A new play reveals how S.F. is changing
'Dirty White Teslas' looks at city's latest wave of gentrification
Playwright Ashley Smiley has seen things. As a Black native of San Francisco, she's watched her city change as rich tech workers move in, housing prices skyrocket and entire communities — and Black communities in particular — are pushed out.
All of that goes into “Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad,” her new play now playing at San Francisco's Magic Theatre, presented by the Magic and Campo Santo.
Described in the press release as “a living poem and a prayer,” the play follows a Black San Franciscan seeking some kind of salvation on the eve of losing her home in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood.
“Watching this hypererasure of everything I thought I knew about the city and everything I recognized was the first spark,” says Smiley, 34. “And then the creeping influx of white Teslas. They were spotted here and there, and then all of a sudden they were flooding the streets at the same time that we were seeing this hyper-gentrification and rise of houselessness and erasure and omission of native San Franciscans, not just in terms of who was able to afford to live here, but also who was actually being listened to and prioritized when it came to major decisions in the city.”
“Dirty White Teslas” is Smiley's first full-length play.
“I woke up one day and found out that I was kicking off the Magic Theatre's 2024 season,” she marvels. “I really don't know what to do with myself now. What do you do when the dream comes true? Now I've got to figure out a whole new dream.”
Smiley has been deep into theater since she was a kid growing up in San Francisco.
“I got bit by the bug when I got to be the Major General in my fifth-grade production of `Pirates of Penzance,' she recalls.
In high school, Smiley started working with Youth Speaks as well as Brava! For Women in the Arts' hip-hop theater collective Colored Ink. She went on to get a B.A. in performing arts and social justice from University of San Francisco and her M.A. in drama from San Francisco State, while working with many local theater companies as a stage manager, production manager or sound designer. She's currently the theater manager for the Bayview Opera House.
“I am like that groupie that finally got to make it on tour with the band,” she says. “I was first introduced to Campo Santo by my ninth grade English teacher when I was attending Lowell High School. She was going to go see a production of `Fe in the Desert,' and she was supposed to be going with Ntozake Shange, who is like a patron saint of mine. But Ntozake wasn't available, so she asked me, and my mom said yes. So I went and I was just astonished, because one, this is not a play that I've read before or heard about before. It's something that's brand new. I see people that look like me, and I'm like, this is my kind of theater.”
That first encounter led to a long relationship with Campo Santo that continues to this day.
“I did the typical theater nerd thing of sheepishly standing around and showing up to all of the shows and offering to volunteer,” Smiley says. “Eventually an opportunity arose to be an assistant stage manager for a Trolley Dances collaboration they were doing with this group called Mix'd Ingrdnts in Powell Street BART. And I think I made a decent impression, because then they kept asking me to come back and do stage management and stuff. That's what I did for quite some time.”
Smiley developed “Dirty White Teslas” with Campo Santo over the course of several years. It all started with a conversation with Sean San José, Campo Santo cofounder and now the Magic's artistic director.
“That was the scary part where I turned to Sean and I was like, `I don't really want to do production management and stage management anymore. I actually really want to focus on writing,'” Smiley says. “And I was extremely blessed, because he was like, `I don't know what took you so long. Let's go.'”
Smiley's play is a loving ode to her hometown even as she watches it morph into something she hardly recognizes, and something that has no room anymore for so many that have lived there all their lives.
“This is an offering to humanize conversations and experiences that can quickly just become text in an article or line items in a budget,” Smiley says. “When we talk about people's relationship to San Francisco, we aren't just talking about the political conversations or the socioeconomic conversations. We're talking about real human beings and their experiences. People forget what individuals are truly going through mentally, physically, and spiritually when they watch their home get pulled out from underneath them.”