Jessica Stone, a Tony-nominated director (“Kimberly Akimbo,” “Water for Elephants”), has been named the brand new inventive director of La Jolla Playhouse, succeeding Christopher Ashley on the helm of one of many nation’s preeminent regional theaters. The Board of Trustees of La Jolla Playhouse made the announcement on Tuesday.
Her appointment ends the monopoly of male inventive administrators at peer establishments in Southern California. In a area that boasts a number of the nation’s most necessary nonprofit theaters (the Previous Globe, South Coast Repertory, Middle Theatre Group, Pasadena Playhouse and the Geffen Playhouse), La Jolla Playhouse would be the solely one in every of this elite group with a lady calling the inventive pictures.
Stone had a flourishing profession as an actor, racking up quite a few Broadway credit earlier than she transitioned to directing. Her final outing on a Broadway stage as a performer got here in Kathleen Marshall’s 2011 Tony-winning revival of “Anything Goes,” starring Sutton Foster.
The following time Stone labored on Broadway was in 2022 because the director of the Tony-winning musical “Kimberly Akimbo.” The present relies on David Lindsay-Abaire’s 2000 offbeat play about a youngster with a situation that causes fast growing older. Whereas nonetheless in highschool, she transforms bodily into an aged lady.
Not the stuff of strange musicals, however Lindsay-Abaire, who wrote the ebook and lyrics, and Jeanine Tesori, who wrote the rating, nailed the eccentric humor together with the lyrical poignancy. And Stone seamlessly balanced these components in a manufacturing that was as tonally assured as a John Ashbery poem.
“Kimberly Akimbo” has no connection to La Jolla Playhouse. It started at New York’s Atlantic Theater Firm earlier than transferring to Broadway. However this quirky musical with a dramatic soul may function the platonic supreme of a La Jolla Playhouse present.
The official mission of the theater is to inform “stories that inspire empathy and create dialogue toward a more just future” by cultivating “a local, national and global following with an insatiable appetite for audacious work.” In a video name interview that included managing director Debby Buchholz, Stone seized on the phrase “audacious” as a key purpose for her curiosity within the job.
Jessica Stone, left, La Jolla Playhouse’s newly named inventive director, stands with Debby Buchholz, the theater’s managing director.
(Erica Joan Productions)
Stone admitted that she was initially resistant. “It wasn’t necessarily something that I had on a bucket list,” she stated. “I’m a creature of habit. And a mother and a daughter and a wife. I had worked all over the country as a director, but I had been working in New York for quite a few years, and that was my artistic home.”
She credit her good friend, “Jersey Boys” ebook author Rick Elice, who additionally wrote the ebook for the musical “Water for Elephants,” with opening her eyes. He requested her if she ever had a creative residence. Stone thought again to her formative interval at Williamstown Theatre Pageant, and Elice’s phrases about not dismissing such a present stayed together with her.
However what actually turned issues round, she stated, was “the opportunity to be a part of making an artistic home for others.” In doing her due diligence, she found that audacious creativity actually does lie on the core of La Jolla Playhouse’s dedication to new work. And she or he felt assured it was a match of sensibilities.
In describing her aesthetic, Stone stated, “I love a bold choice and a big swing, and I want to push the boundaries.” She in contrast her work in “Kimberly Akimbo,” an intimate scale musical, and “Water for Elephants,” a grander providing with epic themes and circus-style theatrics, and concluded: “I like to zoom in and I like to zoom out.”
Buchholz shared that in the middle of the search course of, plenty of trustees noticed “Kimberly Akimbo” when it was on tour in Southern California. “And the whole conversation afterwards was why didn’t that start with us?” she stated.
Carolee Carmello, left, and Miguel Gil star within the nationwide tour of “Kimberly Akimbo.”
(Joan Marcus)
Aware of her Playhouse predecessors, Stone stated she desires to proceed to construct on their legacy. She’s labored as an actor for Des McAnuff, whose tenure as inventive director remodeled the Playhouse right into a Tony-winning regional theater powerhouse. And she or he’s collaborated with Ashley, each as a performer and as an affiliate director. (“I think I was a terrible associate director,” she stated with self-deprecating humor, “but I have a long history with Chris.”)
Stone just isn’t the primary lady inventive director in La Jolla Playhouse’s historical past. Anne Hamburger, who succeeded Michael Greif within the function in 1999, served little greater than a 12 months earlier than leaving to turn into an govt vice chairman of artistic leisure on the Walt Disney Co. However Stone’s appointment is nonetheless noteworthy for the area. Girls inventive administrators will not be unusual elsewhere. The 2 main regional theaters within the Bay Space, American Conservatory Theater and Berkeley Rep, are led by girls. However Southern California, which has made headway in different areas of management range, has lagged behind.
When requested to touch upon the importance, Stone stated that she hopes it was her daring aesthetic that was the figuring out think about her appointment and never her gender. Buchholz confirmed that certainly was the case: “I can tell you absolutely that it was the bold choices and big swings that made Jessica absolutely the hands-down choice of our search committee.”
Buchholz added that she appreciated that the board had her on the search committee, “because this is a little bit of a marriage, a co-leadership. I do not work for Jessica and Jessica does not work for me. Both of us report directly to the board.”
