Silver Linings Playbook Musical to Have World Premiere at La Jolla Playhouse

La Jolla Playhouse has announced its 2027-28 season, the first to be programmed by its new artistic director, Tony-nominated director Jessica Stone. The season will feature two world premiere musicals, three world premiere plays, and a West Coast premiere.

Silver Linings Playbook – A New Musical (February/March 2028), based on the 2012 motion picture of the same name and the novel by Matthew Quick, is the first show to be directed by Stone in her new role. Featuring a book by Tony Award nominee Rick Elice and music and lyrics by Ian Axel and Chad King of the band A Great Big World, the musical is about Pat Solatano Jr., who is determined to put his life back together and win back his estranged wife after a tumultuous year involving a stay in a psychiatric hospital. Then he meets Tiffany, a sharp, unpredictable young widow, who offers to help him in exchange for becoming her partner in a dance competition.

The other world premiere musical is I Think Big Cat Is Stealing My Words (August/September 2027), a memoir with music written and performed by Daniel Zaitchik and directed by Obie Award winner Shayok Misha Chowdhury, in a co-production with Roundabout Theatre Company. Netty is a retired English professor whose words have been disappearing. When her son Daniel comes home, neither of them can quite make sense of what’s happening.

The season will also include the world premieres of the plays A Magical Orange Grove in a Nightmare (May/June 2027), a comedy about a father who doesn’t believe his son is real, by Noah Haidle and directed by Arya Shahi; Palm Springs (June/July 2027), a Playhouse commission by UC San Diego MFA graduate Jeff Augustin, directed by UC San Diego MFA graduate Joshua Kahan Brody; and The Cutter Incident (November 2027), set at the dawn of the medical breakthrough of the polio vaccine, written by Pulitzer Prize winner Doug Wright and directed by Tony Award winner and Playhouse founding artistic director Des McAnuff.

The season also includes the West Coast premiere of The Attic: Things I’ve Seen While Lying on My Back (July/August 2027), a production by the contemporary circus collective 7 Fingers, written, directed, and choreographed by Shana Carroll.