Center Theatre Group News & Blogs

"The Christians' Playwright Lucas Hnath on Revealing the Invisible

Lucas Hnath — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 13:29:00 -0800

The expectation that I become a preacher did not come out of nowhere. I grew up in churches. My mother went to seminary when I was in middle school. During the summer months I’d sit next to her during her classes. I learned some Greek, some Hebrew. I read books on hermeneutics. Some of it I understood. Some of it I pretended to understand.

In seminary you learn a lot about translation. You learn about how there can be more than one way to translate a word. And you come to realize just how many words the Bible has that could be translated this way or that way. The act of interpreting the Bible carries with it a lot of responsibility. A friend from high school who ended up becoming a pastor recently said to me that pastors have to be very careful not to remake the gospel in their own image.

For a few years, I taught expository writing at NYU. I’d have students read challenging texts by folks like Barthes, Berger, and Sontag. I’d ask them to simply read and understand what these writers were saying.

Often the students would project themselves into the meaning of the essays we were studying. The students were eager to find ways to make the texts “relatable,” and in doing so, they would bend the words of the author to say something the author wasn’t actually saying.

That troubling word: “relatable.” It implies that because I think something is like “me” it is therefore generally understandable and also especially good. But what about the things that are nothing like “me”? Our imaginations seem to be so limited by our personal experiences, you have to wonder if it’s even possible to understand something that sits outside of them. That expository writing class became, in large part, about the task of encouraging students to be okay with not understanding. In the rush to understand, we get in the way of our ability to see something as it is. I can feel that rush to understand when people ask me, with respect to The Christians, which plays the Mark Taper Forum from December 2, 2015 through January 10, 2016, what I personally believe. I refuse to answer the question. I’m not necessarily cagey about my beliefs (although I do think that the attempt to put those beliefs into words will always result in a misrepresentation of said beliefs; I am very mistrustful of words), but I suspect that answering the question will somehow diminish the effect of the play.

That lack of obvious resolution can be uncomfortable, agitating.

I can also feel it when I’m asked if the play is based on this preacher or that preacher. (Invariably, the answer is no. It’s based on many preachers and many people who are not preachers, all thrown into a blender.) In these questions, I detect the desire to explain away something. I detect the desire to locate a single, visible “point.” And while the plot of The Christians is far from ambiguous, the play is a series of contradictory arguments. No single argument “wins.”

That lack of obvious resolution can be uncomfortable, agitating. But we can also take pleasure in the agitation. And maybe something more complex and true becomes visible within the agitation, amidst the collision of disparate perspectives. I think back to my very brief pre-med days. I think back to a physics class I took and to a picture from the course textbook. I think of this picture often. The picture is of a very tiny particle. The only way you can see the particle is by colliding it with many other particles, from many different angles, and so you just get the outline of the particle but not the particle itself. (I tried to find this picture on the Internet to include with this essay. I could not find it. I remember this being a thing, but maybe I made it up.)

Here’s something I believe: A church is a place where people go to see something that is very difficult to see. A place where the invisible is—at least for a moment—made visible. The theatre can be that too.

Crashing Into a Career in Theatre

Lily Larsen — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 14:27:00 -0800

Getting into the three-day Theatre Crash Course, which is free and open to teens all over the city, is based on your own initiative, not on competition. The fact that no prior experience is needed is really great for some teens who haven’t found their niche yet. Beforehand, everyone signed up for the discipline of their choice: lighting and scenic design, costume design, acting, or directing. I chose costume design, which sounded super interesting and was totally new to me.

Being welcomed into Center Theatre Group’s creative family may be one of the most enjoyable and exciting experiences I’ve had as a young theatre artist. From the moment my fellow Theatre Crash Course participants and I stepped into CTG’s Downtown L.A. headquarters, we were put at ease by a warm and open vibe, nice music, and a CTG swag bag! Did I mention that they fed us? I arrived on two buses straight from a long day at the L.A. County High School for the Arts and was starving before every session, so the fact that they anticipated teenage hunger made me feel “got.”

