Parent Guide – Age Recommendations
Center Theatre Group provides this guide to help you make informed decisions when bringing young people to our theatres. Please know that these are recommendations not rules. You are the expert in deciding what your children should see and know best how to help them enjoy their theatergoing experience.
Center Theatre Group updates this guide when artistic choices substantively change the content. Theatre is a living medium, and the work evolves throughout the development and rehearsal process. The information provided below is the most current available. Running times are approximate.
Upcoming Productions
All Ages
Cirque du Soleil
A lyrical, fanciful, kinetic foray into cinema, Cirque du Soleil’s new production, IRIS: a journey through the world of cinema, will bring together dance, acrobatics, live video, filmed sequences and animation as it takes spectators on a fantastic voyage right to the heart of the movie-making process.
Length: Approximately 2 hours 30 minutes
Ages 10+
Parental Discretion Advised
Anything Goes
New York City’s Roundabout Theatre Company is proud to present the national tour of ANYTHING GOES, the 2011 Tony® Award winning Broadway musical theatre masterpiece. Cole Porter’s 1934 musical comedy about the lovers, liars and clowns on a transatlantic cruise is “a daffy, shipshape romp!” - Variety. When the S.S. American heads out to sea, etiquette and convention head out the portholes as two unlikely pairs set off on the course to true love… proving that sometimes destiny needs a little help from a crew of singing sailors, an exotic disguise and some good old-fashioned blackmail.
Adult Humor, Deception
Length: TBD
Ages 13+
Clybourne Park
Bruce Norris’ 2011 Pulitzer Prize winning play, Clybourne Park takes a satirical look at race in America through the imagined story of one of the important houses in literary history, both before and after it becomes a focal point in Lorraine Hansberry’s classic A Raisin in the Sun. Through the prism of property ownership, Norris’ lacerating sense of humor dissects race relations and middle class hypocrisies in America.
Racial themes and dialogue, adult language
Length: TBD
FELA!
A triumphant tale of courage, passion and love, featuring Fela Kuti’s captivating music and the vision direction and choreography of Tony-award winner Bill T. Jones. Fela! tells the true story of legendary Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, whose soulful Afrobeat rhythms ignited a generation. Inspired by his mother, a civil rights champion, he defied a corrupt and oppressive military government and devoted his life and music to the struggle for freedom and human dignity.
Language, sexuality, war
Length: Approximately 2 hours 45 minutes
Follies
Follies, the 1971 musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman is in part an affectionate look at the American musical theater between the two World Wars. Follies features a 40-member ensemble that performs flashbacks to vaudeville-era Broadway. The musical revival focuses on two married couples, Buddy and Sally and Benjamin and Phyllis of a Ziegfeld-like stage extravaganza- the Weismann Follies. They have reunited inside their dilapidated old theatrical haunt on the night before its demolition where they begin to reminisce on their youthful pasts and become haunted by the present.
Adult humor, extra-marital subject matter
Length: TBD
Los Otros
Los Otros is a world premiere chamber musical, with book and lyrics by Ellen Fitzhugh and music by Michael John LaChiusa. This two-character musical spans decades, sharing distinctly Californian stories that provide a moving perspective on the Mexican immigrant experience. The first act depicts three defining moments in the life of a Southern California woman, all of them involving chance encounters with Mexican immigrants. The second act introduces us to a Mexican American man, first as a 12-year-old picking plums in a Central Valley orchard during WWII and finally as a 75-year-old whose mind is failing him. A final duet between the woman and man reveals their surprising connection and accents the myriad gifts and devotions that have shaped their lives, together and apart.
Mild adult language, race and ethnicity
Length: TBD
A Raisin in the Sun
Ebony Repertory Theatre’s critically acclaimed production of Lorraine Hansberry’s masterpiece about race in America. Set in the 1950s, A Raisin in the Sun portrays an African-American family and its pursuit of a better life while facing the obstacles of conflicting aspirations, betrayal and racism. Central to the story is a $10,000 life insurance payment that symbolizes freedom in various ways to each family member, including the possibility of buying the family’s first house, located at 406 Clybourne St. in Chicago.
