Dear Friends,

In mid-March 2020, when the pandemic shutdown first started – back when being on something called Zoom was still a novelty – the Playhouse’s artistic department assembled for our first virtual meeting. We were a somber group, confronting the same awful question facing every theatre artist: what do you do when you’re not allowed to do the thing you do?

Happily, the Playhouse’s answer arrived sometime during that Zoom meeting. Thanks to our Without Walls (WOW) series of immersive and site-responsive experiences, we’d worked with many artists used to creating theatre in unusual and unexpected places. Could we pivot our WOW programming to a virtual world? Could we still find unique and organic ways to connect in the midst of the biggest disconnect of our lifetimes? 

Over the next year and a half, we commissioned a dozen new works and shared fourteen Digital WOW shows – from international artists like Gob Squad, nationally-renowned companies like 600 Highwaymen and Culture Clash, and a slew of talented San Diegans such as David Israel Reynoso, Blindspot Collective and Animal Cracker Conspiracy. We aired monthly Coffees with the Playhouse to keep the Playhouse community engaged with each other.

No artist I know, however, pivoted as inventively and productively as Kristina Wong. Sidelined from performing her new solo show, Kristina Wong for Public Office, she turned her horror and frustration with the government’s ineffective pandemic response into a supremely impressive moment of community building. She assembled a posse of hundreds of “aunties” to pitch in and make homemade masks for underserved (or outright forgotten) groups.

As an answer to the question “what do you do when you’re not allowed to do the thing you do,” Kristina’s is the best I’ve encountered. As you’ll see in Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord, she confronted systemic inequality, kept people safe, rallied a community – and created a beautiful, funny and moving new show about all of it.

CHRISTOPHER ASHLEY
The Rich Family Artistic Director of La Jolla Playhouse