After theatre games (which break all social barriers in seconds), we dove into deconstructing the play: exploring and unpacking the tone, themes, and overall world of Father Comes Home From The Wars Parts 1, 2 & 3) by Suzan-Lori Parks, an upcoming production at the Mark Taper Forum. This epic drama follows the fortunes of a slave, Hero, who heads off to fight in the Civil War—on the Confederate side! That alone was enough to pique my interest. The questions the play posed about slavery and freedom provoked discussion and debate in our group: a necessary practice—and a playwright’s job. The play’s world taught us so much about the era as we connected to it in an emotional way—which is very different from when we studied this period in school.

Then we got into action. Our teaching artist shared what it's like to be a professional costume designer, which made me put it on my list as a possible vocation (there are a lot of actors, not so many costume designers). CTG supplied us with crafts and materials—everything from big sparkly gems to rough burlap—to start designing outfits for maquette dolls, as well as magazines so we could cut out or draw our ideas for what we think would fit each character best. We searched for ideas online and tried to figure out what people wore in the 1800s in the South, which meant comparing fabrics for house-working slaves to field-working slaves and looking up what breeds of dogs accompanied soldiers in the Civil War. (There’s a dog in the production, played by a human.)

The second workshop challenged us, but we rose to it! We cut all the fabrics to create the costumes we wanted, and sewed or hot glued them together. We also peeked in on the other groups: the lighting and scenic designers were creating dioramas of the set and experimenting with different gels (which change the color of the lights), while the actors were rehearsing the scenes that the student directors had chosen. It was super exciting to learn about all the different opportunities in the theatre world.

I also learned that being in an ensemble involves a lot of cooperation. I hadn’t known that in order for a production to go on smoothly, each department needs approval from the director or actors. For example, if you're making a costume, you have to make sure that the set designer’s work is compatible with that costume and won't be too fussy on stage.

Our third and final workshop was a presentation for the public (aka family, friends, and some observing teachers). We shared our vision of the play and demonstrated our work in front of a live audience.

Viewing all the ideas our fellow groups had come up with was inspiring and impressive. We covered a six-week professional production process in just six hours total!

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

Center Theatre Group — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 00:46:00 -0800

A New York Times profile published this fall explained that Hnath wrote The Christians in part based on personal experience:

Lucas Hnath grew up in an evangelical church. His mother became a minister, and he thought he might do the same. Instead, he became a playwright, and now he’s written a knowing script about congregational tremors set off by a doctrinal dispute inside a megachurch.

But what does the author of The Christians believe himself? That, he’s not going to tell you.

Hnath was more forthcoming about why—beyond his own history—he decided to write a play on the subject:

“I was having a very difficult time thinking of other contemporary plays that took on the subject of religion, and specifically Christianity, that did so without satirizing it or prompting us to roll our eyes at ‘those Christians,’ and it seemed to me that there was a lack of effort to try to understand what’s at stake in those beliefs,” he said.

Mr. Hnath began to experiment: He invited a group of nonreligious actors to watch tapes of preachers, including Kathryn Kuhlman, Joel Hunter and Steve Brown, and to jot down words that made them cringe. And then he set about writing a sermon that included none of those words, “just to find a way to talk about Christianity in a way that sidestepped certain preconceptions that made people want to quickly dismiss it.”

To find out if Hnath succeeded, see The Christians at the Taper from December 2, 2015 through January 10, 2016. Read the full New York Times profile to learn more about Hnath and the play.

A Conversation with Pulitzer Prize-Winning Writer Marsha Norman

Marcos Nájera — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 14:36:00 -0800

Marcos Nájera
Thank you for taking the time to talk with us, Marsha. We want to give people a chance to learn a little about this story and you—a member of the creative team—before they experience The Bridges of Madison County.

Marsha Norman

Sounds good. This isn’t simply the story of Francesca and [photographer] Robert [Kincaid]. This is the big difference [between our musical] and the book and the movie. This is the story of the town. This is the story of the family. And the story of this couple in the course of a family, in the course of a town. It’s more like Our Town than the original material is. We really zoomed back so we can see the family life and the town life, and we can learn Francesca’s history in Italy.

We zoomed back and we panned around. I invented the neighbors. We invented the town. We invented the people who would really care about Francesca and who would be aware, in this small town, that she was going through something.

That is wonderful. You mentioned Our Town by Thornton Wilder. How did Our Town inspire your take on The Bridges of Madison County?

