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Backyard Players brings community together through volunteer-created, fully staged outdoor theater in Oakland. Our work encompasses both the months-long collaborative process of making a production and the shared experience of welcoming an audience into the backyard.
Backyard Players' principal program is an annual season of live outdoor theater in Oakland. Each year, we develop and mount a fully staged play, then welcome the community for a six-performance run in our intimate 60-seat backyard venue.
Our productions are entirely volunteer powered. Community members perform, direct, design and build sets, assemble costumes and props, operate lighting and sound, and manage hospitality and production support. The collaborative process is as central to our mission as the performances themselves.
We create welcoming live theater experiences that bring neighbors together around a shared story. We provide padded seating, blankets, heat lamps, drinks, and dessert so audiences can gather comfortably under the stars and experience theater at close range.
Our work to date