La Jolla Playhouses just-announced 2025-26 season, the final season planned by 18-year artistic director Christopher Ashley, will feature two new musicals and three new plays, including the world premiere of Tony-winner Cyndi Laupers latest musical project Working Girl, based on the 1988 film starring Melanie Griffith.
In September, Ashley announced he will leave the Playhouse at the end of 2025 to lead New Yorks Roundabout Theatre Company, one of the nations largest and most prestigious nonprofit theaters. But before he goes he will direct both of the new seasons two musicals, including Working Girl.
La Jolla Playhouse artistic director Christopher Ashley. (Emilio Madrid)
The Playhouse has dedicated its 2025-26 season to philanthropist Joan Jacobs, its trustee emerita who passed away last May.
She had such an extraordinary impact on La Jolla Playhouse and San Diego, Ashley said. In the year after her passing, it felt like such a natural thing to honor Joan with our season.
Heres a look at the Playhouses new Joan Jacobs 2025-26 Season, which will kick off with the annual Without Walls Festival next spring on the UC San Diego campus. Subscriptions are now on sale at lajollaplayhouse.org.
Playwright Jocelyn Biohs Broadway hit play Jajas African Hair Braiding will open La Jolla Playhouses 2025-26 season. (La Jolla Playhouse)
Jajas African Hair Braiding — May/June 2025
Ghanaian American playwright Jocelyn Biohs Tony-nominated play is the story of a day in the life of a community of West African women who work together in a Harlem hair-braiding salon. Ashley said he and many other national theater leaders saw the play on Broadway in 2023 and loved it so much theyve joined to co-produce a production that will also play at Arena Stage, Berkeley Rep and Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Among the shows producers is Tony-winning actress LaChanze, who, like Ashley and the others, are committed to finding plays that enlarge the audience and find new audiences. Whitney White will direct.
Playwright Eliana Theologides Rodriguezs play Indian Princesses will make its world premiere as part of La Jolla Playhouses 2025-26 season. (La Jolla Playhouse)
Indian Princesses — July/August
Emerging playwright Eliana Theologides Rodriguez based this world premiere play on her own experiences in a YMCA father-daughter program she participated in as a child. In the play, directed by Miranda Cornell, five teen girls of color and their White fathers meet at a community center in 2008. Over time this group named the Winnebago Tribe navigate the joys and confusions of childhood, friendship, crushes, grief, financial insecurity and more. Ashley said this is Rodriguezs first-ever professional production of one of her plays, but he predicts it wont be her last. Shes a real writer to watch.
The Heart — August/September
This unique world premiere musical is based on Maylis de Kerangals 2014 French novel Réparer les vivants (Mend the Living), which follows the life of a human heart over 24 hours, from the time its removed from a brain-dead patient until its transplanted into the body of a new recipient. Ashley will direct the production, which will have a book by Kait Kerrigans (bookwriter for Broadways The Great Gatsby) who has re-set the story in San Diego, where a local surfer dies in a predawn car accident and his heart ends up saving the life of another person who had given up all hope of survival. The score will be composed by Anne Eisendrath and Ian Eisendrath, who are cowriting the lyrics with Kerrigan. Ian Eisendrath was the music supervisor for the La Jolla Playhouse-born Broadway musical Come From Away, which earned Ashley his Tony for direction. Ashley said the musicals score has an electronic dance music vibe because the girlfriend of the heart donor is a nightclub DJ. Club music pulses at 120 beats-per-minute, which is twice the rate of the resting human heart. The music will be woven into other environmental sounds of the hospital and other locations. Im really excited about this one. Its going to be very different, Ashley said.
Playwright Noah Diazs commissioned play All the Men Whove Frightened Me will make its world premiere in La Jolla Playhouses 2025-26 season. (La Jolla Playhouse)
All the Men Whove Frightened Me — September/October
La Jolla Playhouse commissioned this world premiere play by Noah Diaz. It is the 12th play to make the jump from the Playhouses DNA New Works Series to the subscription season. Its the story of young married couple, Ty and Nora, who are moving into Tys childhood home to start a family. When they discover Nora is unable to carry a child, Ty — a trans man — decides to reverse his transition to carry the baby instead. But as theyre making plans for parenthood, Ty is visited by three mysterious men from his past. The play will be directed by Playhouse Directing Fellow Kat Yen. Theres a central mystery to this play, Ashley said. Theres something supernatural happening during the course of the play and it unfolds in very unexpected but very satisfying ways.
Theresa Rebeck is the bookwriter for the Cyndi Lauper-scored musical Working Girl, which will make its world premiere in La Jolla Playhouses 2025-26 season. (Cleo Lynn)
Working Girl — November/December
This world premiere musical is a project that Ashley, who will direct the production, has been working on for quite a while. Based on the 1988 film starring Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver, its the story of the bright and ambitious but underemployed secretary from Staten Island at a 1980s New York investment firm. When her cruel boss is out on sick leave, Tess borrows her office, impersonates her and lands a major new client. Cyndi Lauper, who won a Tony Award in 2013 for her Kinky Boots musical score, will create an 80s-style score. Although the musical will retain its time setting, Ashley said it will reflect the sensibilities of modern times. For example, Tess will have a romance in the film, but it wont be the focus of the story. Instead it will focus on female friendship. Ashley said of the piece: I love that this story is set in the 1980s and Cyndi Lauper writes a pop song better than anyone from those years. But I also think its about how far weve come since the 1980s and what weve overcome. Ive been working on it for a while and Im so excited about the way its come together.
Chef and author Julia Child shows off tomatoes in the kitchen at her home in Cambridge, Mass., Aug. 13, 1992. (Jon Chase / The Associated Press file)
Julia Child play — February/March 2026
This as-yet untitled play by Claudia Shear is based on Bob Spitzs book Dearie, about the life of Pasadena-raised Julia Child before she found her calling as a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef, her voice as a TV personality and her passion in husband/soulmate Paul Child. Shear, a two-time Tony nominee, has worked twice with Ashley, who directed her plays Blown Sideways Through Life (1995) and Restoration (2009). But this time, because Ashley will have moved on to Roundabout by 2026, Lisa Peterson (An Iliad at the Playhouse and Good Night, Oscar on Broadway) will direct the production. This play has a bold take on Julia Child, Ashley said. Its about a few specific moments of her life. Claudia tends to write about peoples passions— what makes them people who have one thing that absolutely dominates their life and people who are obsessed with something. (Julias) obsession is for cooking and transforming the way people think of food as life.
Members of the aerial ballet troupe BANDALOOP dance on the walls of the Design and Innovation building at UC San Diego during the La Jolla Playhouses Without Walls Festival on April 4, 2024. The 2025 WOW Festival will returns to the UCSD campus April 24-27. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Without Walls (WOW) Programming
WOW Festival — April 24-27, 2025
The annual, free festival will be held once again on the campus of UC San Diego, which is partnering on the 2025 festival. It will feature four days of theater, dance, music, puppetry and spectacle events by local, national and international artists. Ashley said he loves presenting the festival on the UCSD campus because the students there actively engage in creating and promoting the programming.
The Unfair Advantage — Feb. 25-March 23, 2025
The 2025 WOW season will also include a stand-alone production created and performed by magician and casino security expert Harry Milas. An audience of 25 to 30 people will be required to sign confidentiality agreements before they take their seat around a table where Milas will share the secrets of how people cheat on card games and how mentalists perform sleight-of-hand tricks and illusions. Ashley said of the unique show I love being on the inside of that kind of artistry and I think one of the things I love about card magic is that even though I know the truth, I still enjoy the magic.