Racism, adult language, alcohol use, domestic violence
Length: Approximately 2 hours 27 minutes
Red
Alfred Molina will portray one of the greatest artists of the 20th century in the Donmar Warehouse production of the 2010 Tony Award-winning Best Play Red by John Logan. Red is set in the 1950s New York studio of artist Mark Rothko, whose paintings pulsate with a life force of their own. Rothko is working on a commissioned series of paintings for the new Four Seasons restaurant and his recently hired assistant is rapidly learning about the uncompromising aesthetic of his new boss. Though Rothko feels the threatening presence of a new generation of artists, he tells his assistant, “There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend . . . One day the black will swallow the red.” Red captures the dynamic relationship of an artist and his creations.
Mild adult language
Length: TBD
November
Just in time for the 2012 election, David Mamet’s fiendishly funny comedy set in the Oval office days before a major election. A behind the scenes spoof of politics and power, the state of America today and the lengths people will go to win.
Profanity
Length: TBD
Waiting for Godot
Beckett’s absurdist tragicomedy follows two days in the life of a pair of characters whose apparent purpose in life is to wait by the side of the road for someone named Godot to arrive. This simple act, at once seemingly futile and hopeful, asks basic questions of human existence; why we are here and what is our ultimate destiny?
Mature themes, existential questions
Length: TBD
War Horse
War Horse travels from the verdant English countryside to the fields of France and Germany at the outbreak of World War I. A boy's beloved horse has been sold to the cavalry and shipped to France. Caught up in enemy fire, the horse serves on both sides of the war, and survives an odyssey that leaves him alone in no-man's land. The boy, now a young man, cannot forget his horse, and embarks on a treacherous mission to find him and bring him home. War Horse is a magnificent drama, filled with stirring music and beautiful songs. But it is more than just a compelling tale. This is a show of indescribable grandeur and sheer inventiveness -- There are breathing, galloping, charging horses on the stage - their flanks, hides and sinews built of steel, leather and aircraft cables. They are life-size puppets strong enough for men to ride.
Emotional depiction of war through an animal’s perspective, mortality
Length: Approximately 2 hours 50 minutes
Ages 16+
American Idiot
Called "the first great musical of the 21st century" by The Toronto Star, American Idiot tells the story of three lifelong friends, forced to choose between their dreams and the safety of suburbia. Their quest for meaning in a post 9-11 world leads them on an exhilarating journey. An adaptation of punk rock band Green Day's concept album of the same name, the story, expanded from the concept album, centers on Johnny, a disaffected youth who flees stifling suburbia and his parents' restrictions to look for meaning in his life, and to try out the freedom and excitement of the city. One of his friends stays home to work out his relationship with his pregnant girlfriend. Another friend serves in Iraq. Johnny finds a part of himself that he grows to dislike, has a relationship and experiences lost love.
Teen pregnancy, war, language, drug use
Length: Approximately 90 minutes
American Night: The Ballad of Juan José
Fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad. Mexican immigrants wading across the Rio Grande. Radical labor organizers and hard-line Arizona sheriffs. Lewis and Clark and Jackie Robinson, Sacajawea and Joan Baez, Fidel Castro and Malcolm X. Richard Montoya and Culture Clash present their newest work satirizing and performing commentary on race, social justices, and American history. The play’s central character, a Mexican immigrant, Juan José lapses into a fever dream while cramming late into the night for his U.S. citizenship exam. Once asleep, he finds himself transported through history into some of the chapters left out of the history books. Richard Montoya and Culture Clash create a boisterous, surreal, post-modern, post-racial journey into American history - and by extension the heart of one man’s American Dream.
Social commentary, adult language, racial irony
Length: Approximately 90 minutes
The Convert
This world premier production of Danai Gurira’s The Convert is a co-production with the McCarter Theatre Center and the Goodman Theatre. The play portrays salvation coming at an unholy price when colonialism threatens a Southern African boomtown in 1895. A young girl is put into strange new circumstances that pit ancient African traditions against Western culture and Christianity. When conflict erupts, she must follow her heart and make the ultimate sacrifice.
Violence, adult language, war, rape, nudity
Length: TBD
Other Desert Cities
A family drama set in Palm Springs. The family reunion is thrown into turmoil by the daughter’s plan to publish her memoir focusing on an explosive chapter in the family’s history.
Alcoholism, suicide and mental heath
Length: TBD
Not Recommended Under 18
No shows at this time.
Photo Credit
Flower Drum Song workshop. Photo by Alan Weissman Photography
