Cutting Ball Theater

The Cutting Ball Theater, located at the EXIT Theatre (a Hewlett Foundation grantee), is devoted to the professional staging of experimental new works and re-visioned classics, reaching an annual audience of 4,000 people. Building on several recent box office successes, praise from both critics and audiences, and the hiring of its first general manager, the company is well positioned to advance its artistic reputation and infrastructure. With renewed support, the Cutting Ball Theater would continue to offer seasons with three productions and a new experimental play festival; diversify its revenues; and, through its participation in a comprehensive research study, investigate program ideas inspired by findings about how audiences are personally transformed by arts and cultural experiences.

The Cutting Ball Theater is one of the Bay Area’s only theater companies devoted to the professional staging of experimental works and as the numerous accolades from its first ten years attest, it is the best. Nesting thorny works by Gertrude Stein, or new works by up and coming locals like Eugenia Chan and Marcus Gardley, in a season that also includes avant-garde classics by Sartre and Beckett and inventive interpretations of Shakespeare too, the company has consistently filled houses and grown an audience for challenging art. Now in residence at one of fellow Hewlett grantee Exit Theater’s stages in down town San Francisco the company has recently brought on full time administrative staff and with first time general operating support will be able to support the increased overhead it has invested in to continue its five-show seasons and expand the audiences for exceptional daring work.