La Jolla Playhouse WOW Festival to debut virtually this Thursday

The Playhouse is launching the series with four favorite WOW collaborators: UK-based artist Brian

Lobel (2013 WOW Festival’s Carpe Minuta Prima), San Diego-based artists Mike Sears and Lisa Berger (2019 WOW Festival’s How High the Moon) and Blindspot Collective (2019 WOW Festival’s Hall Pass); as well as internationally-renowned designer and Playhouse 2020/21 Artist-in-Residence David Israel Reynoso and his company Optika Moderna (WOW Festival’s Las Quinceañeras and Waking La Llorona; Off-Broadway’s Sleep No More).

BINGE by Brian Lobel & Friends. Photo courtesy of La Jolla Playhouse

The works by Blindspot Collective, Sears and Berger, and Reynoso/Optika Moderna are all worldpremiere La Jolla Playhouse commissions. Tickets for these four projects will range from free to $25.

“Our WOW series is extraordinarily well suited to this unprecedented moment when we’re all sheltering in place, offering groundbreaking theatre that re-imagines the relationship between artist, audience and story in a virtual space,” 

said Christopher Ashley, The Rich Family Artistic Director of La Jolla Playhouse. 

“Each of these innovative works is essentially about human connection. At a time when we're physically unable to be together, they address how art can help people feel bonded in moving, inventive and deeply humane ways."

Ancient, the first digital WOW (With Out Walls) piece created especially for an at-home experience, will be available to access for FREE beginning next Thursday, May 14! Local artists Mike Sears and Lisa Berger bring a video installation that explores the relationship between repetition and meditation, the routine and the ancient. This visual meditation invites the audience to observe an unfolding of day-to-day tasks that have been in play for centuries. A reminder that we have been here before and that somehow, we go on.

For the full WOW schedule please click here.

About Without Walls (WOW)

The Playhouse’s Without Walls (WOW) program is a dizzying array of interactive and site-inspired theatre that attracts energetic art lovers of all ages. For the past decade, the Playhouse has offered one or more WOW programs a year, plus its popular biennial Without Walls Festival that features hundreds of local, national and international artists engaging with audiences in vibrant, interactive experiences. You might find yourself getting down in an impromptu dance party, or interacting virtually with an artist in a Zoom chat, or taking a stroll through a lush botanical garden as your WOW experience unfolds. Full of diverse offerings, WOW shows have one thing in common – they are an invitation to rethink theatre in intriguing and playful experiences, whether on a beach, in a car, or even online!