THE SPHERES, THE BITTER GAME, HEAVEN ON EARTH and More Join 2015 Without Walls Festival Lineup
By: BWW News Desk Aug. 31, 2015
La Jolla Playhouse announces additional projects for its second Without Walls (WoW) Festival on October 9 - 11, featuring more than 20 immersive and site-based works taking place simultaneously in and around the Playhouse Theatre District, UC San Diego campus and the surrounding neighborhood.
Tickets to the WoW Festival, ranging from free to $29, go on sale Thursday, September 3. Curated packages, as well as VIP Passes offering concierge ticket service and additional benefits, are also available. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit WoWFestival.org or call (858) 550-1010.
"Our excitement around the WoW Festival continues to mount, as we welcome even more collaborators to the mix, including the Australia-based The Spheres with a spectacular kick-off event in the Festival Village; Keith Wallace's powerful, Playhouse-commissioned work set on the Revelle College basketball court; a fascinating Charles Mee piece by Sledgehammer Theatre taking place at UCSD's Powell Structural Lab; plus a slew of family-friendly activities, all resulting in a joyous, community-wide celebration of immersive and site-inspired work that places the audience right in the center of the action," said Playhouse Artistic Director Christopher Ashley.
As a special Festival opening event, the Playhouse will present The Spheres, a stunning piece by Australia's Strange Fruit, taking place on the Playhouse's Mark Taper Plaza on Friday, October 9 and Saturday, October 10 at 7:00pm and 9:30pm. The Spheres is a cosmic and awe inspiring performance that takes a whimsical look at physics, the miracle of rebirth and power behind these two phenomena. Four celestial beings emerge out of illuminated globes to recount a tale of transformation and wonder.
The Playhouse also announces additional Festival projects: The Bitter Game, by UC San Diego M.F.A. candidate Keith Wallace, directed by UC San Diego faculty member Deborah Stein, and Heaven on Earth, presented by Sledgehammer Theatre.
The Bitter Game blends verse, prose and 'shit-talkin,' into a stirring commentary that begs the question, what does it mean to survive while Black in America? This solo work, ripe with pain, poetry and laughter, examines the relationship between a young man and his mother as each struggles to protect one another from that which seems inevitable. Commissioned by the Playhouse, The Bitter Game explores the subtle and often unrecognized effects of racism, the question of police agency, and the value of Black lives in this country. The Bitter Game enjoyed an acclaimed first reading this past July at the Jacobs Center in Southeast San Diego.
Thirty years after their first production in a campus canyon, Sledgehammer Theatre returns to UC San Diego with Charles Mee's Heaven on Earth, a site-specific presentation around Powell Structural Lab. Co-founders Scott Feldsher (director) and Robert Brill (design) lead a team of Sledgehammer veterans and newcomers in this play with music and movement. In Heaven on Earth, the apocalypse is nigh, but there is a sense time has run its course and something new is about to emerge from the spent fuel of what's gone before. Like his "Man with the Gas Can" who quietly smokes a cigarette while reminiscing about past love, what will be left if he drops the cigarette into the can? Mee seems to suggest he won't do it because there is still hope, and there always has been. Hence, Heaven on Earth offers the promise of a future, perhaps even a Utopia, if we plant the right seeds; seeds based on human goodness, love, and community, not the seeds of mass production.
The Festival will also feature numerous free family-friendly productions, including Animal Cracker Conspiracy's Gnomesense! A Puppet Happening in the Garden, Fern Street Circus's The Adventures of Heartman, CORPUS's A Flock of Flyers, The Spheres and Seven Butterflies, as well as fun hands-on activities on both Saturday and Sunday presented by the San Diego Children's Discovery Museum (SDCDM), including their popular Art Garden and Fort Building programs that capture the whimsical spirit of the Museum. In the Art Garden, visitors will engage in a large-scale art project to create plants, flowers and insects out of recycled materials while learning about flower and vegetable gardens, raising chickens, the importance of pollinators such as bees and butterflies, and native and water tolerant plants. This community-based design project allows participants to use their imagination and creative thinking skills while designing multiple, interactive structures and "lands."
