Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience (BACCE)

PRODUCING NEW WORK BY, FOR, AND ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE.

Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience (BACCE) was founded in 1994 by Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe, Shirley Smallwood, and the late Lester Jones, with a rotating company of actors and directors including Bob Devin Jones, June Lomena, Michael Carreiro, Peter Macon, Rico Anderson and Tanya Mayo, to produce new plays by, for, and about Black people. The company has produced and presented work by Keith Josef Adkins, Pearl Cleage, Robert Alexander, Robert O’Hara, and Andrew Saito.

In 2013, BACCE produced the critically successful Bay Area premiere of A. Zell Williams’ In A Daughter’s Eyes at Brava Theater Center, where it is now a resident company. In 2015, the company presented a staged reading of Facing Our Truths – a New Black Fest commission of six short plays on Race and Trayvon Martin that was part of a national project, and Sweet Maladies by Zakiyyah Alexander which earned a Best Ensemble recognition by Theatre Bay Area awards. BACCE produced Robert O’Hara’s Bootycandy on Brava’s Main Stage in February 2017, followed by O’Hara’s An American Ma(u)l in 2018. Most recently, BACCE premiered Andrew Saito’s El Río on Brava’s second stage in September 2019; and currently hosts the monthly Black art salon, So Soul San Francisco, which is available for viewing on YouTube.