Shipping & Handling

Shipping & Handling is a theatrical experience constructed as a night out at the theatre told in reverse.  The playwright shuffles chronology in order to scramble our historical expectations around Black plays, and unmap our limited vision of a future AI world. Are creations always a reflection of their creator? Can an AI bear witness to divine prophecy? Shipping & Handling seeks to transmit a signal for locating the tone of what it means to be human in this specific moment, and collectively reimagine our future design.

A revolutionary world premiere from Crowded Fire & Campo Santo’s Playwright In Residence, Star Finch, Shipping & Handling explores how our humanity will be measured within the soon to be robotic-reality. As an audience member, you’ll start at a moment in time and move back; from an afterparty with actors, to a playwright’s experimental talkback, to the performance of the play you’ve been hearing all about, a surreal and beautiful future vision from a Black Feminine gaze. 

Star Finch (Playwright) is a native San Franciscan trying her best to hold ground amidst the erasure of gentrification. She’s a member of Campo Santo Theater Company and a resident playwright at Playwrights Foundation. Her plays include H.O.M.E. [Hookers on Mars Eventually] and BONDAGE (Princess Grace Award semifinalist, Relentless Award honorable mention). She was also the lead writer on the collaborative performance piece Babylon is Burning, a loose adaptation of Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop; and on Death Become Life: Banish Darkness, a collaboration with AXIS Dance, Ensemble Mik Nawooj, and Crowded Fire Theater. Finch has also contributed to various collaborative projects including TheaterFirst’s PARTICIPANTS and Campo Santo’s ETHOS DE MASQUERADE. She’s held residencies in Crowded Fire’s R&D LAB and AlterTheater’s Alter Lab, and is a recipient of the San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Commission in Theater. She is currently the Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence at Campo Santo and Crowded Fire, the first collaborative shared staff in the history of the award.