Joe DiPietro, Quiara Alegria Hudes, Ayad Akhtar & Jeff Augustin Tapped for La Jolla Playhouse's 2016-17 Season

This is one stellar 2016-17 season! Four productions will make their world premieres at La Jolla Playhouse in California, including works by Tony winner Joe DiPietro, Pulitzer winners Quiara Alegría Hudes and Ayad Akhtar, as well as Jeff Augustin. Safe to say we will be keeping a close eye on every single one of these shows—they could well be bound for New York.

DiPietro’s noir thriller Hollywood will be directed by Christopher Ashley. In 1922, famed director William Desmond Taylor is found murdered in his home. The celebrity suspects mount as the headlines explode with lurid reports of love triangles, hush money and deception. Enter Will Hays, Hollywood's newly-appointed moral watchdog, determined to silence the scandal and purify this increasingly corrupt city.

Directed by Lear deBessonet, new musical Miss You Like Hell will have book and lyrics by Alegría Hudes, along with music and lyrics by Erin McKeown. When a free-spirited mother convinces her whip-smart teenage daughter to join her on a drive across the country, neither can imagine where it will take them. Chance encounters with a motley crew of characters along the way brings them closer to understanding what sets them apart—and what connects them forever.

Helmed by Doug Hughes, Akhtar’s Junk: The Golden Age of Debt takes us back to the hotbed of the ‘80s and offers us an origin story for the world that finance has given us, a thriller about an upstart genius hell-bent on changing all the rules. It's a world where debt is an asset and assets are excuses for more debt, a world where finance runs the show. How did we get here? How did the world we once knew change?

Augustin’s The Last Tiger in Haiti is set to be directed by Joshua Kahan Brody. In an earthquake-torn tent shack in Haiti, the sounds of kanaval fill the air as a group of restaveks—child slaves—spend the night trading fantastic folktales until the line between reality and fiction blurs. At daybreak, the oldest plans to break free for a new life but discovers the story of his future and past are in the hands of someone else. Set in a world that is utterly real and remarkably imaginative, this new play weaves Haitian lore into a contemporary narrative of survival and betrayal.