La Jolla Playhouse Unveils Projects for 2025 DNA New Work Series
Events will run from December 4 – 14.
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Oct. 24, 2025
La Jolla Playhouse has revealed the dates and projects for its 2025 DNA New Work Series, running in the Playhouse’s Rao and Padma Makineni Play Development Center.
This year’s readings include In the Black, by Quaz Degraft, directed by Delicia Turner Sonnenberg; Night Game, by Octavio Solis, directed by UC San Diego Theatre & Dance department chair Lisa Portes; Red Taxi, by Banna Desta, directed by Jacole Kitchen; and
Well Well Well, by Brant Russell, directed by Jaki Bradley.
The Playhouse’s annual DNA New Work Series offers playwrights and directors the opportunity to develop a script by providing rehearsal time, space and resources, culminating in free public readings. This process gives audiences a closer look at the play development process, while allowing the Playhouse to develop work and foster relationships with both established and up-and-coming playwrights.
“The DNA New Work Series has become an incredibly vital pipeline for new plays, musicals and even WOW productions at the Playhouse. Since the launch of the program in 2013, more than a dozen DNA works have gone on to have full productions in our subscription season,” said Christopher Ashley, the Rich Family Artistic Director of La Jolla Playhouse. “Patrons relish the opportunity to take part in the birth of a new play, while giving playwrights invaluable feedback in the earliest stages of the development of their work.”
Tickets to the DNA New Work Series readings are free; reservations are required.
Curated by Gabriel Greene, La Jolla Playhouse’s Director of Artistic Development, the DNA New Work Series has been a launching pad for numerous projects that have gone on to full productions in future Playhouse seasons, including Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar’s The Who & The What; Chasing the Song, by the Tony Award-winning team of Joe DiPietro and David Bryan (Memphis, Diana); Michael Benjamin Washington’s Blueprints to Freedom; UC San Diego MFA graduate Jeff Augustin’s The Last Tiger in Haiti; Miss You Like Hell, by Pulitzer Prize winner Quiara Alegría Hudes and Erin McKeown; Kill Local, by UC San Diego MFA graduate Mat Smart; What Happens Next, by UC San Diego MFA graduate and faculty member Naomi Iizuka; The Luckiest by Melissa Ross; The Coast Starlight by Keith Bunin; SUMO by Lisa Sanaye Dring; Derecho, by Noelle Viñas; and this season’s All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me, by Noah Diaz. In addition, Marike Splint’s 59 Acres and Robert Farid Karimi’s American Dream Casino were developed in the DNA Series prior to their premieres in the WOW Festival.
All DNA New Work Series projects take place with no scenic, costume or staging elements, and actors will have scripts in hand. The creative teams will be available for interviews for feature coverage; however, in order to preserve the developmental nature of the program, DNA Series presentations are not open to review.
DNA New Work Series Projects
Well Well Well
Directed by Jaki Bradley
Thu, December 4 at 7pm and Sat, December 6 at 7pm in PDC
Erik & Erika have been intertwined since young adulthood, for better, for worse, and for everything in between. Now 40, they re-unite at a party to celebrate Erika’s engagement – to someone else. Well Well Well is a funny, smart, and bruising play that searches for the line between addiction and devotion.
Red Taxi
By Banna Desta
Directed by Jacole Kitchen
Fri, December 5 at 7pm and Sun, December 7 at 2pm in PDC
Abraha is part of a close-knit group of Eritrean friends living in Washington, DC, driving cabs and dreaming of returning home when their country wins its independence. But as years stretch into decades, Abraha’s dreams of stability crash into political, technological and economic shifts that threaten to upend everything. Red Taxi is a sharp, comedic and moving new play that examines how one can succeed and preserve relationships when “home” is so fragile.
Night Game
A La Jolla Playhouse commission
Directed by Lisa Portes
Thu, December 11 at 7pm and Sat, December 13 at 7pm in PDC
Ted Williams stared down the fiercest pitchers in baseball while becoming a star for the Boston Red Sox. But when he returns to his childhood home in San Diego to visit his estranged brother Danny, Ted faces an entirely different kind of heat. Octavio Solis’s new play for La Jolla Playhouse explores identity, destiny, and how the ties that bind can also strangle.
In the Black
By Quaz Degraft
Directed by Delicia Turner Sonnenberg
Fri, December 12 at 7pm and Sun, December 14 at 2pm in PDC
Every wolf starts as a cub... some just have to claw their way up. In the Black is a gripping, dark comedy solo play about an ambitious Black accountant fighting for a seat at the table in the high-stakes world of Wall Street. Torn between love, identity and the relentless pursuit of success, he must navigate power, class and identity in a system that was never built for him. How far will he go to survive...and who will he become in the process?
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