I love Our Town. I don’t even know how many times I’ve seen it. I think it’s one of the great, inspiring pieces of American literature. It’s clear in the cemetery scene of Our Town how much they’ve all taken care of and watched out for each other.

Somebody shows up at the door and she realizes she does feel like an outsider.

I also know that in a small town—as Our Town makes clear—a small town, like where Francesca and Robert are, everybody knows what’s going on. So everybody knows that [Francesca’s] kids and [husband] Bud are headed off for the state fair. And everybody knows that Francesca is there by herself. And everybody knows that there is a photographer, in town taking pictures. And everybody knows that she took him over to the bridge. Everybody knows everything. What I really wanted to do was to make it clear that Francesca makes her decision in the context of her family and her town and her history.

Jason [Robert Brown, the composer] and I were eager to hop from Iowa all the way back to Italy—to show what the end of the war was really like in Naples and what she experienced as a girl. And why she is here [in the United States] and what kind of things she’s never really come to terms with as a human being. Because she’s spent her time adjusting so quickly.

She came here, she was newly married, she didn’t speak much English. She learned English, she learned to farm, and she learned to be a wife, to be a mom, and presto! Somebody shows up at the door and she realizes she does feel like an outsider. And now, she does need to think about how she has spent her life and she does need to feel alive again as she did as a girl. What Robert does is cause her to take a deep breath in and look around—to connect with herself and to connect to him, but mainly herself.

It’s this moment that people have when they think, what about that other path? What about that love that I had to turn away from? What about that? What would have happened if I married that guy who went to the University of New Mexico?

What would have happened?

We can’t help but wonder those things, right? The people that I see crying the hardest in the audience are the people that have obviously left great loves behind. That’s something a lot of people respond to—including a lot people on the creative team. Everybody, I think! (Laughing) So yes, we have these questions. We all deal with this thing. We can’t have absolutely everything that we want to have in life. Because some of these things conflict.

Robert’s description of [what his and Francesca’s] life would be is so seductive and wondrous. Whether she would actually be happy with him or not, it doesn’t even matter. She makes the decision to honor her responsibilities, and she knows that if she leaves, her son is going to be in trouble. [Her daughter] Carolyn is going to be fine. But [her son] Michael? She still needs to stay to take care of Michael. To make sure Michael does OK. That’s why we see Michael’s graduation from medical school. She did have that effect. Michael was ready to bolt out of there and get in trouble with the law and his dad or whatever—and she saw that. She knew that he wasn’t going to be a farmer. She knows she has to stay. We sometimes have to make those really hard choices between the things that we care about.

I wonder about the danger of the town watching all this happen. It seems like the stakes rise so much higher if everybody can see that she is talking to this stranger while Bud and the kids are away. Isn’t Francesca scared?

That’s the kind of thing, the comfort that women can provide to each other.

She is scared. The fact that we don’t do any of that—[Francesca] having a dangerous conversation with [the neighbor] Marge or Marge almost finding out [about the affair]—that seemed a little cheap to us in terms of the excess drama.

But yes, it’s on her mind. Especially when she goes into town to buy a dress. Certainly, she knows that Marge knows. And there’s a whole conversation—unwritten and unspoken—that goes on between Marge and Francesca about what’s going on. That’s why Marge arrives at exactly at the right moment with the lasagna. Marge knows exactly what’s happened.

It’s almost as if Francesca’s all-knowing neighbor, Marge, is cheering her on!

She is. She certainly is not judging. The friendship with Marge is deep and powerful. For me, the most wondrous moment in the whole show is right there at the end when [Marge] leaves from Bud’s funeral and says, “See you tomorrow!” It’s like, “Things continue here, and I’m going to see you tomorrow [Francesca]. You feel such a loss right now. You’ve lost both of these men now and here you sit. And I will see you in the morning.” (Laughing)

That’s the kind of thing, the comfort that women can provide to each other. I was very interested in writing that in the piece. It is Francesca’s story. But it is [also] a story of what women can do for each other. That’s why I mentioned Our Town. Two generations ago, Thornton Wilder wrote about Grover’s Corner. Now, Jason and I are writing about Winterset, Iowa. It’s a continuing interest and dream that we all have of belonging to a place and belonging to a group of people and belonging in the family.