Saturday, October 10 is Family Day and will feature activities by SDCDM, Museum of Photographic Arts, Timken Museum of Art and the Mingei International Museum. Family Day will also feature a delightful Live Action Role Play event, where young explorers age 8 and up are invited to join the exclusive "Society of Creative Thinkers." Creativity has gone missing and the Society of Creative Thinkers must embark on The Quest to find it! Part scavenger hunt, part role play and full of clue-solving challenges, The Quest is a mysterious and epic mission to save creativity in the world!
As previously announced, the 2015 WoW Festival will showcase more than 20 events occurring simultaneously in and around the UC San Diego/La Jolla Playhouse Theatre District. This year's event boasts numerous collaborations with renowned San Diego theatre and dance companies, along with several national and international artists, including Liz Lerman, Jean Isaacs San Diego Dance Theater, Ion Theatre, City Opera, Moxie Theatre, Animal Cracker Conspiracy, Fern Street Circus, THE TRIP, ArtPower, along with Canada's CORPUS, Pittsburgh's Bricolage Production Company, San Francisco's Ubuntu Theatre Project in association with San Diego REPertory Theatre, Los Angeles' Chalk Repertory Theatre, and a return of Moving Arts' highly-popular The Car Plays. The Festival will also feature several projects by UC San Diego Department of Theatre and Dance students and alumni.
Similar to the acclaimed 2013 Festival, this exciting event will serve as a cultural and artistic hub, including a vibrant central Festival Village, where patrons can gather to enjoy food stations and sit-down dining options by the Theatre District's on-site restaurant James' Place, relax in the beer garden, watch free performances and share Festival experiences.
Since its inception in 2009, Without Walls has become one of San Diego's most popular and acclaimed performance programs. This signature Playhouse initiative is designed to break the barriers of traditional theatre. Over the last six years, the Playhouse has been commissioning and presenting a series of immersive and site-specific productions at locations throughout the San Diego community, including Susurrus (2010), The Car Plays: San Diego (2011), Sam Bendrix at the Bon Soir (2012), Accomplice: San Diego (2013), El Henry (2014) and, most recently, The Grift at the Lafayette Hotel (2015). Underscoring the theatre's mission of providing "unfettered creative opportunities for the leading artists of today and tomorrow," coupled with the idea that the Playhouse is defined by the work it creates, not the space in which it is performed, WoW is designed to offer theatrical experiences that venture beyond the physical confines of the Playhouse's facilities.
The Tony Award-winning La Jolla Playhouse is internationally-renowned for creating some of the most exciting and adventurous work in American theatre, through its new play development initiatives, its innovative Without Walls series, artist residencies and commissions, including BD Wong, Daniel Beaty and Kirsten Greenidge. Currently led by Artistic Director Christopher Ashley and Managing Director Michael S. Rosenberg, the Playhouse was founded in 1947 by Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire and Mel Ferrer, and reborn in 1983 under the artistic leadership of Des McAnuff, La Jolla Playhouse has had 25 productions transfer to Broadway, garnering 35 Tony Awards, among them Jersey Boys, Memphis, The Who's Tommy, Big River, as well as Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays and the Pulitzer Prize-winning I Am My Own Wife, both fostered as part of the Playhouse's Page To Stage Program. Visit www.LaJollaPlayhouse.org.
Without Walls Festival Projects:
Healing Wars
Conceived, directed and choreographed by Liz Lerman (Baltimore, MD)
West Coast Premiere
Location: Mandell Weiss Forum
Healing Wars is a multisensory experience that blends dance, storytelling and multimedia in an exploration of how soldiers and healers cope with the physical and psychological wounds of war. Incorporating narratives from the American Civil War as well a remarkable performance from a young Navy veteran, this powerful piece asks how we as a nation recover from what seems like endless battles. Healing Wars is also the first WoW production to be part of the Playhouse's subscription series, running additional dates: September 29 - October 25.
