2015 | Center Theatre Group

Ahmanson Theatre audiences are getting a very special treat for the entire run of The Bridges of Madison County (through January 17, 2016): composer Jason Robert Brown, who won two Tony Awards® for the show (Best Original Score and Best Orchestrations), is conducting the orchestra. A former Angeleno, Brown is a big fan of the Ahmanson and is excit...

Composer Jason Robert Brown Switches Hats to Conduct at the Ahmanson

Before The Bridges of Madison County became a Tony Award ®-winning musical, it was one of the highest grossing movies of 1995, garnering an Academy Award nomination for Meryl Streep and showcasing director and co-star Clint Eastwood’s astonishing range. A few years before that, it was a literary phenomenon: a few months after its April 1992 publ...

Musicals that Leaped from Page to Screen to Stage

Why is a massive cross dominating the stage of the Mark Taper Forum, and why is a choir belting out hymns? These are two ways The Christians, which plays the Taper through January 10, 2016, is immersing audiences in an evangelical church where they play the congregation. At the pulpit, a pastor questions a core tenet of Christianity, organized reli...

In 'The Christians' L.A. is The Choir

Straight White Men playwright and director Young Jean Lee talks with Center Theatre Group Associate Artistic Director Diane Rodriguez and UCLA Center for the Art of Performance Executive and Artistic Director Kristy Edmunds about how their theatres came to co-present her show at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. “You guys were sort of lying in wait [to g...

Young Jean Lee on Bringing 'Straight White Men' to L.A.

With Straight White Men playing the Kirk Douglas Theatre through December 20, 2015, Center Theatre Group took to the streets of Culver City to find out what ideas and images the show’s title brings to mind, and how Angelenos define privilege. We also asked playwright Young Jean Lee to explain why she chose this provocative identifier for her play...

When I Say 'Straight White Men,' L.A. Says...

Before theater veteran Bartlett Sher directed The Bridges of Madison County on Broadway in 2014, and before its 1995 run as a movie starring Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep, the love story was a slim book penned in two weeks by an unlikely first-time Iowa novelist, college business professor Robert James Waller....

'The Bridges of Madison County' Gets the Broadway Treatment

When I was younger, I was supposed to be a preacher, but I decided it would be too much responsibility. I didn’t want to worry about other people’s souls. I switched to pre-med, but I didn’t want to worry about other people’s bodies. And so, I switched to playwriting.

"The Christians' Playwright Lucas Hnath on Revealing the Invisible

When audiences step into the Mark Taper Forum to see playwright Lucas Hnath’s The Christians, they may do a double take. The stage is being transformed into a megachurch’s pulpit (with a full choir) for the play, which opens with a sermon from a pastor that will divide his congregation....

Lucas Hnath Wants to Talk About Faith—But Not His Own

Playwright. Director. Singer. Filmmaker. Korean-American. Feminist. Experimental. Adventurous. Provocative. Young Jean Lee and her boundary-pushing, genre-bending, radically inclusive work is impossible to place in any one box. So who is the playwright and director behind Straight White Men, which plays the Kirk Douglas Theatre November 20 through...

Who is Young Jean Lee?

What does it mean to be successful—as a man, a father, or a son? Male playwrights have grappled with this question for over 2,000 years, ever since Sophocles dramatized Oedipus’ murder of his father, King Laius in Oedipus Rex. Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men, which plays the Kirk Douglas Theatre November 20 to December 20, 2015, carves ou...

'Straight White Men' Takes Aims at Father-Son Drama

Musical heavyweights Courtney Love and Todd Almond lead the cast of Kansas City Choir Boy, which plays at the Kirk Douglas Theatre through November 8, 2015, but this contemporary music-theatre work is very much an ensemble piece. Director Kevin Newbury gave us a glimpse into the extremely collaborative process of bringing Todd Almond’s music and...

The Ensemble Behind 'Kansas City Choir Boy'