To me, one of the awful parts of the virtual world is that, OK, we have a virtual family. But is that really OK? Is that good? Is that enough? Or do you want to know enough people so that if you make a pie, like that one I made last night that’s that good, you can call other houses and get the whole pie eaten? This pie last night was so remarkable that I thought, “I do not need to let it sit around here in the house where just my daughter and I are. I need to call three people to have some!”

The pie should be enjoyed! Life should be enjoyed right? It makes me think about the scene in the movie version of The Bridges of Madison County where Meryl Streep is in the truck. And the camera focuses in as the muscles in her right hand tighten as she grips the handle and she’s about to open the door and go off to Robert. Do you think we live in a world now that is progressive enough for her husband Bud to just let her go?

The piece brings up all this “what would happen,” that’s fun to suppose about. But for Francesca, she’s got to make that decision in that moment. The truck moment [from the film] is so crucial that we worked really hard to find something that would give us a sense of the truck moment. That’s what we call “The Rewind.”

In that moment that she chooses her family—it’s Robert’s world that falls apart.

That’s where she appears to go to Robert. Suddenly, she turns around and stops and sees her family and knows what they would feel if she did that. And she walks back to them. And then time picks up again and she goes on into the Soda Shop.

In that moment that she chooses her family—it’s Robert’s world that falls apart. That’s our theatrical way to investigate the “what-would-happen-if-I-did-this?” What I was able to do was give voice, give character, give personality, give wishes to every single person in this family.

I think [Francesca] does the right thing. I totally think she does the right thing. But man, do I understand the struggle. That sense of being alive put up against the sense of being connected in a family or being responsible. This passion of feeling alive is pretty powerful, but the sense of being useful and being loved beats it every time.

The book really tells the story from Robert’s point of view. Why did you decide to focus on Francesca’s point of view for this musical?

The Francescas of the world are the 70% of the people buying the tickets to the theatre. So women should have a story where they’re the lead. I have a picture on my wall of Kelli O’Hara [who played Francesca on Broadway] standing there with no make-up, and she’s holding a piece of paper that says, “I need stories by women on stage because my daughter will hear the echo of their voices.” It’s an extraordinary picture.

I’m the president of the Lily Awards, which is an organization that celebrates and honors the contributions of women in the theatre and works for gender parity. Kelli received an award from us the year before last. I mean, she’s certainly played all the glorious [female leads on Broadway], but for [The Bridges of Madison County] to be the first time she has ever said words on stage that were written by a woman? I was hearing this for the first time as she was saying this on the stage [at the Lily Awards]. And it was a staggering experience for me, and I think for the audience. I suddenly felt the significance of my staying alive in order to write. And my activism and the importance of this mission of gender parity, so the voices of women can be heard and the stories of women can be told.

In regard to gender parity, if life worked the way the theater does, 4 out of every 5 things you heard would be said by men. In working for gender parity we are working to hear all the voices of the human chorus on the stage. All the voices. All the stories. In not hearing the voices of women, it’s almost as if theatres have chosen to only tell stories about things that happen in the daytime. It’s eliminating half of the experience of life on the stage. We need to hear all the voices in the human chorus.

So yes, if an all-male team had written this—I’m sure it would have been the Robert story. I’m totally sure. And what is the Robert story? I came into town, I met this woman. We had a thing, I had a couple of thoughts of whether or not to haul her off in the truck with me and then I left. Got back to New York and saw the Hare Krishnas. So there’s not a musical in the Robert story. There’s only a musical in the Francesca story.

People come to musicals to watch that glorious search for home...

As in Oklahoma, so it is in Iowa. The loners have to go on their way. It’s true with musicals in general. I teach musical book-writing [at Juilliard]. This is one of the big rules. The loners go on their way. But people come to musicals to watch that glorious search for home in song. It’s like The Wizard of Oz, where does Dorothy end up? It’s the Francesca story, it’s the Tevye story, it is every musical there is. [Playwright Jerome] “Jerry” Lawrence told me this: “All musicals are about the conflict between two worlds.” It’s Guys & Dolls, it’s West Side Story, it’s Oliver… you can go on down the list, The King & I. Two worlds. In this case, it’s the life of passion versus the life of family and community.

