Dear Friends, 

For the second time this season, we revisit the 1960s and ‘70s, an era whose chaos and instability mirrors our own. But whereas Love All focused on the ways in which the struggle for equality and justice inspired Billie Jean King to become a trailblazer, our newest world-premiere musical turns the spotlight on one of those decades’ most compelling and complicated figures in popular culture: Hunter S. Thompson.Thompson.

Spurning the long-standing ideal that journalism was the domain of objective facts, Dr. Thompson pioneered a new form of journalism, “Gonzo,” which placed himself at the subjective heart of all of his stories. (As evidence of Hunter’s loose relationship with facts, look no further than the fact that the “Doctor” title was entirely self-applied.)

And yet, Hunter’s prose was in service of what he saw as a deeper truth: the truth of how he experienced the events and subjects he covered. The America he searched for and wrote about was vastly different from that of mainstream journalists; he celebrated the misfits, the freaks, the outsiders – the people who didn’t fit neatly into society’s rigid definitions of what it meant to belong.

The legacy of Gonzo journalism is not without its problems; witness the glut of contemporary news channels dedicated to a partisan outlook at the expense of facts. But Hunter’s story is also particularly urgent now, when legislatures across the country seek to criminalize any identities or behaviors they deem immoral. Just as Hunter fought to bring attention to those who lived on the margins, a new generation is striving to create a country that embraces difference.

Thanks to Joe Iconis’s riveting, endlessly-catchy score, alongside Joe and Gregory Moss’s rambunctiously funny book, The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical is an experience every bit as anarchic, audacious and unruly as its subject.

Christopher Ashley
The Rich Family Artistic Director of La Jolla Playhouse