La Jolla Playhouse Announces Over 20 Events as Part of 2015 Without Walls Festival

La Jolla Playhouse, nationally-renowned for its commitment to the development of new work and new theatrical forms, is pleased to announce the projects and collaborators for its second Without Walls (WoW) Festival taking place October 9 - 11.

"Our inaugural Without Walls Festival in 2013 exceeded our wildest expectations, demonstrating that San Diego audiences continue to have a voracious appetite for one-of-a-kind experiences that transform our customary idea of theatre," said Artistic Director Christopher Ashley.

Ashley continued, "Across the theatre landscape, the relationship between the audience and the art is changing, and immersive theatre is taking place out in the world, playing with boundaries and experimenting with form. The audience is right in the middle of the action, creating a singular event that truly engages and surprises. The Playhouse continues to stand at the leading edge of this burgeoning trend with our Without Walls program, and this year's Festival welcomes even more collaborators to the table, with projects by some of our favorite local companies, as well as national and international artists, creating a spectacular three-day, community-wide celebration of immersive and site-inspired work."

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, Animal Cracker Conspiracy, Fern Street Circus, THE TRIP, ArtPower, Patricia Rincon Dance Collective in association with Switzerland's Drift Company, 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 faculty, students and alumni. Additional projects, along with performance times, locations and ticket information will be announced at a later date.

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 truck fare, relax in the beer garden, hear free acoustic music performances and share Festival experiences. The Festival will also include a Family Day on Saturday, October 10, with several hands-on, family-friendly programs presented by the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego Children's Discovery Museum and the Timken Museum.

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.

Festival productions will go on sale in August and will feature a mix of free ticketed events. For more information on programming and artists, visit lajollaplayhouse.org/wowfestival.

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Without Walls Festival Projects

Healing Wars
(West Coast Premiere)
Conceived, directed and choreographed by Liz Lerman (Baltimore, MD)

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
(World Premiere Plays)
By Moving Arts (Los Angeles, CA)

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 and characters.

OjO: The Next Generation of Travel
(West Coast Premiere)
By Bricolage Production Company (Pittsburgh, PA)

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
(West Coast Premiere; Family-Friendly)
By CORPUS (Toronto, Canada)

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
(World Premiere)
By Hannah Ryan and Melissa Gordon

Every Path is a site-specific production about a woman's journey through adulthood as she encounters multiple versions of herself, each version representing a different choice, a different reality. Set in the La Jolla 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

Seven Butterflies is a micro-concert featuring Kaija Saariaho's Sept Papillons, a piece with ethereal extended techniques evocative of swooping, swarming or gently fluttering butterflies. The concert includes a simultaneous performance during which a monarch butterfly will be released 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.

UC San Diego Projects
Clouds in My Room
By UC San Diego Dance Professor Patricia Rincon with Switzerland's Drift Company

A solo dance-theatre work, Clouds in My Room explores one woman's fanciful aloneness experienced through dreamlike encounters that are whimsical, offbeat, even bizarre - all while sitting in her room playing an accordion. The piece is an international collaboration between Zurich-based choreographers and theater/dance/performance artists Beatrice Jaccard and Peter Schelling of Drift Company, and choreographer Patricia Rincon, artistic director of San Diego-based Patricia Rincon Dance Collective, and Head of Dance at UC San Diego.

A Completely Factual Tour
(World Premiere)
By UC San Diego M.F.A. Graduate David Jacobi

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 play 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
(World Premiere)
By UC San Diego M.F.A. Candidate Bennett Fisher/People of Interest

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 Happiness Bazaar is an impishly comic exploration of how we buy peace of mind.