If you think about us as a country—there are things that we’ve lost. And yes, we mourn them. We had to give them up in order to go forward toward the other things we believe. This making of choices is something that people respond to, and in this case they get to really watch a big one, a big choice and it’s kind of the most elemental one. It’s a story about choice.

A Bridge to Boyle Heights

Lynell George — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 19:06:00 -0800

Center Theatre Group has set out to try to narrow that distance. Since 2013, CTG’s prop and costume facilities in Boyle Heights has also served as headquarters for The Shop, a hub for community programming that offers residents opportunities to make theatre a part of everyday life through free workshops, events, and readings. The Shop also works to steadily enhance relationships and build creative partnerships between CTG, Boyle Heights organizations, and artists—particularly those for whom collaborating with the community is an essential part of the creative process.

Over two years ago, CTG began an experiment in building interest in theatre in local communities by inviting people to participate as artists. Boyle Heights was the natural place to start. And legendary Chicano theatre company El Teatro Campesino (ETC) was a natural artistic partner.

It’s an honor to be here and work with CTG and Boyle Heights. To hopefully be the bridge that helps people move across the bridge. In both directions.

According to CTG Associate Artistic Director Diane Rodriguez, who herself was a member of ETC for 11 years, hosting ETC was a way to make art but also for CTG “to work with a company who is not just superficially doing the work in their community—but deeply doing the work for decades—and using [their] curriculum for interacting with a community.”

Working together with Boyle Heights residents and ETC to produce Popol Vuh: Heart of Heaven would be both a way to expand CTG’s reach and look to the future, while being rooted in place and history. But just as importantly, this vibrant, multimodal (and multigenerational) live performance would serve as a celebration of the art of collaboration and a more expansive and inclusive notion of family.

ETC has been part of the CTG family since 1978, when Founding Artistic Director Luis Valdez’s groundbreaking production Zoot Suit premiered at the Mark Taper Forum. “I remember playing around—and in—the pools of water around the Taper as a young child,” recalled Luis’ son Kinan Valdez, the company’s current artistic producing director, who returned to Los Angeles to direct Popol Vuh. Valdez recalled how his father founded the company on the picket lines of Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers, staging its first performances on flatbed trucks or in local union halls to illustrate the farm workers’ struggles and cause. “It pioneered a use of theatre to reflect community activism, or community building, as we’ve come to define it in contemporary terms,” said Kinan Valdez. “This was an opportunity for everyone to join in and use the arts as a means of telling the world what was happening here.”

Opening up the definition of what it meant to be a participant was as radical and game-changing as the very work itself, and has been a cornerstone of ETC’s art for the past 50 years. It is also at the heart of Popol Vuh, which is performed by a mix of company members and community members—including whole families—many of whom have no prior theatre experience.

Popol Vuh, which is based on the Mayan book of creation, translates as the “Book of Counsel” or “Book of People,” and was part of the mythology ETC immersed Valdez in as a very young child. “We played games based on it,” he recalled, “and part of the work of ETC would use the puppetry and the mythology in order to teach children the ancient civilization’s philosophy.” He added, “What I wanted to do with this particular piece, as a director, was tap into the creative spirit of the community itself, and to also tap into the scope and magnitude of some of the images that we have as children.”

To achieve that larger-than-life effect, Valdez dreamed big. “What better way to approach the scale and scope of this mythology than by doing some sort of pageant which included large-scale puppets?” he said. The production’s puppets, which are operated by three people each, are 10-15 feet tall, vividly appointed papier-mâché creations that when set in motion appear to float above the terra— the stuff of dreams.

The first performance of Popol Vuh was staged in ETC’s hometown of San Juan Bautista, then refined and tinkered with before being brought to CTG and Southern California— and given a local twist. Valdez wanted the L.A. production to “come from some of the desires and dreams of the people of the Boyle Heights community, making them coauthors as well. The work reflects the people we’re working with,” Valdez said, “but it is also about cultivating that basic sense of humanity through respect for one another.”

Over the course of six months, CTG and ETC, with assistance from other local organizations, recruited participants and held workshops in puppet and mask making, acting, and music. Tiana Alvarez, a dancer and former Boyle Heights resident, worked as one of the community liaisons for the project and canvassed the neighborhood, meeting at community centers and schools or with neighborhood associations to bring people into the fold. During that time, she saw children and their parents unlock hidden talents, discovering “that they had these gifts they had never had before,” said Alvarez. “One woman came with her daughter, who was 23. It was the first time the mom had been able to be creative, as an immigrant who had spent so much of her life working—and this gave them a gift. A gift of time together.”

