BUILDING AN ARTISTIC HOME

Tony nominee Jessica Stone prepares to cultivate community as she leaps coasts to become artistic director of La Jolla Playhouse

- BY CHARLES MCNULTY THEATER CRITIC

ERICA JOAN

JESSICA STONE, an actor-turned-director of Broadway productions "Kimberly Akimbo" and "Water for Elephants," will lead a key regional theater in San Diego.

Jessica Stone, a Tony-nominated director (“Kimberly Akimbo,” “Water for Elephants”), has been named the new artistic director of La Jolla Playhouse, succeeding Christopher Ashley at the helm of one of the nation’s preeminent regional theaters. The Board of Trustees of La Jolla Playhouse made the announcement Tuesday.

Her appointment ends the monopoly of male artistic directors at peer institutions in Southern California. In a region that boasts some of the country’s most important nonprofit theaters (the Old Globe, South Coast Repertory, Center Theatre Group, Pasadena Playhouse and the Geffen Playhouse), La Jolla Playhouse will be the only one of this elite group with a woman calling the artistic shots.

Stone had a flourishing career as an actor, racking up numerous Broadway credits before she transitioned to directing. Her last outing on a Broadway stage as a performer came in Kathleen Marshall's 2011 Tony-winning revival of “Anything Goes,” starring Sutton Foster.

The next time Stone worked on Broadway was in 2022 as the director of the Tony-winning musical “Kimberly Akimbo.” The show is based on David Lindsay-Abaire’s 2000 offbeat play about a teenager with a condition that causes rapid aging. While still in high school, she transforms physically into an elderly woman.

Not the stuff of ordinary musicals, but Lindsay-Abaire, who wrote the book and lyrics, and Jeanine Tesori, who wrote the score, nailed the eccentric humor along with the lyrical poignancy. And Stone seamlessly balanced these elements in a production that was as tonally assured as a John Ashbery poem.