WOW: What You Need to Know About the La Jolla Playhouse Without Walls Festival
The La Jolla Playhouse has revealed 20 of the unique shows that will be presented at the organization’s annual Without Walls festival.
According to the La Jolla Playhouse, the Without Walls Festival — or WOW Festival — is a celebration of performance art that explores what happens when that art is taken outside traditional theatre walls and into unique spaces.
To that end, the organization is bringing local, national, and international performance troupes to the campus of UC San Diego from April 4 through April 7.
As with past WOW festivals, the event is being presented free of charge. That makes it one of the best-kept UCSD secrets.
“The lineup for our 2024 WOW Festival once again offers a thrilling combination of intimate and large-scale spectacle events, created by acclaimed local, national and international artists — all free of charge,” said Christopher Ashley, the Rich Family Artistic Director of La Jolla Playhouse. “We are overjoyed to celebrate this four-day, community-wide event in partnership with UC San Diego.”
Here’s just a sampling of the shows booked for this year’s festival.
- 59 Acres — an immersive, headphones-on walkthrough of the La Jolla Playhouse and the UCSD campus by LA-based artist Marike Splint.
- Erin the Caterpiller → Butterfly — This project will see San Diego design studio Friendly Futures create a transformable play structure named Friendly Wall v0004.
- Inertia — A collection of humorous interactions that explore the role art plays in our stories, created by New York theater artist Drew Petersen.
- Les moutons — A funny show featuring a Toronto theatre troupe performing sheepish behaviors with the help of the audience.
- The Running Show — A documentary and performance exploring the life of a dancer over a 40-year period. Produced by New York dance company Monica Bill Barnes & Co, it will feature a large cast of dancers aged 12 to 80.
For a full list of the shows, click here. While all shows are free, some have limited room for attendees, so RSVPs are required.
Media credit: Image courtesy of lajollaplayhouse.org
Mike Peterson is a writer, editor, and strategist based in San Diego. When he’s not writing and editing the La Jolla news, you can often find him practicing yoga, rock climbing, or exploring the outdoors with his wife and dog.