The Car Plays: Interchange
By Moving Arts (Los Angeles, CA)
World Premiere 10-Minute Plays
Location: Valet Parking Area in Festival Village
For the 2015 Without Walls Festival, the tremendously popular The Car Plays returns with a new twist. The event will again feature a series of intimate 10-minute plays, each taking place in a car, where audiences of two move from vehicle to vehicle to experience works by different playwrights. Typically, each play in a line of five cars tells a different story, unrelated to the others in the row, but with The Car Plays: Interchange, the five plays will share a common storyline or theme.
OjO: The Next Generation of Travel
By Bricolage Production Company (Pittsburgh, PA)
West Coast Premiere
Location: Begins at Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre
OjO takes you places you've never seen, providing unparalleled personal service and the finest travel packages available. OjO's five-star staff of agents guarantee your experience will be transformative and unforgettable. Using various modes of transportation, OjO leads participants on a 75-minute perspective-altering adventure that explores the streets of the WoW Festival and the world of the senses.
A Flock of Flyers
By CORPUS (Toronto, Canada)
West Coast Premiere; Family-Friendly
Location: Mark Taper Plaza in Festival Village
Due to severe budget cutbacks the 217th Canadian Flying Squadron has been left without any planes. Determined to fly at any cost, the 5 flyers continue their regimented training in an imaginary terrestrial airfield. Choreographed down to the millimeter, the Flyers have paraded their hilarious maneuvers to audiences around the world. Conceived and choreographed by Sylvie Bouchard and David Danzon, A Flock of Flyers was the Gold Medal Winner at the IV Games of la Francophonie 2001 in Hull, Quebec (Street Theatre category) and was hailed as a "Canadian contemporary classic" by the Globe and Mail.
Every Path
Produced by Moxie Theatre in association with La Jolla Playhouse
World Premiere
Location: Ian's Garden in Festival Village
A site-based piece by Hannah Ryan and Melissa Gordon, Every Path is about a woman's journey through adulthood as she encounters multiple versions of herself, each one representing a different choice, a different reality. Set in the Playhouse prop shop garden's various paths, the audience is free to explore the gardens and journey in any direction.
Seven Butterflies
Performed by Cellist Jennifer Bewerse
Location: Beneath the Weiss Theatre Deck in Festival Village
Seven Butterflies is a micro-concert featuring Kaija Saariaho's Sept Papillons for solo cello and La Monte Young's Composition 1960 #5. Sept Papillons features ethereal extended techniques evocative of swooping, swarming or gently fluttering butterflies. Composition 1960 #5 is a text score with the instructions: "Turn a butterfly loose in the performance area...the composition may be considered finished when the butterfly flies away." The piece features a simultaneous performance of these two works during which a live Monarch butterfly will perform Composition 1960 #5 while cellist Jennifer Bewerse performs Sept Papillons, resulting in a miniature concert, fitting of both the delicate nature of the butterflies and their symbolic ephemeralness.
The Bitter Game
By Keith Wallace
World Premiere - La Jolla Playhouse Commission
Location: UCSD's Revelle College Basketball Court, Adjacent to Parking Lot 103
The Bitter Game blends verse, prose and 'shit-talkin,' into a stirring commentary that begs the question, what does it mean to survive while Black in America? This solo work, ripe with pain, poetry and laughter, examines the relationship between a young man and his mother as each struggles to protect one another from that which seems inevitable. Commissioned by the Playhouse, The Bitter Game explores the subtle and often unrecognized effects of racism, the question of police agency, and the value of Black lives in this country.
The Spheres
By Australia's Strange Fruit (Melbourne, Australia)
Location: Festival Village - Taper Plaza
The Spheres is a cosmic and awe inspiring performance that takes a whimsical look at physics, the miracle of rebirth and power behind these two phenomena. Four celestial beings emerge out of illuminated globes to recount a tale of transformation and wonder.
