The 47th Bay Area Playwright Festival has announced their semi-finalists and finalists for the festival, and five Columbia playwrights, both alums and a current student, have made the list. These writers include: Alle Mims '23 for A Soviet Film on Negro Life in America, Emma Schillage '23 for COCKROACHES, Kanika Asvari Vaish '22 for Eight Ways to Plead with a God, Zizi Majid '20 for Milk, and Zoe Stanton-Savitz '25 for Twice Gone. One additional alum, Greg T. Nanni '22, has been named a finalist and is in the running for an award from The Festival for his play Suicide Cowboys.
The 47th Bay Area Playwrights Festival will be presented in a hybrid model in Fall 2026, with some productions being in-person and others on-demand. The festival received 601 applications and selected 128 plays as semi-finalists. From there, judges selected just 37 finalists to advance to the next round. Four of these finalists will be selected as winners and will have their plays produced as part of the festival lineup.
The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, BAPF, founded by theatre director Robert Woodruff, is one of the oldest—and considered most prestigious—festivals for early work developed in the United States. Known for amplifying new and emerging voices pushing the boundaries of American Theatre, BAPF has had a hand in around 500 award-winning productions. Alumni of this festival include Annie Baker, Paula Vogel, Theatre Professor David Henry Hwang, Rajiv Joseph, and Sam Shepard.