Partner Projects:

Dances with Walls
(World Premiere)
Produced and directed by Jean Isaacs San Diego Dance Theater

Dances with (or against) walls is a strategy that 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. The three surfaces selected include a hallway in the Wagner Dance Building, a wall north of Galbraith Hall, and the Stuart Collection's iconic Stonehenge (La Jolla Project.) Trained tour guides will usher audiences of up to 100 people every 45 minutes to view these three dances. Dance with Walls will feature twelve professional San Diego Dance Theater dancers. Audiences will be encouraged to video/ photograph these performances on their phones and to share on social media. San Diego Dance Theater will gather the images on our website and update periodically so that folks who are unable to attend the WoW festival can still participate in real-time and after the festival is over. All choreography is by San Diego Dance Theater's Artistic Director Jean Isaacs.

Refuse or The Golden Door
(World Premiere)
Produced by Ion Theatre

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.

Grounded
Produced by Ubuntu Theatre Project in association with San Diego REPertory Theatre

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
(World Premiere Adaptation)
Produced by City Opera

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.

Three Sisters
(World Premiere Adaptation)
Produced by THE TRIP

Following their acclaimed 2013 WoW Festival production of Our Town, THE TRIP returns with a new adaptation of Chekhov's famous drama, Three Sisters.

The Adventures of Heartman
(Family-Friendly)
Produced by Fern Street Circus

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 Happening in the Garden
(Family-Friendly)
Produced by Animal Cracker Conspiracy

Gnomesense invokes the spirits of non-sense, serious play, and make believe to come out and bask in the sunshine and be absurd. Questioning what is up, what is down, what is straight, what is round - we ask what is it you invest in believing 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!

Greg Wohead's Hurtling and The Backseat of My Car (And Other Safe Places)
(West Coast Premieres)
Presented by ArtPower

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.

In Case of Emergency
(World Premiere)
Presented by Chalk Repertory

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.

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Artist/Company Biographies:

Animal Cracker Conspiracy (Gnomesense! A Happening in the Garden) founders Bridget Rountree and Iain Gunn have been collaborating under the name Animal Cracker Conspiracy since 2006. Their shared interest and investigation of where fine art, puppetry, performance art, physical theater and mixed media intersect is a continued source of inspiration for their work. They have performed and exhibited in the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego and Art Power, and recently workshopped their Paper Cities project at La Jolla Playhouse. They have participated in both national and international artist residencies and workshops with Bread and Puppet, North American Creative Laboratories, La Pocha Nostra, RosenClaire, and the Old Trouts Puppet Workshop. They have received support from the Jim Henson Foundation, Puffin Foundation, San Diego Foundation, Sator Arts Foundation, Synergy Arts Foundation, and The Puppet Slam Network.

ArtPower (Hurtling, The Back Seat of My Car) at UC San Diego builds creative experiences in music, dance, film, exhibition and food for our collective pleasure and inspiration. We engage diverse audiences through vibrant, challenging, multi-disciplinary performances by emerging and renowned international artists. Through extensive partnerships, ArtPower provides exciting opportunities for research, participation, and creation of new work, igniting powerful dialogue between artists, students, scholars and the community.

Jennifer Bewerse (Seven Butterflies), cellist, is a devoted performer of contemporary classical music. As a result of her work, she has premiered over 50 works including most recently Monte

Weber's Weather Music for solo cello. Other composers she has had the privilege to work with include Augusta Read Thomas, Gunther Schuller, Jonathan Harvey, Christian Wolff, and David Del Tredici. She has performed as a soloist for the Robert Helps Festival, was the 2010 Performance Prizewinner at soundSCAPE festival in Italy, and is a New Music USA Project Grant recipient. Currently, she is pursuing her Doctorate in Contemporary Performance at UC San Diego.

Bricolage Theater Company (OjO) envisions theater not as a passive experience, but as a vehicle for heightened involvement for artist and audience alike. By combining different artistic mediums, nourishing local talent, producing provocative work, and facilitating audience engagement, Bricolage seeks to revitalize live performance for a new era. The word Bricolage means "making artful use of what is at hand." What excites this company is the connection and interaction between seemingly disparate elements, and the potential for these components to resonate as one cohesive event. "What's at hand" is the city's changing landscape, its plentiful human and material resources, and the salient political, cultural and ethical issues they encounter and react to each day. Their approach encourages artists to take the creative risks necessary to create full-blooded, high-quality theatrical experiences that challenge audiences to engage in new ways, react and express openly their opinions about the work - to have a stake in the creative discussion.

