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.
One of the greatest American plays finds new light in this critically-lauded re-imagining of the classic story of a fragile family hanging its hopes on the arrival of a “gentleman caller.”
Two-time Tony Award®-winner Judith Ivey is featured in director Gordon Edelstein’s sparkling new production.
"Fiercely moving and seriously funny... Judith Ivey gives what is surely the performance of her career."
Four-time Tony winner Jerry Zaks is coming to Los Angeles where he will collaborate with Oscar-winning composer Randy Newman on a new musical production.
The music and lyrics of one of America’s most beloved songwriters, will be featured in the world premiere of Randy Newman’s Harps and Angels, which has music and lyrics by Randy Newman, and is conceived by Jack Viertel. Randy Newman’s witty, complex, bittersweet and often satirical songbook is at the heart of this new work, in which the personal and the socio-political entwine creating a compelling, honest and humorous commentary on what it is like to be born, grow up, fall in love, and live and die in America.
