la jolla playhouse announces four productions for scintillating 2014

2910 La Jolla Village Drive La Jolla, CA 92037
LaJollaPlayhouse.org
LA JOLLA PLAYHOUSE ANNOUNCES FOUR PRODUCTIONS
FOR SCINTILLATING 2014/2015 SEASON, FEATURING
MULTIPLE TONY AWARD® WINNERS
PAGE TO STAGE MUSICAL: CHASING THE SONG BY MEMPHIS CREATIVE TEAM
WORLD PREMIERE PLAY AND TWO NEW PRODUCTIONS OF CLASSICS:
KINGDOM CITY, THE BALD SOPRANO AND BD WONG IN THE ORPHAN OF ZHAO
La Jolla, CA — La Jolla Playhouse announces four shows for its 2014/2015 season, boasting
numerous Tony Award-winning playwrights, directors and actors. The season kicks off with a Page
To Stage workshop production of Chasing the Song, a jubilant new musical by the team behind the
Tony Award-winning musical Memphis, featuring book and lyrics by Joe DiPietro, music and lyrics
by David Bryan and directed by Playhouse Artistic Director Christopher Ashley.
The season also features a world-premiere play and two adaptations of classic texts: The Orphan
of Zhao, in a new adaptation by James Fenton, directed by Carey Perloff, co-produced with
American Conservatory Theatre and featuring Tony-winning actor BD Wong (Playhouse’s
Herringbone, TV’s Law & Order: SVU); the world premiere of Kingdom City by Sheri Wilner,
helmed by Pam MacKinnon, 2013 Tony Award-winning director of Broadway’s Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf?, and a bold new production of Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano, directed by
Gabor Tompa, head of Directing, UC San Diego’s Department of Theatre and Dance.
“La Jolla Playhouse is dedicated to serving as a home for artists, and never has that been more
evident than with this upcoming season,” said Ashley. “I’m so pleased to be working again with
Playhouse favorites and frequent collaborators Joe DiPietro and David Bryan on their latest project
and to be able to continue the show’s developmental journey that began last year during our
inaugural DNA New Work Series.
Ashley continued, “We also welcome to the Playhouse several internationally-acclaimed, awardwinning directors and playwrights – not to mention our dear friend BD Wong – giving these
exceptional artists a chance to hone their work in an environment of support that only the Playhouse
can provide.”
Chasing the Song
The creators of the Tony Award-winning musical Memphis follow the evolving American music
scene into the early 1960s in this rock ‘n’ roll-inspired new musical. Elegant Edie’s team of hitmakers is upended by the arrival of the newest aspiring songwriter — Edie’s daughter Jinny. As
Jinny strives to earn her place in the male-dominated world of songwriting, American rock ‘n’ roll
finds itself under siege from the incoming British Invasion.
The Orphan of Zhao
BD Wong returns to the Playhouse in a luminous reinvention of a classic Chinese legend. In the
aftermath of a violent coup, an epic story of self-sacrifice and revenge plays out as a young orphan
discovers the shattering truth behind his origins. Often described as the Chinese Hamlet, this
gripping tale was the first Chinese play to be translated in the West and has inspired countless
operas, plays and movies.
Kingdom City
When displaced New York director Miriam finds herself in Kingdom City, Missouri, she reluctantly
agrees to direct a high school production of The Crucible. As the students fall deeper into their roles,
the play unlocks their own unspoken desires, creating a firestorm in this small, predominantly
Christian town. Pam MacKinnon, 2013 Tony Award winner for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,
helms this comic and smart world premiere in which a 20th Century classic play inspires a 21st
Century showdown.
The Bald Soprano
Acclaimed Romanian director and head of Directing at UC San Diego’s Department of Theatre and
Dance Gabor Tompa directs this modern masterpiece by the “Shakespeare of the Absurd.”
Ionesco’s seminal “anti-play” is as fierce and funny as it was during its initial premiere nearly 70
years ago. Tompa brings his trademark physical inventiveness and audacious theatricality to this
farcical satire of the middle class.