Chalk Repertory Theatre (In Case of Emergency) is dedicated to presenting classical and contemporary plays in unconventional spaces around Los Angeles County. Chalk Rep kicked off in 2009 with a critically-acclaimed season of four plays including the Ovation Award-winning Family Planning. Past productions include Three Sisters, Twelfth Night, and the West Coast Premiere of Slither by Carson Kreitzer at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, the West Coast Premiere of The Debate over Courtney O'Connell of Columbus, Nebraska by Mat Smart, the FLASH Festival of short plays and three World Premiere productions by founding member Ruth McKee including Hell Money, Full Disclosure, and the Garland Nominated Stray. Chalk Rep was also commissioned to produce work at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum as a part of their 100th Anniversary in 2013. Recent productions have taken place at UCLA's Clark Library and a new residential building in downtown L.A. called 8th + Hope. For more information about Chalk Rep or its upcoming season, please visit ChalkRep.com.

City Opera (Queen of Carthage), led by Co-Artistic Directors Cory Hibbs and Cynthia Stokes, is a new, artist-driven opera company in San Diego dedicated to building community by turning beautiful music into stunning theatre and contributing to the dynamic reimagining of opera in America for the 21st century.

CORPUS (A Flock of Flyers), co-founded by Sylvie Bouchard and artistic director David Danzon, is known for its precise and surrealist humor that combines movement with theatrical imagery. Their unique and engaging performances are presented in both traditional and unusual locations, for large and diverse audiences. Created in 1997, Corpus has now 11 pieces in its repertoire and has presented over 1500 performances at venues and events across Canada and around the world, including the Milk International Children Festival (Toronto), Just for Laughs (Montreal & Toronto), Canada Dance Festival, (Ottawa), Dancing on the Edge Festival (Vancouver), Awesome Children Festival (Australia), the prestigious Singapore Arts Festival, La Fira de teatre de Tarréga (Spain), Festival International de théâtre au Benin (West Africa) and International Straattheaterfestival (Belgium). Corpus' work can also be seen on television and on film. The Bravo!FACT short Peep Show has been programmed in over 40 film festivals around the world and won the Audience Award at Cinedans (Netherlands) in 2004. Corpus also co-created with Treehouse TV 4-square, an increasingly popular educational television series for pre-schoolers. Several of their productions have been nominated for Dora Mavor Moore awards and in 2002 Corpus was the recipient of the Prix Hommage for Arts awarded by the Fédération Culturelle Canadienne Française. In 2001, Corpus was also the gold-medal winner at the IV Games of la francophonie (Street Theatre category).

Drift Company (Clouds in My Room), a Zurich-based dance theatre company, was founded by Beatrice Jaccard and Peter Schelling. Together they have created more than 33 full-length pieces and showed their work in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republik, Egypt, Estonia, France, Germany, Holland, Hungaria, India, Italy, Latvia, Mazedonia, Mexico, Pakistan, Poland, Rumania, Russia, Scotland, Serbia, Slowakia, Slowenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunesia and the USA. They've also created installations and performances that have been shown extensively in Swiss art museums. Additionally, they were commissioned to choreograph for the Neumarkttheater Zürich (Switzerland), Ballet of the State Theatre Detmold (Germany), Ballet of State Theatres Freiburg and Heidelberg (Germany), Ballet of Luzern Theatre (Switzerland) and worked for a season for Tsumura Illusions/ Mummenschanz, Tokyo (Japan). They directed and choreographed for Luzern Theatre the baroque opera Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse, by Joseph Bodin de Boismortier. Jaccard and Schelling are three-time recipients of the Swiss Choreography Cultural Award from the City of Zurich for their complete work, as well as the Swiss Dance Cultural Heritage Award.

