Bootstrap Theater Foundation

BootStrap Theater Foundation was founded in 1998 to help theater artists bootstrap their way to visibility. Our mission is to create and produce new plays.

We support, nurture and agitate for collaborative theater making.  Our plays emphasize ensemble acting, music and movement.  We dwell in our collaborative process, rather than hurry into product.  We abandon hierarchy and listen to all voices, watch all ideas.

Long before a play goes into rehearsal, we design workshops that include our writers, musicians, actors and a director. We get everyone in a room together and watch the two-dimensional ideas-on-paper explode into time and space 

By supporting our work, you help provide the space for our creative process—renting a theater, paying our collaborators, putting food on our lunch-break table, mounting a theatrical production.  You create possibilities for us; we create meaningful theater for you.

Celebrating Fiften Years and Ten World Premieres

A History of Things That Never Happened

            by Sharmon J. Hilfinger

             Fort Mason, San Francisco, 1999

Imaginal Disks: A Tale of Transformation

            by Sharmon J. Hilfinger and Joan McMillen

              Mountain View Center, Mountain View, 2001

               Castilleja School, 2002

 

got water?

            by Sharmon J. Hilfinger and Joan McMillen

                        Improv Summer Camp, 2003

                        San Francisco Fringe Festival, 2004

                        Castilleja School, 2004

 

A Beautiful Home for the Incurable

            by Ian Walker

             Pear Avenue Theatre, 2004

BTF dramaturgical services & funding

Veracruz

            by John F. Levin

            Pear Avenue Theatre, 2004

BTF dramaturgical services & funding

 

What the Birds Carry

            by Elizabeth Gjelten

            Pear Avenue Theatre, 2005

    BTF dramaturgical services & funding

 

Deuce

            by Sharmon J. Hilfinger

             Pear Avenue Theater, co-production, 2006

 

Tell It Slant

            by Sharmon J. Hilfinger and Joan McMillen

             Pear Avenue Theater, co-production, 2009

             Fort Mason, San Francisco, 2010

 

Hanging Georgia

            by Sharmon J. Hilfinger and Joan McMillen

             Thick House, San Francisco

             TheatreFirst Co-production, 2011

         Pear Avenue Theatre, co-production, May, 2013

 

Duct Tape Girl and Fetish Chick

            by Paz Pardo

            Brooklyn, New York, March 28 – April 21, 2013