La Jolla Playhouse announces Without Walls mobile show ‘Taxilandia’ opening next week

Bernardo Mazón Daher is the writer and star of "Taxilandia: San Diego."

In development since 2020, ‘Taxilandia’ takes cab riders on a guided tour of San Diego’s ethnically diverse neighborhoods

San Diego Union-Tribune

Sept. 28, 2022 5:41 AM PT

Most people drive to the theater to be swept away by a story unfolding onstage, but La Jolla Playhouse’s upcoming “Taxilandia: San Diego” will sweep people away in a “taxi,” where they’ll experience the drama of lives unfolding in some of San Diego’s South Bay neighborhoods.

“Taxilandia: San Diego” has been under development since 2020, when the Playhouse launched its all-digital Without Walls Festival. The mobile experience was created, developed and directed by Modesto “Flako” Jimenez of Oye Group in New York. Jimenez first presented the driving theatrical event in Brooklyn in 2021. He has written an entirely new version of the play for San Diegans that will be presented Oct. 11 through Nov. 6.

“‘Taxilandia’ embodies every aspect of the WOW (Without Walls) program — t’s immersive, it’s site-specific, and it takes audiences on a literal adventure far outside the confines of a traditional theater,” Christopher Ashley, artistic director of La Jolla Playhouse, said.

In “Taxilandia: San Diego,” the mobile tour guide, “Sal,” will be played by activist theater artist Bernardo Mazón Daher, a South Bay native who has worked to raise awareness in the fields of public health, voting and social progress.

Sal will take passengers on a rolling history tour of his beloved South San Diego neighborhoods, including National City, Chula Vista and San Ysidro. Along the way, Sal will wrestle with the questions that come when a neighborhood changes, confronting social stigmas and gentrification. The play will explore the life of locals as well as immigrants and their sense of home and place.

Jimenez based the original “Taxilandia” on his experience of driving a New York City taxicab for nine years and his documentation of the conversations with passengers, residents, locals and immigrants in his native neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn. He now works with theaters nationwide to create site-specific “Taxilandia” productions in their city’s most diverse neighborhoods.

Ticket buyers will meet Sal at the Eighth Street Trolley Stop in National City for the 90-minute experience, which includes a ride on the San Diego Trolley. Masks are required for all riders.

Performances are at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays, 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Fridays-Sundays. Tickets are $25 and can be reserved at (858) 550-1010 or lajollallayhouse.org.

Arts & Entertainment Theatre

Pam Kragen

Pam Kragen is the arts and entertainment editor, as well as the chief theater, dining and opera critic, for the San Diego Union-Tribune. She joined the Union-Tribune staff in October 2012 after 27 years at the North County Times, where she served as the Arts & Features Editor, as well as the paper’s longtime arts writer and theater and opera critic. She is the co-founder of the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from San Diego State University and completed fellowships in theater criticism at the University of Southern California and opera-classical music criticism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. And in 2022, she was chosen as one of the fellows in the prestigious National Critics Institute, run by the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterf, Conn.