La Jolla Playhouse to Host 6th Latinx New Play Festival in October

La Jolla Playhouse will host the sixth Latinx New Play Festival on October 27 - 29, 2023, produced by Dr. Maria Patrice Amon, the Playhouse's newly-appointed Artist-in-Residence for the 2023/2024 season.

The Latinx New Play Festival is a celebration of new theatrical work by Latinx playwrights from across the country. Originally launched in 2016 at San Diego Repertory Theatre, the festival expands the presence of Latinx stories and artists on the American stage and spotlights the broad range of today's Latinx experience. More than 90 play submissions were received for this year's festival, from which four scripts will be selected to be rehearsed and developed at the Playhouse, culminating in a live public reading at the festival in October.

The Latinx New Play Festival is free to attend and will include a robust schedule of in-person readings of new works, panel discussions and other events. Complete festival programming will be announced at a later date. For more information, please visit LaJollaPlayhouse.org.

"We are delighted to have Patrice join us this season as our Artist-in-Residence. Her vision and fortitude have built the Latinx New Play Festival into one of the premiere events of its kind in the nation, and it's an honor to be able to provide a new home for the festival this year, with Patrice at the helm," said Christopher Ashley, the Rich Family Artistic Director of La Jolla Playhouse.

The artist residency program is designed to give artists the freedom to focus on their ongoing body of work, while becoming fully immersed in all aspects of the Playhouse, from the stage to the boardroom to the classroom. Previous Artists-in-Residence have included playwright Kenny Ramos, award-winning designer David Israel Reynoso (WOW Festival productions of Las Quinceañeras, Waking La Llorona; Digital WOW's Portaleza); married writers Mike Lew and Rehana Lew Mirza (Playhouse's Bhangin' It), Tony Award-winning actor and writer BD Wong (Playhouse's Herringbone, The Orphan of Zhao, playwright/director for POP Tour production of Alice Chan), scenic designer and UC San Diego graduate and faculty member Robert Brill (Playhouse's SUMMER: The Donna Summer Musical, The Wiz, and many others); and MacArthur "genius" Grant recipient Basil Twist (Playhouse's A Midsummer Night's Dream, WOW Festival productions of Seafoam Sleepwalk and Faetopia).

Dr. Maria Patrice Amon

is a director, producer, scholar and leader. Directing credits include: Hoops (Milwaukee Chamber Theatre), A Skeptic and a Bruja (Urbanite Theatre), Group! The Musical (Passage Theatre), Hoopla! (La Jolla Playhouse POP Tour), Azul (Diversionary Theatre), Mojada (UC San Diego), A Zoom of One's Own (CSUSM), Ich Bin Ein Berliner (Theatre Lab), DREAM HOU$E (CSUSM/TuYo Theatre), Fade (Moxie Theatre), The Madres (Moxie Theatre), Lydia (Brown Bag Theatre Company). Dramaturg: Manifest Destinitis and Beachtown (San Diego Rep). Patrice was a 2020 National Directing Fellow and an Associate Artistic Director at San Diego Repertory Theatre. She is also a co-founder and co-Artistic Director of TuYo Theatre, a professional Latinx Theatre Company in San Diego, with whom the Playhouse collaborated for On Her Shoulders We Stand at the 2022 Without Walls (WOW) Festival. Currently an LTC Steering Committee member and a board member for NNPN, Patrice is an assistant professor at CSUSM. JD: California Western School of Law. Ph.D.: UC Irvine. mariapatriceamon.com

La Jolla Playhouse is a place where artists and audiences come together to create what's new and next in the American theatre, from Tony Award-winning productions, to imaginative programs for young audiences, to interactive experiences outside our theatre walls. Founded in 1947 by Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire and Mel Ferrer, the Playhouse is currently led by Tony Award winner Christopher Ashley, the Rich Family Artistic Director of La Jolla Playhouse, and Managing Director Debby Buchholz. The Playhouse is internationally renowned for the development of new plays and musicals, including mounting 110 world premieres, commissioning 65 new works, and sending 33 productions to Broadway - including the hit musical Come From Away - garnering a total of 38 Tony Awards, as well as the 1993 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre.