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.
Performances at the Mark Taper Forum
The Subject Was Roses
“The Subject Was Roses” replaces the previously announced “Speed-the-Plow” by David Mamet as the first production in the Taper’s 2010 season at the Los Angeles Music Center.
Martin Sheen returns to the play that earned him a Tony Award nomination in 1964; now as the patriarch of a family forced to confront its own privatized emotions and buried truths. Frances Conroy (Six Feet Under) and Brian Geraghty (The Hurt Locker) complete the family triangle struggling to reconnect after years of emotional distance and rediscover the beauty in the simple gift of roses.
Bengal Tiger...Baghdad Zoo
Audience and critical buzz brought national attention to this explosive world premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre last spring.
Now enhanced for the Taper stage, this remarkable play throws two homesick soldiers, a tormented Iraqi and a brooding tiger together into a revelatory situation that is both hysterical and macabre, soul-wrenching and lyrical.
The Lieutenant of Inishmore
He’s clever, devilishly rakish and, when he’s not torturing his enemies, the Lieutenant is a lover of cats. It’s this sliver of humanity — juxtaposed against the cold, cruel circumstances of political terrorism — that drives this play to its wicked depths.
Critics raved and gasped over this 2006 Tony Award® Best Play nominee. You can decide for yourself when the original Broadway director stages this daring and disturbingly intoxicating dark comedy.
Only available as part of a 2010 Mark Taper Forum Season Ticket Package
The Glass Menagerie
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 features in director Gordon Edelstein’s sparkling new production that makes this Menagerie as fresh and vital and sadly magical as its original 1944 debut.
Only available as part of a 2010 Mark Taper Forum Season Ticket Package
Randy Newman's Harps & Angels
We’re in the final stages of planning and locking down the details for this new musical that boasts a multi-Tony Award®-winning director and songs plucked from the catalog of one of the truly great living American singer-songwriters.
It’ll be the perfect Taper musical: intimate and compelling, with an irresistible score that draws you into the story, ingrains itself into your soul and sends you out of the theatre singing.
Only available as part of a 2010 Mark Taper Forum Season Ticket Package