Tickets to the 2014/2015 season are available only through a subscription purchase by calling the
box office at (858) 550-1010 or online at LaJollaPlayhouse.org. Additional subscription shows will
be announced shortly.
The nationally-acclaimed, Tony Award-winning La Jolla Playhouse is known for its tradition of
creating the most exciting and adventurous new work in regional theatre. The Playhouse was
founded in 1947 by Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire and Mel Ferrer, and is considered one of the
most well-respected not-for-profit theatres in the country. Numerous Playhouse productions have
moved to Broadway, including the currently running, multiple Tony Award-winning hit Jersey Boys,
as well as Big River, The Who’s Tommy, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, A Walk
in the Woods, Billy Crystal’s 700 Sundays, the Pulitzer Prize-winning I Am My Own Wife, Thoroughly
Modern Millie, The Farnsworth Invention, 33 Variations, Peter and the Starcatcher, Bonnie & Clyde,
Chaplin and Hands on a Hardbody. Located on the UC San Diego campus, La Jolla Playhouse is
made up of three primary performance spaces: the Mandell Weiss Theatre, the Mandell Weiss
Forum Theatre and the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for La Jolla Playhouse, a state-of-the-art
theatre complex which features the Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre. La Jolla Playhouse is led by
Artistic Director Christopher Ashley and Managing Director Michael S. Rosenberg.
Biographies
Christopher Ashley (Director, Chasing The Song) has served as Artistic Director at La Jolla
Playhouse since October, 2007. During his tenure, he helmed the world premieres of Claudia
Shear’s Restoration and Arthur Kopit and Anton Dudley’s A Dram of Drummhicit, as well as His Girl
Friday, Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the
acclaimed musicals Xanadu and Memphis, which went on to Broadway, winning four 2010 Tony
Awards including Best Musical. In addition, he spearheaded the Playhouse’s acclaimed Without
Walls site-specific theatre series, the Resident Theatre program and oversaw the world premieres of
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Hands on a Hardbody, Milk Like Sugar, Little Miss Sunshine,
Limelight: The Story of Charlie Chaplin, Surf Report, Bonnie & Clyde, Doug Wright’s adaptation of
Creditors, the Page To Stage workshop of Charlayne Woodard’s The Night Watcher, and the West
Coast premiere of 33 Variations. Prior to joining the Playhouse, Mr. Ashley directed the Broadway
productions of Xanadu (Drama Desk nomination), All Shook Up and The Rocky Horror Show (Tony,
Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations), as well as the Kennedy Center Sondheim
Celebration productions of Sweeney Todd and Merrily We Roll Along. Other New York credits
include: Leap of Faith, Blown Sideways Through Life, Jeffrey (Lucille Lortel and Obie Awards), The
Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, Valhalla, Regrets Only, Wonder of the World, Bunny Bunny,
Communicating Doors, The Night Hank Williams Died, Fires in the Mirror (Lucille Lortel Award),
among others. He also directed the feature film Jeffrey and the American Playhouse production of
Blown Sideways Through Life for PBS. Mr. Ashley is the recipient of the Princess Grace Award, the
Drama League Director Fellowship and an NEA/TCG Director Fellowship.
David Bryan (Composer/Lyricist, Chasing the Song) is a Tony-Award winning composer and
lyricist. He won three 2010 Tony Awards for Best Score, Best Orchestrations and Best Musical for
the hit Broadway musical Memphis, as well as the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for
Best Musical. He is a Grammy® Award-winning keyboard player and founding member of Bon Jovi.
Over the past 30 years the band has sold more than 150 million records and toured the world,
playing to millions of people. Their recent Because We Can tour was the #1 grossing tour in the
world. He and Joe DiPietro have also co-written the award-winning musical The Toxic Avenger. Mr.
Bryan is also a National Spokesperson for VH1's Save The Music Program. For more information
please visit www.davidbryan.com.
