Since it opened in 1967 the Mark Taper Forum has been honored for its development of new plays and voices for the theatre and for its continuing commitment to serve the broadest possible audience. It has received virtually every theatrical award including the 1977 special Tony Award for theatrical excellence.
With Michael Ritchie as its Artistic Director and Gordon Davidson its Founding Artistic Director, the 739-seat Mark Taper Forum is one of the top resident theatres in the country.. The theatre has guided and developed an impressive number of Tony Award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-winning plays, including Children of a Lesser God, The Shadow Box, The Kentucky Cycle and Angels in America. The Taper was distinguished by having two of its plays The Kentucky Cycle and Angels in America (Part One - Millennium Approaches) receive in consecutive years the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, the first time for plays produced outside of New York.
Recent Taper productions include August Wilson’s King Hedley II, Gem of the Ocean and Radio Golf, the revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song with a new book by David Henry Hwang, David Mamet’s Romance, a revival of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard with Annette Bening, David Hare’s Stuff Happens and Culture Clash’s Chavez Ravine and Water & Power. The Taper has a five to six play season which runs from January through December.
U.S. Army Captain Catherine Siler journeys to the New Mexico reservation home of Private First Class Raymond Birdsong on a search for answers. The questionable circumstances surrounding Ray’s death in Afghanistan create a crisis of conscience for the captain giving her no choice but to re-examine her own life along the way.
Hollywood gets a scathing tongue-lashing as two ruthless producers debate Art vs. Commerce in what the playwright calls a Workplace Drama, where “the choice is never between good and evil…but between two evils.”
