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past seasons

2023-24 season

STEW

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By Zora Howard

Directed by Yolanda Marie Franklin

A co-production with Scripps Ranch Theatre

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Fri Mar 29, 2024 - Sun Apr 21, 2024 

Mama is up early to prepare an important meal and, even with her family on hand to help, time is running short. Tensions simmer with three generations of Tucker women under one roof, but things come to a boil as the violence hovering around the periphery of their lives begins to intrude. The kitchen becomes a microcosm of the family, a protection from outside traumas with the making of the stew a challenging task (it gets ruined twice) and a group activity needed to keep the family together.

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“A captivating story that’s intimate, funny, and heartbreaking in equal measure.” – The New Yorker

2022-23 season

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Postponed

The Colored Museum​

By George C. Wolfe

Directed by Yolanda Marie Franklin

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Feb. 3, 2023 - Feb 12, 2024

Common Ground brings back a classic for Black History Month! The Colored Museum has electrified, discomforted, and delighted audiences of all races.  Its "exhibits" cut the stilted legs out from under black stereotypes old and new, and return to the facts of what being black means.

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"Mr. Wolfe is the kind of satirist who takes no prisoners. The shackles of the past have been defied by Mr. Wolfe's fearless humor, and its a most liberating revolt" - The New York Times

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"True Satire" - Newsweek

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Uplifting Black Voices
7 Part Staged Reading Series​

Produced by Common Ground Theatre

"2022-23 Theatre-in-Residence"
at La Jolla Playhouse

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Spring 2023

This well received Staged Reading Series was launched by Common Ground to give Local & National African American Playwrites a space to respond during the pandemic. Common Ground will now produce it "live" as a short play festival during its residency at La Jolla Playhouse this Spring/Summer 2023.

2010-2019

A partial list of productions from 2010-2019:

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  • This Is Gaffney in September 2010

  • O Come All Ye Faithful: Black Nativity the Musical, directed by Hassan El-Amin

  • Waiting to Be Invited, directed by Charles Patmon, Jr.

  • Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, directed by Charles Patmon, Jr.

  • Nativity: A Soulful Celebration, directed by Charles Patmon, Jr.

  • Forever Free: A Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Before It Hits Home, and Christmas Is Comin’ Uptown, directed by Charles Patmon, Jr.

  • “The Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar” presented and recited by Dorothy L. W. Smith

  • “And Still I Rise,” a one-man show of poetry and music by Grandison Phelps III

  • “African American Literature: Facts and Fiction,” by Theresa “T” Ford from the San Diego Black Storytellers

  • “Tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.” by Carmen Gaffney and Dorothy L. W. Smith

  • “A Musical Tribute in Memory of Dr. Floyd Gaffney” by Francine DeWitt-Haynes

  • Nativity: A Soulful Celebration, Crowns, Nativity: A Modern Day Noel, For Black Boys Who Have Considered Homicide When the Streets Were Not Enough, directed by Charles Patmon, Jr. and Terrance Bowens

  • North Star Rising, directed by Charles Patmon, Jr.

  • The Wiz, directed by Charles Patmon, Jr.

  • James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, directed by Yolanda Marie Franklin, 2019-2020 Guest Artistic Director. 

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