Joe DiPietro (Book Writer/Lyricist, Chasing the Song) is a Tony-Award winning playwright and
lyricist. He won two Tony Awards for co-writing Memphis, which also received the 2010 Tony,
Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Musical. He was nominated for a Tony Award
and won a Drama Desk Award for Nice Work If You Can Get It starring Matthew Broderick. His other
plays and musicals include I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change (the longest-running musical
revue in Off-Broadway history); The Toxic Avenger and The Thing About Men (both winners of the
Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical); the much-produced comedy Over the
River and Through The Woods; The Art of Murder (Edgar Award winner for Best Mystery Play); and
the Broadway musical All Shook Up. His latest play, Clever Little Lies, is debuting at George Street
Playhouse starring Marlo Thomas. His work has received thousands of productions across the
country and around the world.
James Fenton (Adapter, The Orphan of Zhao) was educated at the Durham Choristers’ School,
Repton and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize for Poetry. He has
worked as a political and literary journalist on The New Statesman, was a freelance reporter in IndoChina, spent a year in Germany working for The Guardian, was theatre critic for The Sunday Times
for five years, chief book reviewer for The Times from 1984 to 1986, South East Asian
correspondent for The Independent from 1986 to 1988 and a columnist for them until 1995. He is a
regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. Fenton was Professor of Poetry at Oxford
from 1994 to 1999. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1983. He won the
Whitbread Prize for Poetry and was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Poetry in 2007. Recent work
includes a new selection of poems, Yellow Tulips. It contains some of the most memorable lyric
verse of the past decades, from the formal skill that marked his debut, Terminal Moraine, to the
dramatic and political monologues of The Memory of War and Children in Exile, through to the
unforgettable love poems of Out of Danger. He edited the New Faber Book of Love Poems in 2006.
Further publications include School of Genius: A History of the Royal Academy of Arts, A Garden of
a Hundred Packets of Seeds, Samuel T Coleridge Selected Poems, William Blake Selected Poems,
his reportage as a war correspondent All the Wrong Places: Adrift in the Politics of South-East Asia,
and the collection of essays The Strength of Poetry. Plays and libretti include: The Orphan of Zhao
and Tamar’s Revenge (RSC), Pictures from an Exhibition (Young Vic), The Tsunami Song Cycle
(BBC), Rigoletto (ENO) and Haroun and the Sea of Stories (New York City Opera).
Eugène Ionesco (Playwright, The Bald Soprano) (1909 – 1994) was born in Slatina, Romania to
a Romanian father and French mother and spent most of his childhood in France. He started his
career as a noted essayist and critic, only beginning writing plays in 1948 with The Bald Soprano,
after trying to learn English using the Assimil method and realizing how banal, uncommunicative and
absurd the phrases he was learning were. The play was first performed in 1950 and heralded a new
direction in theatre. Other plays followed, most notably, by The Lesson in 1951, Rhinoceros in 1959,
and Exit the King in 1962.
Pam MacKinnon (Director, Kingdom City) is the 2013 Tony Award-winning director of Edward
Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Broadway, Arena Stage, Steppenwolf; Tony and Drama
Desk Awards for Best Direction of a Play, Outer Critics Circle nomination); Bruce Norris’ Clybourne
Park (Broadway, Mark Taper Forum, Playwrights Horizons; Tony and Lortel Award nominations and
Obie Award for Direction); Horton Foote’s Harrison, TX (Primary Stages); Beau Willimon’s The
Parisian Woman (SCR); Craig Lucas’ The Lying Lesson (Atlantic); Itamar Moses’ Completeness
(Playwrights Horizons, SCR), Bach at Leipzig (NYTW), The Four of Us (MTC, Old Globe); David Bar
Katz’s Atmosphere of Memory (Labyrinth); Rachel Axler’s Smudge (WPP). She is a frequent
interpreter of the plays of Edward Albee, having directed world premieres of Occupant (Signature)
and Peter and Jerry (Second Stage, Hartford) and regional premieres of The Play About the Baby
(PTC, Goodman) and The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (Alley, Vienna) as well as A Delicate Balance
(Arena). She is an alumna of the Drama League and Lincoln Center Directors’ Lab, an Associate
Artist of the Roundabout Theater and chairman of the board of the downtown theater CLUBBED
THUMB, dedicated to new American plays.
