For the 2019-20 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the new Playwrights Foundation literary team of Heather Helinsky, Kieran Beccia, and Zoe Jovanovich, under the leadership of Executive Artistic Director Jessica Bird Beza, chose 35 Finalists from among 735 scripts considered through our open application process. We are sharing those scripts as a two-part list; below are the first 18. This year, we were committed to ensuring that our National Committee of 150 readers and 21 Bay Area Literary Council members, who were involved in recommending the plays, were as diverse as the playwrights who applied. The Festival begins July 17.