Director’s fellowship finale at La Jolla Playhouse will be her biggest show yet

For the past two years, Kat Yen has served as La Jolla Playhouse’s inaugural directing fellow. Her last project, opening next month, also will be her biggest.

The world-premiere play “All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me,” directed by Yen and written by Noah Diaz, opens Sept. 16 at the playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Forum.

“This is the largest show of my life, budgetarily and scope of stage and scope of the production,” Yen said. “So that just feels like the culmination of two years but also the culmination of, like, my life … to this point.”

“All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me” follows young married couple Ty and Nora as they settle into the next stage of their lives and ready themselves for parenthood. When they discover Nora can’t carry their child, Ty — a transgender man — decides to carry the baby.

Along the way, three mysterious men start appearing at the couple’s new home, all from Ty’s past.

“In general, I’ve never been attracted to plays that I would say are straight comedies or straight tragedies or dramas or anything because I like plays that make me feel like they’re really reflecting life,” Yen said. “And in life, there’s always a mix of both.”

Playhouse Artistic Director Christopher Ashley praised Yen and Diaz, calling the play “wildly imaginative” and “engaging.”

“All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me” is a product of the playhouse’s 2021 DNA New Work Series, making it the 12th play to go from those workshops to the main stage. Diaz, a playwright and screenwriter from the Iowa-Nebraska border area, was commissioned to put together the script.

Diaz and Yen attended graduate school at Yale University and collaborated in the DNA New Work Series. Yen said she was struck by their similar artistic values through the years and by Diaz’s ability with surrealism and naturalism. Diaz introduced Yen to La Jolla Playhouse.

“I left the playhouse [after the New Work Series] thinking ‘That was such a wonderful experience. I would love to work with them in any capacity in the future.’ But I didn’t really think anything of it,” Yen recalled.

As a graduate in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic, Yen entered the workforce at a “very, very hard time for anyone to launch into the industry,” she said. But she was able to spend time diving deeper into the theater world.

Today, Yen estimates she’s worked on 35 to 40 productions at theaters ranging from the Atlantic Theater Company and Ars Nova to Cherry Lane Theatre and Ensemble Studio Theatre.

Some of her recent productions are Lloyd Suh’s “The Heart Sellers” at North Coast Repertory Theatre, Christin Eve Cato’s “The Weather Busters of Beachcastle” for La Jolla Playhouse’s POP Tour and WOW Festival and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Pipe Dream” at Berkshire Theatre Group. She also was associate director on Tina Landau’s “Redwood” and “The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical” by Joe Iconis and Gregory Moss and directed by Ashley.

If she hadn’t done the playhouse fellowship, helming “All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me” would have been much more anxiety-inducing, Yen said.

“Since I’ve been here for two years, I sort of know all the players,” she said. “I know everyone who’s here, I know who to go to when I have questions, and also I’m given the support, care and benefit of the doubt of someone who everyone knows is new to how large this production is.”

The story also resonates with Yen as she finds herself living out of a suitcase and wrestling with the concept of what “home” means to her.

“I’ve been on what I’ve been calling the precipice of parenthood,” Yen said. “The last few years, my partner and I have been on that route of starting to figure out what being parents means in our life.”

“Another theme we explore is generational trauma,” she added. “Everyone in some capacity is affected by that or has their own version of dealing with that. But also confronting that is a part of growing up and thinking about how parents raised you from an adult’s point of view.”

‘All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me’

When: Tuesday, Sept. 16, through Sunday, Oct. 12. Shows at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 7 p.m. Sundays beginning Sept. 28

Where: Mandell Weiss Forum, La Jolla Playhouse, 2910 La Jolla Village Drive

Cost: Tickets start at $30.

Information: lajollaplayhouse.org/show/all-the-men-whove-frightened-me