Carey Perloff (Director, The Orphan of Zhao) recently celebrated her 20th year as Artistic Director
of A.C.T., where she most recently directed Underneath the Lintel (with Academy Award nominee
David Strathairn), Arcadia (with Academy Award winner Olympia Dukakis), Elektra, Endgame,
Scorched, The Homecoming, Tosca Cafe and Racine's Phèdre in a co-production with the Stratford
Shakespeare Festival. Known for directing innovative productions of classics and championing new
writing for the theater, Perloff has also directed for A.C.T. José Rivera's Boleros for the
Disenchanted; the American premieres of Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love and Indian Ink and
Harold Pinter's Celebration, the A.C.T.–commissioned translations/adaptations of Hecuba, The
Misanthrope, Enrico IV, Mary Stuart, Uncle Vanya, A Mother and The Voysey Inheritance (adapted
by David Mamet); the world premiere of Leslie Ayvazian's Singer's Boy; and major revivals of 'Tis
Pity She's a Whore, The Government Inspector, Happy End, A Doll's House, Waiting for Godot, The
Three Sisters, The Threepenny Opera, Old Times, The Rose Tattoo, Antigone, Creditors, Home,
The Tempest and Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll, Travesties, The Real Thing, Night and Day and Arcadia.
Her plays include Luminescence Dating, Kinship, Waiting for the Flood and Higher, which won the
2011 Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation Theatre Visions Fund Award. Before joining A.C.T.,
Perloff was artistic director of Classic Stage Company in New York, where she directed the world
premiere of Ezra Pound's Elektra, the American premiere of Pinter's Mountain Language, and many
classic works. A recipient of France's Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the National
Corporate Theatre Fund's 2007 Artistic Achievement Award, Perloff received a B.A. Phi Beta Kappa
in classics and comparative literature from Stanford University and was a Fulbright Fellow at Oxford.
She was on the faculty of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University for seven years and
currently teaches and directs in the A.C.T. Master of Fine Arts Program.
Gabor Tompa (Director, The Bald Soprano) graduated in stage and film directing at the I.L.
Caragiale Theatre and Film Academy in Bucharest in 1981 as a student of Liviu Ciulei, Mihai Dimiu,
Cătălina Buzoianu, founders of the world-famous Romanian school of stage directing. Since 1981,
Tompa has directed plays at the Hungarian Theatre in Cluj. In 1987 he became its artistic director
and after the Romanian Revolution of 1989, the managing director as well. He has staged more the
80 plays in the U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Austria, Serbia, Czech Republic, Canada, South
Korea and the U.S. in English, French, German, Romanian, Hungarian, Catalan and other
languages. His feature film, Chinese Defense (1999), a Hungarian-Romanian-French co-production
has been presented at the Festivals of Berlin, Karlovy Vary, São Paulo, Trieste, Istanbul, Budapest,
Soci and has been awarded the Best First Feature in Salerno, Italy. Four-time recipient of the Best
Director Award in Romania, he has been awarded the Best Foreign Director in England and in
Serbia as well. His productions are frequently presented in the theatre festivals of Avignon,
Edinburgh, Bogota, Torun, Gdansk, Seoul and are being toured worldwide. In 2007 he founded the
biannual Interferences International Theatre Festival in Cluj. Since 1989 he has been Professor at
the Theatre Academy in Târgu Mureş. He founded the Faculty of Dramatic Art in Cluj and has run its
directing program since 1991. From 1990 to 1995 he was head of directing at the Theatre Academy
in Târgu Mureş;, one of the oldest theatre programs in Romania. In 2005 he directed the M.A.
program at Brunel University, London. He has taught classes and workshops for actors and directors
in Spain, the UK, Germany and France. He is member of the Union des Theatres de lEurope,
founded by theatre legend Giorgio Strehler. Since 2007 he has served as Head of Directing at the
Theatre and Dance Department of the University of California, San Diego.
