The story at the center of Lauren Yee’s music-propelled play “Cambodian Rock Band” stretches halfway around the world and a half-century back in time — to the war-ravaged Southeast Asia of the 1960s and ‘70s.
But a key inspiration for this nationally buzzed work, which is about to receive its first area production at La Jolla Playhouse, is rooted a lot closer to home — in, of all things, a visit to San Diego’s annual Adams Avenue Street Fair eight years ago.
Yee was still a student in the University of California San Diego’s renowned graduate playwriting program when she found herself in Normal Heights one Saturday evening in September 2011.
