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World premieres at San Diego Rep and La Jolla Playhouse will dive into history and ask tough questions

BY PAM KRAGEN

In the coming theater season, I’m most intrigued by two world premiere plays that will deal in fascinating ways with historical events and people, as well as the questions we ask ourselves about ethnic identity and belonging They are “The Great Khan” at San Diego Rep and “Here There Are Blueberries” at La Jolla Playhouse.

“The Great Khan,”

San Diego Repertory Theatre

In March, the Rep will coproduce the rolling world premiere of this imaginative comedy by San Francisco playwright Michael Gene Sullivan that the Rep first presented online last March in its inaugural 2021 Black Voices Play Reading Series

It’s the story of a 16-year-old Black boy whose book report on Mongol leader Genghis Khan comes to life when Khan climbs through his window and seeks to rewrite history from a more authentic perspective. Sullivan is the chief writer for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and his many plays have explored political, social and activist-driven topics. Longtime San Diego Rep artistic director Sam Woodhouse said “The Great Khan” explores the question of “who controls the narrative” in historical biographies written by authors of ethnicities, perspectives and cultures different from those of the historical figures

In this play, a Black teen named Jayden moves to a new town with his mom to escape the dangerous celebrity he earned after saving a girl named Ant from a group of boys who tried to assault her in their former hometown Jayden stays mostly in his room playing video games and working on a book report about Genghis Khan until Khan himself arrives with the goal of correcting the common view of him as a bloody warrior. The play will be directed at the Rep by Delicia Turner Sonnenberg. The play will run March 3-28.

“Here There Are Blueberries,”

La Jolla Playhouse

In June, the Playhouse, in association with Tectonic Theater Project, will present this world premiere play by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich.

It’s inspired by a photo album donated to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in January 2007. The album contained photographs taken in 1944 and 1945 by a Nazi official from the Auschwitz death camp in Poland.

Although the camp staff spent their days killing hundreds of thousands of Jews, they relaxed together on weekends at a nearby vacation chalet The photos show them singing, sunbathing and posing for photos with notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, seemingly unbothered by the horrors of their work.

The play by “The Laramie Project” author Kauf- man and Gronich will mix fact the album and museum archivists’ international efforts to uncover the photographer with the story of a fictional German businessman who is horrified to recognize his grandfather in many of the images. Playhouse artistic director Christopher Ashley said the production will feature projections of photos from the album, including the play’s title image of amused