Sheri Wilner’s (Playwright, Kingdom City) plays include Father Joy, Hunger, Bake Off, Labor Day,
Relative Strangers, Little Death of a Salesman and Joan of Arkansas, and have been performed at
major regional theatres, including the Guthrie Theater, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Summer Play
Festival, Naked Angels, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Contemporary American Theater Festival,
New Georges and the O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference, as well as by the Old Vic/New Voices
program in London. Playwriting awards include a Howard Foundation Fellowship, Bush Artist
Fellowship and two Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellowships. In addition, she is a two-time winner of
the Heideman Award/National Ten-Minute Play Contest, granted by the Actors Theatre of Louisville.
Her work has been published in over a dozen anthologies, and Playscripts.com has published
twelve of her one-acts, which have received over two hundred productions all over the United
States, as well as in Australia, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Japan, United Kingdom and India. Also
an established playwriting teacher, Ms. Wilner was recently named the Fred Coe Visiting Playwright
in Residence at Vanderbilt University, as well as the Master Playwright for the Miami-Dade
Department of Cultural Affairs’ Playwrights’ Development Program. She was head of the playwriting
program at Florida State University in 2011-12 and has conducted playwriting classes and
workshops at Fordham University, UC Santa Barbara, Cornell University, University of
Minnesota/Guthrie Theater B.F.A. Actor Training Program and Whitman College. She attended
Cornell University and received her M.F.A. in Playwriting from Columbia University. She currently
lives in New York City.
BD Wong (Actor, The Orphan of Zhao) was born and raised in San Francisco, California and is
the only actor ever to have received all five major New York Theater awards for a single role. For
his performance in M. Butterfly, his Broadway debut, he received the Drama Desk Award, the Outer
Critics Circle Award, the Theater World Award, the Clarence Derwent Award, and the Tony Award.
BD appeared in the NBC series Awake, where he played Dr. Lee, Det. Britten’s psychiatrist in the
‘red’ reality. For eleven seasons audiences watched him on the top-rated series Law & Order:
Special Victims Unit as Dr. George Huang, a forensic psychiatrist and expert on the criminal mind.
Wong gained notice as a cast regular on HBO’s critically acclaimed series Oz, playing the resilient
prison priest, Father Ray for the show’s five-season run. His other television credits include a
starring role in ABC’s All-American Girl and HBO’s telefilm And the Band Played On, as well as
guest-starring roles on Welcome to New York, Chicago Hope, The X-Files, Bless This House and
Shannon’s Deal and the Hallmark Mini Series, Marco Polo. Wong has also appeared in more than
20 feature films, including The Normal Heart, Jurassic Park, The Freshman, Father of the Bride (1 &
2), Seven Years in Tibet, Executive Decision, The Salton Sea and Stay. Wong can also be heard as
the voice of Shang in the Disney animated films Mulan and Mulan II. He recently completed filming
the new Will Smith film, Focus. Wong’s additional New York theater credits include The Tempest, A
Language of Their Own, As Thousands Cheer, the Broadway musical revival of You’re a Good Man,
Charlie Brown and the Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific
Overtures, for which he received a Drama League nomination for distinguished performance. He
produced and directed The Yellow Wood for NYMF and Cindy Cheung’s Speak Up Connie for the
All For One festival. He recently appeared in Herringbone at The McCarter Theatre, La Jolla
Playhouse, and the Williamstown Theater Festival. He is currently developing the new musical,
Heading East, by Leon Ko and Robert Lee. Wong published his first book, Following Foo: the
electronic adventures of the Chestnut Man (Harper Entertainment), which chronicles his son
Jackson’s struggle for life after he was born 11 weeks premature. He has received community
service recognitions from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Asian AIDS
Project, GLAAD, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Association of Asian-Pacific American
Artists, East/West Players, Second Generation, Organization of Chinese Americans and APICHA.
Board member: Actors’ Fund of America, Symphony Space and Rosie’s Kids. Wong currently
resides in New York City