LA JOLLA, CALIF.: La Jolla Playhouse (LJP) has announced four plays in the six-play lineup in its 2016–17 season. It includes world premieres by Joe DiPietro, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Ayad Akhtar, and Jeff Augustin. The run-dates have not been confirmed.
“These first four announced shows in our 2016–17 season come from a beautiful multiplicity of voices, each of which transforms a specific community, setting or locale into a story that speaks to us in a universal way,” said LJP artistic director Christopher Ashley in a statement. “As we continue to serve as a home for the new and the next, I’m proud to share these stories—from some of the finest playwrights and directors in the nation—with our audiences in San Diego and beyond.”
DiPietro’s newest play Hollywood will be directed by Ashley. Billed as a noir thriller set in 1922, it follows the unsolved murder of real-life director William Desmond Taylor.
Doug Hughes will direct Akhtar’s JUNK: The Golden Age of Debt. The thriller takes place in the ’80s, in the finance world and the board room.
Augustin’s The Last Tiger in Haiti will be directed in Joshua Kanan Brody. Set in an earthquake-torn shack in Haiti, it follows a group of child slaves trading folktales.
LJP has commissioned Hudes’s newest musical Miss You Like Hell, with music and lyrics by Erin McKeown and directed by Lear deBessonet. It follows a mother and daughter who embark on a cross-country road trip.
