in mortuary science, holding advanced degrees in music and anthropology. www.chloeangst.com
Kristy Lin Billuni (Creates and Performs)
Kristy’s writing career springs from the compost of dancing in the iconic unionized Lusty Lady peepshow, fighting on the ‘90s gay liberation frontlines with GLAAD, and teaching with the radical sexual health educators of Project Prepare. She treasures the diverse venues where her plays have appeared, from an HIV clinic in the Castro, to a ghost mall in Citrus Heights, to a public radio station in FiDi. An especially proud member of Theatre Bay Area as well as The Dramatist Guild, Left Coast Theatre Company, and San Francisco Eagle Players, she is a Lambda Literary Fellow and a 3Girls Brady Fellow. She lives in San Francisco with her heroic social worker wife.
Virginia Blanco (Sustains)
Virginia Blanco is an actor, director, and theatremaker with acting regional credits including Oakland Theater Project, Shelton Theatre, TheatreFirst, Theatre of Yugen, Cutting Ball Theater, Anton’s Well Theater Company, and La Lengua Theater, where she also made her directorial debut with Doméstica Realidad. Virginia has produced all of La Lengua’s productions to date. She trained at Studio ACT, the Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, and Shakespeare & Company, has a Bachelor’s degree in Communications (University of Buenos Aires) and a background in journalism and editing. In 2019 she founded La Lengua Theater where she is Artistic Director. Virginia is an artist in residence at Brava! For Women in the Arts and was a TBA Arts Leadership fellow in partnership with AlterTheater. Follow her work: @virginia.m.blanco and lalengua.org
Rachel Brown (Sustains)
Rachel Brown is a core company member with Theatre Lunatico in Berkeley, CA. There she has performed in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, A Rose For Emily, The Revolutionists, The Moors, Romeo and Juliet, and Frankenstein. Previously, as a core company member of Ragged Wing Ensemble in Oakland, CA, Rachel performed in A Winter’s Tale, Time Sensitive, the world premiere of A Different Long Stretch of Earth, and was an actor/deviser in the world premiere of Multiverse: Beyond the Broken Universe. Rachel received her BA in English from UC Berkeley and her MFA in Ensemble Based Physical Theatre from the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre. She has also studied with the Moscow Art Theatre, British American Drama Academy, and SITI Company, as well as at American Conservatory Theater. She has taught students from preschool through the graduate-school level, including tenures with The Nueva School, Spotlight! Girls (Go Girls! Theatre Camp), Ragged Wing’s The School of Fierce Play, and The University of Southern Mississippi.
Teressa Foss (Creates and Performs)
Teressa Foss (AEA, SAG-AFTRA, AGMA) is a North-Bay-based performing artist with over 30 years of professional credits in musical theatre, drama, opera, variety, recital concert, indie film, and commercial. Local credits include Berkeley Rep, Opera San Jose, Berkeley Playhouse, 42nd Street Moon, Theatreworks, Sacramento Theatre Co., and Livermore Valley Opera; elsewhere includes Phoenix Theatre, GeVa Theatre, Reprise! L.A., and the Hollywood Bowl. She currently serves on Napa County’s granting body, the Arts & Culture Advisory Committee. July 2026: “Dr. Cora Gage,” Going To St. Ives, Lower Bottom Playaz (Oakland). www.teressafoss.net
Tirumari Jothi (Creates and Performs)
Comedian, actor, and writer Tirumari Jothi can be seen in Critical Hit Comedy every Saturday at It’s Your Move Games in Oakland, and the Auntie Pho Comedy Hour (CA$H Performs grantee, Fall 2025) June 4–7 at Z Below. Find Tirumari online: IG: @tirumario, YT: @tirumari, TT: @tirumari69420
Joe Waterman (Sustains)
Joe Waterman is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Eclectic Box, a nonprofit blackbox theatre focused on bringing unique stories to the stage. www.eclecticboxsf.com He is also a performer, visual artist, writer, and lighting designer. Joe has previously worked with: Awesome Theatre, San Francisco Youth Theatre, Left Coast Theatre Company, Ignite SF Puppet Slam, and Snatchbox. “In this world there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.” —James Baldwin
K. Sid Zhang (Creates and Performs)
K. Sid Zhang is a director, dancer, and poet from Nanjing, China and currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She searches for space between words and their silence and creates visual poetry out of interdisciplinary, movement-based performances. Up next in July: Samsara Hotel (CA$H Creates grantee, Fall 2025). Sid is a co-founder of Moon Dog, a nascent theatre company. ksidzhang.com | IG: @moondog.productions