Junk: The Golden Age of Debt

It’s likely you’ve already heard of playwright Ayad Akhtar, given his 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning, Tony Award-nominated play Disgraced, among other works including The Who & The What and The Invisible Hand. Fans craving the dramatic, the thrilling, the raw, and the politically-undertoned cannot wait for his newest play Junk: The Golden Age of Debt premiering at the La Jolla Playhouse on July 26^th and playing until August 21^st. 

Known for pondering greater themes of humanity and corruption, Akhtar makes no exceptions with Junk: The Golden Age of Debt as he forces the audience to consider the implications of capitalism and the politics and morals of the West as they’ve evolved over the past few decades. The play has been described as a rather intense––but hugely entertaining––commentary on the chase for extreme wealth since the 1980s. Akhtar’s play dominates the theatrical forefront at a particularly political moment in our country's history, whether that moment consists of political tensions surrounding the presidential campaign or issues of isolating minorities domestically and abroad (both of which the author is outspoken about).

Akhtar uses the world of finance in the 80’s as a backdrop for his political ideals in Junk, where the financial "race to the top" is thought to have started, and writes what has been described as "a sexy and epic thriller about an upstart genius hell-bent on changing all the rules" by the La Jolla Playhouse itself. Protagonist Robert Merkin, the "king" of his time in the realm of junk bonds and financial ventures, reaches a crucial point in his questionable but thrilling career that could make or break him as the corrupt rule-maker. The play is as dark and provocative as the moral dilemma that those of this era may have faced in the pursuit of the glamorous American dream. 

Junk is about more than the deal making behind the mergers and acquisitions movement of the ‘80s. It asks the audience, as Disgraced famously did, how America has reached this point: a point at which people of color are forced to once again fight for their rights, at which nationalism and celebrity dictate the game of politics in the name of capitalism, and at which those who dare question capitalism as a whole are labeled socialists in the extreme. Akhtar teams up with the Tony-winning director of Doubt to suggest that, on a larger level, the origin story of capitalism is very much the origin story of America’s current political landscape. 

Purchase your tickets on the La Jolla Playhouse website to be transported back to a sexy, riveting, corrupt time that may or may not be shaping your very perceptions today. Come to be thrilled and disillusioned, or merely to witness the genius that is Ayad Akhtar’s work. 

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