SAN FRANCISCO: PlayGround has announced four new members of their leadership team for the second year of their producing fellowship program. The part-time fellows will focus on communications, development, artistic programs, and theatre management. This year’s fellow include Lindsey Abbott, Daniel Benitez, Caroline Portante, and Wallace Ming Yan.

The new cohort of producers was curated to reflect the diverse community that makes the Bay Area vital to the theatre community at large, with a focus on diversity of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity. The fellows will work under the leadership of artistic director Jim Kleinmann, associate artistic director Annie Stuart, and production manager Jacque Bugler.

Lindsey Abbott is a recent graduate of Sonoma State University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Arts & Dance with a concentration in acting. She is working toward her MFA in theatre arts management at Brooklyn College. Abbott works both on- and offstage and aspires to assist the next generation of theatremakers.

Daniel Benitez is a multi-hyphenate who works primarily as a performance artist and is entering the world of makeup artistry and design. They are a recent graduate of Princeton University, where they received the Spirit of Princeton Award in honor of their queer activism and artistry. Benitez was a member of diSiac Dance Company and Más Flow Dance Company at Princeton.

Caroline Portante is a Bay Area-based actor and performance artist focused on making radical queer art. She is a graduate of McGill University and is currently studying at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting’s summer conservatory. Portante is a member of the artistic leadership board of Poltergeist Theatre Project, where she produced and directed their premiere of the radio play Written in the Stars through PlayGround earlier this year.

Wallace Ming Yan is a San Francisco-based theatre artist who aspires to build spaces for marginalized voices to be heard and respected in the theatre. They are a graduate of the University of California Irvine and are passionate about writing, cooking, painting, sculpture, woodworking, and the banjo.

PlayGround is California’s leading playwriting incubator and provides unique development opportunities for the best new playwrights in the Bay Area and Los Angeles through staged readings, commissions, and the annual PlayGround Festival of New Works.