La Jolla Playhouse inventive director Christopher Ashley holds his Tony Award for guiding “Come From Away.”
(Lauren Radack)
Stone added: “I love to have a partner in crime. Our skill sets complement each other’s well and I believe this scaffolding is necessary for any institution. I feel really lucky to have Debby’s expertise to lean on as well as her generosity with regard to my own spreading of wings.”
Final 12 months, the Playhouse appointed Eric Eager-Louie as inventive producing director. Buchholz defined that the place happened in recognition that, given the period of time Ashley was away with initiatives that have been developed at La Jolla Playhouse, there was a necessity for “someone in place who stays and doesn’t direct elsewhere.”
“Our expectation is that Jessica will develop work here and that whether it’s a co-production or something moving to Broadway or commercially that she’ll need to continue to work on it,” Buchholz stated. “And now we have a very strong structure in place that supports the continuing work at the Playhouse.”
“I’ve known Eric for a long time,” Stone stated, “and the thing that I’m excited about is he and I run in some of the same circles, but we also have different relationships with different artists. I’m really excited to meet his folks and introduce him to mine. He has impeccable taste, and it’s really fun already to read scripts and listen to scores together and spitball with each other. I think it’s going to be a really rich partnership.”
Who might be figuring out the programming? Stone confirmed that the inventive buck will cease together with her.
Regional theaters have been preventing for his or her survival for the reason that COVID-19 pandemic. Budgets have been slashed, layoffs have been rampant, manufacturing prices have soared and morale has plummeted as audiences have been recalibrating their leisure choices.
La Jolla Playhouse isn’t impervious to those headwinds, however Buchholz stated that the theater is in a comparatively wholesome place. Each Stone and Buchholz acknowledged the advantages of a powerful, supportive board, and that help is indicative that one thing has been working.
“We have a pretty clear mission and we have an audience that understands what that mission is and we’ve largely stuck to it,” Buchholz stated. “And so our audiences came back pretty much as soon as they could come back. As a matter of fact, our subscription and single ticket numbers have grown.”
Has the altering political panorama had any influence on programming or on fairness, range and inclusion initiatives? The dialog has modified and maybe grown extra intense, Buchholz acknowledged, however the values and priorities of the Playhouse stay the identical.
“Right now politics is front of consciousness for everyone, but we’ve always been a company that has prided itself on people seeing themselves on stage and represented,” she stated. “But we’ve never programmed on the nose. And once or twice we’ve accidentally found that our programming was on the nose, and that’s when our audiences didn’t come. They come for diverse programming, but diverse with a smaller ‘d’ rather than a big ‘D.’”
“It seems to me that the most exciting theater comes from a multitude of voices but involves universal themes,” Stone added. “To me, that is always the organizing principle.”
La Jolla Playhouse has a status for being an opulent Broadway launching pad. The complicated, which incorporates three major venues (every below 500 seats) and a black field that’s used primarily for readings and workshops, occupies a serene nook of UC San Diego’s scenic campus. The Playhouse has not solely cachet however geography. (Who wouldn’t need to spend a winter creating a brand new present on this sun-drenched, seaside San Diego group?)
Throughout Ashley’s tenure, “Memphis” and “The Outsiders” gained Tony Awards for greatest musical and “Come From Away” earned Ashley a directing Tony. However there has additionally been a great deal of industrial dross. There are conspicuous downsides for a nonprofit firm getting accustomed to enhancement cash from outdoors producers.
“The risks are that we start to feel like a rental house and don’t have our fingerprints on something that we stand by that goes to New York,” Stone stated. “The goal is for that not to be the case. There are benefits to the enhancement that comes with these shows that move to New York, but the goal has to first be what’s right for San Diego.”
The manufacturing setting has grown tougher for severe drama. It’s simpler to promote tickets to a brand new musical than a brand new play. The identical holds true for revivals. However Stone, who pointed to Kimberly Belflower’s “John Proctor Is the Villain” as a up to date drama that may provoke an viewers, stated that she’s fascinated about “deepening the resources for being an incubator for new voices.
“I’m also interested in expanding possibilities for later stage playwrights to develop their new work,” she added, in a refreshing nod to an usually neglected space of inclusiveness.
Stone isn’t any stranger to San Diego, having directed comedies by Shakespeare, Shaw, Neil Simon and Christopher Durang (amongst others) on the Previous Globe. In a textual content trade, Previous Globe inventive director Barry Edelstein described Stone as “witty, sharp and rich in imagination.” He referred to as her “a great hire, wonderful for the La Jolla Playhouse and San Diego for sure, but also for the American theater at large.”
Unstinting in his reward, Edelstein wrote, “I’ve had the privilege of producing her at The Old Globe, and she’s become a friend. I know her to be warm and open, passionate, fiercely committed to artists, and also — and this really matters — truly funny. Chris Ashley did great work at the Playhouse and leaves huge shoes to fill, but Jess is poised (together with Debby, who is also brilliant) to lead the place on a huge leap forward.”
Ashley, who has been named inventive director of Roundabout Theatre Firm, leaves his submit on the finish of the 12 months. Stone, who’s married to Tony-nominated actor Christopher Fitzgerald and has two kids, might be dividing her time between New York and La Jolla when she takes the reins in early 2026.