Bennett Fisher (Romulus Kilgore's Mobile Happiness Bazaar) is company member of Campo Santo, an associate artist with the Cutting Ball Theater, and a co-founder of the San Francisco Theater Pub. His plays include Campo Maldito, Borealis, Pay Dirt, Hermes, Don't Be Evil, Devil of a Time, and Whoa is Me. They have been presented and produced by the Kennedy Center MFA Playwrights Workshop, the Martin E. Segel Center, Ubuntu Theater Project, the Unicorn Theater, Sleepwalkers Theater, No Nude Men, New Conservatory, the Cutting Ball Theater, Custom Made Theatre Company, and Bread and Water, and others. As an actor, director, and dramaturg he has collaborated with Campo Santo, California Shakespeare Theatre, Stanford Summer Theatre, Just Theater, Crowded Fire, Pear Ave Theatre, Adirondack Shakespeare Company, Marin Shakespeare Company, and many others. Bennett was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Bennett is a third-year M.F.A. playwriting candidate at UC San Diego, class of 2016. More at www.bennettfisher.net.

Founded in 1990, Fern Street Circus has built a rich legacy of circus in San Diego through a series of annual shows in Balboa Park and in neighborhoods across the County. Known for creating productions with a whimsical sense of place, the Circus mixes adult professionals with after-school students. Anchor elements include original, live music; sets by locally known visual artists; a bi-lingual presentation, and a simple, non-linear narrative. The mix of professionals and amateurs brings the best of both worlds - an accessible, energetic, and polished performance for an all-ages audience.

Melissa Gordon (Every Path) is an artist and mom living in a tiny house on a large hill in San Diego, CA. She received her M.F.A. in Sculpture from the University of Colorado at Boulder and her B.F.A. from Point Loma Nazarene University. Her artwork ranges from miniature landscape hand-painted necklaces to large permanent public artwork. She spends her time pondering puddles, bird watching with binoculars, photographing flora and fauna, and feverishly painting. More at melissajogordon.com or on her blog at www.myquiethousestudio.com.

Ion Theatre (Refuse or The Golden Door) is committed to serving its community by reminding audiences that risk and ambition are components of artistic work as they should be part of our everyday lives; that theater should be inclusive and diverse and should insist on telling powerful, intense, meaningful stories forged with artistic integrity, rich with theatrical magic, embracing of innovation in form and content and initiated with clarity of purpose; ion believes audiences should be startled and engaged by theatre, not patronized or preached to; and ultimately, that theatre is a crucible where tough ideas and human beings must cross paths so that we can best explore our multiple identities in a changing world. ion members are among the most celebrated and in-demand artists in the region - wherever they go, they insist on working 'out of the box' by challenging convention, practicing excellence, inspiring dialogue and embracing diversity. With over 70 productions to date, ion has stewarded many new plays and writers, nurtured dozens of acclaimed new and established artists and earned considerable recognition for sustained excellence.

Jean Isaacs San Diego Dance Theater has become synonymous with site-specific dance in San Diego since the creation of her inventive Trolley Dances in 1988. Since that time, the annual event has grown to include versions in Riverside and San Francisco. In a recent feature, The New York Times wrote, "Trolley Dances offer a fresh take on the city through the lens of dance, guiding audience members to hidden nooks and crannies." Isaacs is excited to return to the UCSD campus. She has choreographed four productions at the La Jolla Playhouse and taught dance in UC San Diego's Department of Theater and Dance for 25 years before retiring in 2008. Her choreography for Wintertime won the San Diego Craig Noel Award in 2000. Three of the ten company dancers, Erica Nordin Ruse, Kyle Sorensen and Minaqua McPherson are graduates of UC San Diego.

