La Jolla Playhouse will debut four world premiere productions during its 2016-17 season, including works from Tony Award winner Joe DiPietro (“Memphis”), Pulitzer Prize winners Quiara Alegria Hudes and Ayad Akhtar, and 2014 Barrie and Bernice Stavis Playwriting Award winner Jeff Augustin.
DiPietro’s noir thriller “Hollywood” is a 1920s whodunit in which director William Desmond Taylor is found dead in his home. Multiple celebrities become suspects as headlines reveal love triangles, deceit and money as a possible motive. Akhtar’s sexy thriller “JUNK: The Golden Age of Debt” follows an upstart genius in the 1980s who is “hell-bent” on changing the world of finance, while Augustin’s “The Last Tiger in Haiti” features the imaginative folktales of a post-earthquake Haiti, where child slaves trade stories that blur the lines between fantasy and reality.
DeBessonet’s “Miss You Like Hell” centers on a cross-country trip between a free-spirited mother and her teenage daughter. As the journey unfolds, the duo finds common ground and meet interesting characters along the way.
“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 Christopher Ashley, La Jolla’s artistic director.
Titles and run dates of the final two productions of the 2016-17 season have yet to be announced. Ashley will be the director of one, while associate artistic director Jaime Castañeda will direct the other.
