Partial lineup unveiled for Liberty Station events in La Jolla Playhouse’s spring Without Walls Festival
La Jolla Playhouse has announced the first nine of more than 20 international and local shows planned for its 2022 Without Walls Festival this spring.
Here’s a look at some of the site-specific, immersive and interactive shows that will be presented in the Arts District at Liberty Station in Point Loma from April 21-24. More productions will be announced in coming months. Tickets will range from free to $20. For more details, visit lajollaplayhouse.org/without-walls.
“Ants” from Polyglot Theatre, Australia: Previously featured at the 2015 and 2019 WOW Fest with its interactive children’s shows “We Built This City” and “Boats,” Polyglot returns with “Ants,” which brings three giant ants together with children who will help the ants transform a public space with lines and patterns. The production will feature Inlet Dance Theatre.
‘Ascension” from San Diego Opera: Two female opera singers will sing a cappella choral pieces as they walk through the parks and historic areas of Liberty Station. As they walk, their attire will transform, taking them from early 20th-century suffragettes to early 21st-century modern American women. The songs, written by composer Melissa Dunphy and librettist Jacqueline Goldfinger, include “Halcyon Days,” about finding hope in the depth of despair, and “Set Myself Free,” about the freedom women found in America, beginning with the right to vote.
“Black Séance” from Blindspot Collective, San Diego: Returning from the 2019 WOW Fest at Liberty Station, Blindspot Collective will perform in a New Orleans-style bar where a bartender-magician tells his mysterious family history and conjures images and stories of his Black cultural heroes, including Frederick Douglass, Josephine Baker and James Baldwin, as well as Eartha Kitt and Redd Foxx.
“La Bulle” from CORPUS, Canada: Last seen at WOW in 2015 with its show “A Flock of Flyers,” CORPUS returns with this solo show featuring the clownlike character Pierrot, a mime, dancer and artist, performing a show about solitude, dreams and social distancing inside a giant snow globe-like bubble.
“The Frontera Project” from Tijuana Hace Teatro, Mexico, & New Feet Productions, New York City: “The Frontera Project” is an interactive bilingual theater experience created and performed by a company of Mexican and U.S. artists. They use theater, music, movement and play to engage the audience in a conversation about life at the U.S./Mexico border.
“Lessons in Temperament” from Outside the March, Canada: Writer-musician-performer James Smith will perform this one-man play about four neuro-diverse brothers, told through piano tuning. Smith and his brothers have dealt with obsessive-compulsive disorder, autism, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. He tells their story as he tunes a piano onstage, a metaphor for how all humans are tuned differently.
“Monuments” from Craig Walsh, Australia: This outdoor site-specific nighttime projection installation will transform trees into sculptural monuments as a way of challenging the traditional expectations associated with public monuments and the selective history they represent.
“On Her Shoulders We Stand” from TuYo Theatre, San Diego: This walk-through, immersive theatrical installation, which will first be presented in February with Turnkey Theatre in Barrio Logan, tells the story of Latina women in the United States during World War II. Audience members will hear the stories of Latinas who, though not accepted as Americans during the 1940s, still joined the war effort at home.
SDUSD 2022 Honors Theatre Devised Project, San Diego: La Jolla Playhouse and visual and performing arts teachers in the San Diego Unified School District are collaborating on an original play that will be devised by 33 high school students.