The final performances of Popol Vuh on October 10 and 11 were also in their way a gift to L.A. audiences: held in Grand Park and free of charge, they drew large and enthusiastic crowds of all ages from across the basin to the city’s core—some of whom were simply enjoying a weekend afternoon in the fountains or on the lawn, and stumbled onto the shows.

Ultimately, the bridge that’s being built isn’t simply connecting Downtown Los Angeles to Boyle Heights. It’s connecting people, stories, traditions, and processes across cultures and epochs. CTG’s Diane Rodriguez valued that most of all about the experience. “To be able to bring a new generation of members into the fold has been very, very cool,” Rodriguez said. “You hear organizations say they are a family. No. Not quite like this.”

For Valdez it is about both family and community: “It’s an honor to be here and work with CTG and Boyle Heights. To hopefully be the bridge that helps people move across the bridge. In both directions.”

Who is Young Jean Lee?

Center Theatre Group — Fri, 13 Nov 2015 15:30:00 -0800

In a 2009 consideration of Lee’s work, The New Yorker theatre critic Hilton Als wrote:

Lee is a facetious provocateur; that is, she does whatever she can to get under our skin—with laughs and with raw, brutal talk that at times feels gratuitous, and is meant to.
Beneath the surface, Lee seems to say in her work, most people are cauldrons of awfulness. Political correctness is a front—and, by now, a tattered one. Any talk of race in our post-Raisin in the Sun world seems like a tired joke.

In an interview that same year with The New York Times, Patrick Healy described how Lee came to be a playwright:

Ms. Lee, who speaks quickly and seemingly with exclamation points to punctuate her strongly held beliefs, is something of an accidental playwright. She grew up in eastern Washington State and planned to pursue an academic career. But she dropped out of her Ph.D. program in English at the University of California, Berkeley, in her late 20s as her dissertation on King Lear was stalling and her marriage was crumbling.
“I was having a nervous breakdown because I was so unhappy, and I went to a therapist who asked me very directly, ‘What do you want to do with your life?’ ” Ms. Lee recalled. “And I said, ‘I want to be a playwright.’ It literally came out of nowhere. I’d never written a play. It was like saying I wanted to be an astronaut.”

In 2010, after Lee formed a band called Future Wife in which she sang lead, she talked to Gwen Orel in The Wall Street Journal about why she writes (though she hates it) and why she sings (though she doesn’t necessarily have a brilliant talent):

The thing I hate about writing is very specific. In the beginning stages of writing everything that you write is bad. It’s excruciating torture for me. I will do anything in my power to avoid starting to write. Then I love writing and can write for 8 hours straight.
I don’t want to be horrible and show everybody a horrible time. I think I’m going to start taking voice lessons, and accept the fact that I’m dealing with somebody who doesn’t have skills in that area.

In a 2012 interview on WNYC’s Studio 360 series on “Aha Moments,” Lee talked about growing up Asian-American in Pullman, Washington—and how reading a Rolling Stone review of the Beastie Boys 1989 album Paul’s Boutique ended up changing her life:

I was incredibly sort of isolated there. I didn't have any friends, and I remember the way I dealt with being so foreign was just trying to assimilate as much as possible. ...It was like the first time in my life that I had ever heard of something that sounded weird that was intriguing. And then I went out and bought the album.

Last year, in an interview about Straight White Men, Lee, whose previous plays have been experimental in both form and subject matter, told American Theatre about learning how to write a naturalistic play for the first time, “which is a really hard thing to do if you’ve never done it before”:

It’s really hard to make anything—and it’s really hard to make good theatre. Period. No matter what kind of theatre it is. I think I’ve been more generous toward experimental theatremakers in the past because I know what they are trying to do—and now I’m realizing naturalistic theatre is really equally difficult, if not more so, because you’re constrained in more ways—there’s less freedom. So working on a naturalistic play is probably going to change me. My brain has been rewired to think in terms of character and plot. I don’t know if I can just get rid of that, you know? I’m sure I’ll be able to write nonlinear things again, but I’ll be writing them with the knowledge of what the linear version would be.