David Jacobi's (A Completely Factual Tour) plays, including The Monster Below, Widower, Mai Dang Lao, Battlecruiser Aristotle and Ex Machina, have been produced throughout the U.S. and in Beijing, China. His work has been presented or developed at such places as Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Clemson Brooks Center, Penghao Theater, 798 Dashanzi Art District, JAW, WordBRIDGE and Great Plains Theatre Conference. He received a B.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from Purchase College and is currently a 2015 M.F.A. Playwriting candidate at UC San Diego. He is co-founder of Monster Down! Theatre Company, a collaborative theatre group in Beijing.

Liz Lerman (Healing Wars) is a choreographer, performer, writer, educator and speaker. She has spent the past four decades making her artistic research personal, funny, intellectually vivid, and up-to-the-minute. A key aspect of her artistry is opening her process to various publics from shipbuilders to physicists to ballerinas, resulting in both research and outcomes that are participatory, relevant, urgent and usable by others. She founded Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in 1976 and cultivated the company's unique multi-generational ensemble into a leading force in contemporary dance. Current projects include a semester at Harvard University as an artist-in-residence; initiating the National Civil War Project, which pairs theatres and universities to create new work and new research related to our civil war, such as Healing Wars; the genre-twisting work Blood, Muscle, Bone with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Urban Bush Women; as well as work in London with Sadler's Wells Theatre, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, National Theatre Studio and the London Sinfonietta. Her collection of essays, Hiking the Horizontal: Field Notes from a Choreographer, was published in 2011 by Wesleyan University Press. She has been the recipient of numerous honors, including a 2002 MacArthur "Genius Grant," a 2011 United States Artists Ford Fellowship in Dance, and the 2014 Dance/USA Honor Award.

Conceived by Paul Stein and produced by Moving Arts, The Car Plays is "adventurous theatre packed into a Jeep or a Jetta or an Audi" (Huffington Post). For Stein, who lives in LA, his car was a haven of solitary moments of reflection, long talks with friends, an occasional breakup or two and more. Drawing on those memories, Stein collaborated with playwrights to create an experience that engages audience members in a new "performance model" of voyeuristic intimacy. Moving Arts is dedicated to the production of original works and continues to show a remarkable versatility and commitment to the craft of theatre. For the past 22 years, Moving Arts has continuously produced adventurous new plays in a variety of venues across Los Angeles and Southern California, ranging from traditional theatres such as [Inside] the Ford in Hollywood and the Los Angeles Theatre Center downtown, to nontraditional spaces such as the Natural History Museum and the parking lot across from Disney Hall. More at movingarts.org

People of Interest (Romulus Kilgore's...Bazaar) is a nonprofit theater company dedicated to creating theatrical experiences around individual stories. POI gives voice to the voiceless, and reveals the hidden truths through new original work. POI serves a community of individuals committed to creating work for the people, by the people, with the people.

Patricia Rincon (Clouds in My Room), Head of Dance at UC San Diego's Theatre & Dance Department, has performed, directed, choreographed and led workshops and performances in Mexico, Argentina, Europe and California. As Artistic Director of Patricia Rincon Dance Collective, she has continued developing the popular annual Blurred Borders Dance Festival and the Myth Project: American Dream dance-theatre series set in San Diego each year. The company completed a performance tour to Buenos Aires in 2012 and TANZINOLTEN International Dance Festival in Switzerland in 2013. Rincon has been awarded numerous UCSD San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture grants for research and development on the documentary and performance series Latino Now: Landscape of Desire, about the American Dream and the immigration debate.