Partner Projects
Dances with Walls
Produced and directed by Jean Isaacs San Diego Dance Theater
World Premiere
Location: Begins at UCSD's Wagner Dance Building
Dances with (or against) walls is a strategy that San Diego Dance Theater Artistic Director Jean Isaacs has employed to address the overwhelming number of choices presented by site-specific choreography. By dancing against walls, Isaacs creates a two dimensional form out of a three dimensional genre. The human body viewed moving against an unyielding concrete or stone wall challenges the viewer's emotional responses by eliciting both vulnerability and stoicism. Audiences will be encouraged to use their phones to capture photos and video of the live performance which San Diego Dance Theater will post on their website for a virtual experience of this stunning dance piece.
Refuse, Or The Golden Door
Produced by Ion Theatre
World Premiere
Location: UCSD's Mandeville Center (Shuttle Provided)
Do you know what it's like to spend hours in a train car headed for an unknown border? Know what it's like to jump onto a boat as your home burns to the ground and militant forces destroy your homeland? Do you know what it's like to grab whatever you can carry as your country is torn apart by civil war? We hear the stories. We feel the frustration. We welcome the intrepid survivors. Now experience it first-hand. Ion theatre is partnering with members of San Diego's refugee population to shape an interactive theater experience showcasing the struggles and resiliency of our refugee population. By bringing together Ion artists, powerful stories inspired by real people and events, and you, we're creating what may be the world's first live-theater, immersive art, documentary-style participatory experience. Because every time you attend, the play forms and reforms around you, attending multiple times will lead to discoveries of stories you hadn't witnessed before.
Three Sisters
Produced by THE TRIP in association with La Jolla Playhouse
World Premiere Adaptation
Location: Scripps Research Institute Tennis Court (Shuttle Provided)
Irina is quickest to the net, but Olga has a killer serve. And though Masha never cared for tennis, she sure plays a mean backhand up the line! Following their acclaimed 2013 WoW Festival production of Our Town, THE TRIP returns with a new production of Anton Chekhov's famous drama, Three Sisters, staged at twilight on a tennis court, with the audience seated just beyond the lines. There will be tea from a samovar, lots of original music, and tennis outfits in various shades of flattering and absurd. If the sisters can't play nicely, maybe you'd like to jump in and play a point or two?
Grounded
Produced by Ubuntu Theatre Project in association with San Diego REPertory Theatre
Location: Potiker Theatre Trap Room
Named one of the 10 best plays of the year by The Guardian in London, this award-winning play seamlessly blends the personal and the political. The story explores a hot-rod F16 fighter pilot whose unexpected pregnancy ends her career in the sky. Repurposed to flying remote-controlled drones in the Middle East from an air-conditioned trailer near Vegas, she struggles through surreal twelve-hour shifts far from the battlefield, hunting terrorists by day and being a wife and mother by night. A tour-de-force play by George Brandt, directed by Emilie Whelan, Grounded flies from the heights of lyricism to the shallows of workaday existence, targeting our assumptions about war, family and the power of storytelling.
Queen of Carthage
Produced by City Opera
World Premiere Adaptation
Location: Eucalyptus Grove at Scripps Institute of Oceanography (Shuttle Provided)
Queen of Carthage is a contemporary re-imagining of Henry Purcell's Baroque opera Dido and Aeneas, directed by Cynthia Stokes. Set in a grove of trees overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the new libretto by Cory Hibbs delves into Dido's self-sabotage in spite of Aeneas' love for her. The words and music combine to tell a story of betrayal, obsession and jealousy.
Heaven on Earth
Produced by Sledgehammer Theatre
Location: UC San Diego's Powell Structural Lab
Thirty years after their first production in a campus canyon, Sledgehammer Theatre returns to UC San Diego with Charles Mee's Heaven on Earth, a site-specific presentation around the Powell Structural Lab. Co-founders Scott Feldsher (director) and Robert Brill (design) lead a team of Sledgehammer veterans and newcomers in this play with music and movement. In Heaven on Earth, the apocalypse is nigh, but there is a sense time has run its course and something new is about to emerge from the spent fuel of what's gone before. Heaven on Earth offers the promise of a future, perhaps even a Utopia, if we plant the right seeds; seeds based on human goodness, love, and community, not the seeds of mass production.