Hannah Ryan's (Every Path) directing credits include NYTW's 2014 Gala, The Big Announcement (Drama League's Rough Draft Series), Let's Misbehave: A Tribute to Cole Porter (Mr. Finn's Cabaret), Cendrillon and Gianni Schicchi (Point Loma Opera Theatre),Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Forced Marriage, Only in New York, Greater Tuna, Polish Joke, and Food for Thought (Point Loma Actors Theatre). Associate Director: a new musical Circus in Winter (Goodspeed Musicals), world premiere ofThe Golem of Havana and Kiss Me Kate (Barrington Stage Company). Assistant Director to Des McAnuff on Broadway's Doctor Zhivago and Billy Crystal 700 Sundays (HBO), Christopher Plummer's A Word or Two (CTG; Stratford Festival), Fetch Clay, Make Man (NYTW), Sideways and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Chasing the Song, A Dram of Drummhicit and A Midsummer Night's Dream with Christopher Ashley (La Jolla Playhouse), God of Carnage and Nobody Loves You (The Old Globe), Drama League Director's Project Fellow. hannahmryan.com

San Diego REPertory Theatre (Grounded) produces intimate, exotic, provocative theatre. Founded in 1976, San Diego REPertory Theatre is downtown San Diego's resident theatre, promoting a more inclusive community through work that nourishes progressive political and social values and celebrates the multiple voices of the region. The company produces and hosts over 300 events and performances year-round on its three stages at the Lyceum Theatre. Since moving to the Lyceum, the REP has produced 47 main stage productions by Latino playwrights, and more than 44 world premieres. The company has received more than 200 awards for artistic excellence from the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle, Patté Theatre Awards, NAACP, Backstage West, Dramalogue, and StageSceneLA. In 2005, the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle presented the REP with the Craig Noel Award "For 30 Years of Artistic Dedication to Downtown and Diversity." San Diego REPertory Theatre feeds the curious soul. To learn more about San Diego REPertory Theatre, to purchase tickets, or make a donation, visit sdrep.org. Join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter (@SanDiegoREP).

THE TRIP (Three Sisters) is a couple guys riding on a shoestring to the Moon. It's a couple backpackers walking up the spine of an Alp. It's two rookie relievers tense on the bench saying nothing to each other but both thinking as the game goes south for the ace, "Will it be you, man, or will it be me?" It's that itch and the concurrent buckle in your bones. It's a walk on the beach in your bare feet at the line where the water meets the sand. And as that line is always changing, so too is THE TRIP. We go where we go, we whistle while we work, and we try to make something that matters. THE TRIP is a contemporary theatre company founded in San Diego in 2012 by Joshua Kahan Brody and Tom Dugdale.

Ubuntu Theater Project (Grounded) was founded in Oakland, California in 2013 as part of the global ubuntu movement with the mission to share diverse works and bring exhilarating live performances to people of all ages and backgrounds; expanding opportunities to whom theater is not readily available or affordable. As part of the global ubuntu movement, the Ubuntu Theater Project is a proud member of Academia Ubuntu's Ubuntu Global Network and participated in the first annual conference in Lisbon, Portugal in April, 2014. Their artistic company is a mixture of Bay Area artists and artists from UC San Diego School of Theater and Dance, who are committed to creating compelling and impassioned works that unearth the human condition and unite diverse audiences through revelatory, heart-pounding theater.

At UC San Diego, innovation and creativity are central to who they are and what they do. Students learn that knowledge isn't just acquired in the classroom -- life is their laboratory. UC San Diego is an academic powerhouse and economic engine, recognized as one of the top 10 public universities by U.S. News & World Report and ranked number one in the nation for public service byWashington Monthly. Celebrating its 40th anniversary, UC San Diego Theatre & Dance has been one of the top-ranked theater programs in the country for more than a decade. Training is imaginative, eclectic and interdisciplinary. The department does not believe there can be - or should be - one approach to making work. UC San Diego shapes minds, changes lives, launches industries and builds the future...one student, one discovery and one achievement at a time. theatre.ucsd.edu

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 Sundaysand the Pulitzer Prize-winning I Am My Own Wife, both fostered as part of the Playhouse's Page To Stage Program. Visit LaJollaPlayhouse.org.