The Adventures of Heartman
Produced by Fern Street Circus
Location: UCSD's Galbraith Hall Lawn
The Adventures of Heartman explores myths, inspirations, and aspirations around superheroes and superheroines, starting with a seven-year-old child's imaginary superhero and broadly using a circus sensibility of playfulness and levity. This interactive show features a core troupe of San Diego's finest circus and variety arts professionals, a bi-lingual ringmaster, After-School Circus Program students from City Heights, and a 5-piece band - all in a newly created Fern Street set. Prior to each performance, visual artists will conduct pre-show workshops to help audience members create their own superheroes for the show's opening parade.
Gnomesense! A Puppet Happening in the Garden
Produced by Animal Cracker Conspiracy
Location: Festival Village
Gnomesense! A Puppet Happening in the Garden mashes up the timeless arts of busking, street performance, and giant puppet pageantry, invoking the spirits of non-sense, serious play, and make believe to come out and bask in the sunshine. Imagine your garden come to life in a fantastic and absurd incarnation with stilt walking faeries, giant insect puppets and a garden gnome brass band. In, age-old fairy tale fashion, the show questions what is up, what is down, what is straight, what is round - and asks what is it that you invest in believing in on a day-to-day basis? This is an audience participatory happening/ meta-theatrical impromptu dance party/ singalong led by a group of benevolent, albeit anarchic, mystical garden beings!
In Case of Emergency
Presented by Chalk Repertory
World Premiere
Location: 8842 Cliffridge Ave, La Jolla, CA
Meredith is prepared for any emergency. Her garage is packed with canned goods, giant jugs of water, first aid kits, and a giant tower of amazon boxes filled with god knows what. It's gotten a little out of hand, which is why she's hired Alex from "Ready, Set, Go" to help her get organized. But neither the supplies nor the prepping expert can prepare her for the personal disasters that her younger sister brings home, on a day when the whole city seems set to go up in flames.
Greg Wohead's Hurtling and The Backseat of My Car (And Other Safe Places)
Presented by ArtPower
West Coast Premieres
Location: Hurtling: Stuart Collection's "Fallen Star," UCSD's Jacobs Hall of Engineering
Location: The Backseat of My Car: UCSD's Parking Lot 102
Greg Wohead is an artist who creates intimate theatre shows, one-to-one performances, and audio pieces. Hurtling is an invitation to remember a previous version of yourself, to imagine a future version, and to wonder who that makes you now. An outdoor performance for one with a cassette player and headphones that's remade for each location in which it's performed, Hurtling is a glimpse of a fleeting moment as it zooms past; an attempt to grasp at a slippery present. The Backseat of My Car (And Other Safe Places) is an interactive true storytelling piece for one audience member at a time about being a teenager and those moments when you're on the verge of something exciting.
UC San Diego Projects
A Completely Factual Tour
By UC San Diego M.F.A. Graduate David Jacobi
World Premiere
Location: North Side of UCSD's Galbraith Hall
Audio tours are becoming more common as tourist sites are moving away from the experience of actual human interactions. Audio tours can be cold, impersonal barriers that hinder meaningful engagement with the site. It seems counterproductive to travel to a place you've never been before only to have exploration and play removed from the equation. A Completely Factual Tour is a world-premiere audio play that begins as a simple audio tour, but soon explodes into absurdist theatricality, unexpected matchmaking, and forced choreography.
Romulus Kilgore's Mobile Happiness Bazaar
By UC San Diego M.F.A. Candidate Bennett Fisher/People of Interest
World Premiere
Location: Begins in Mark Taper Plaza
Are you unhappy? Of course you are. Just look at yourself. But Romulus Kilgore has what you need to feel better, and he's selling it at competitive prices. An interactive, snake-oil medicine show for the troubled soul, Romulus Kilgore's Mobile Happiness Bazaar is an impishly comic exploration of how we buy peace of mind.
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