And on All Things Considered, Lee (whom NPR called “arguably one of the hottest playwrights in America right now”) told Neda Ulaby of one of her epiphanies while writing Straight White Men:

I can always say, “Oh, well I’m just pursuing my own ambition, but I’m making the world a better place.” Because now there's this Asian female playwright who can be a role model for other artists of color, and I'm helping with diversity. And so I can just do whatever I want and sort of get on the good-person list. And it occurred to me that, as I was doing the show and listening to people talk about straight white men—straight white men don't really have that option.

Read more about Lee’s process of writing Straight White Men in this interview with Center Theatre Group.

Courtney Love and Todd Almond Rock Out for Donors

Center Theatre Group — Thu, 12 Nov 2015 15:45:00 -0800

Jody Lippman introduced Artistic Director Michael Ritchie by explaining that Kansas City Choir Boy reflects CTG’s signature blend of originality and history, innovation and tradition. Ritchie echoed that sentiment.

Kansas City Choir Boy is “a great new piece people who have been going to the theatre for decades will love,” said Ritchie, “and so will newcomers.”

Todd Almond took the stage and explained the origins of the show, which began in a hotel room in Kansas City. Almond was feeling lonely and sorry for himself when a photograph of a missing girl came on the TV screen; it reminded him of a young actress who had starred in Almond’s version of The Odyssey, and later went missing and was found dead. “I stopped feeling sorry for myself and wrote a show,” said Almond.

As he played the opening notes of “Sixteen,” Almond said that this stripped-down version—with Almond on keyboard, accompanied by a cellist—was different from the techno beats and computer music of the show. After singing a few more lines, Almond introduced Courtney Love, and they proceeded to perform three songs from the show. “I’m in love with Courtney Love,” said Almond—garnering laughter and murmurs of agreement from the audience—before Love closed out her performance with a version of the Hole song “Malibu.”

“I look forward to seeing you all at our show,” said Love.

The performance certainly whetted the appetite of the audience for more of Love and Almond.

“Tonight was about connection,” said CTG donor Mara Carieri. Love and Almond have “completely different careers and come from different places in life, but you believe the connection between them.”

Host Jody Lippman concurred. “They have an incredible chemistry that’s very powerful to watch,” she said. “Their performance was wonderful.”

Almond, who wrote the book for Girlfriend, which played at the Douglas this summer, is looking forward to spending more time with CTG audiences. “I’ve really fallen in love with the Center Theatre Group and Kirk Douglas Theatre audiences,” he said. “Tonight felt like a special opportunity to share the show and some ‘insider’ details with them. It’s a nice way to introduce this show to the community and the theatre.”

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

Center Theatre Group — Tue, 10 Nov 2015 14:53:00 -0800

Although they have been written by a woman of color, when taken at face value, Matt and Ed resemble characters we have seen throughout thousands of years of Western theatre: they are white, straight, and well-off. They’re part of a tradition that stretches back to the Middle Ages in Europe, when father and son stories began to pervade the theatrical landscape. At the time the most popular, and sometimes only legal, form of theatre was the “mystery play”: a dramatized re-enactment of Christian liturgy. Often, this concerned Jesus and his father, God, as he leads his son to a powerful transformation that culminates in Jesus becoming divine.

As Europe emerged from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance, the subjects of plays expanded to secular topics, but the father-son story remained pervasive. Take Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which follows the young prince Hamlet as he carries out the bloody revenge commanded by his father, communicated to him from beyond the grave. Whether encountering the ghost of his father transforms Hamlet for the better is debatable, as is whether the ghost was his father, a demon, or simply psychosis. What is clear is that from this time on, playwrights frequently put father and son relationships on this very same path: an adolescent male follows the guidance and wishes of his father, often facing immense challenges, and through this experience attains maturity and manhood.

But by the mid-20th century, some playwrights began to turn the predictable trajectory on its head. In Arthur Miller’s 1949 play, Death of a Salesman, the eponymous salesman Willy Loman encourages his son, Biff, to pursue business ventures and become “successful.” Ironically, this happens as Willy’s own professional success begins to implode, and Biff ultimately rejects his father’s wishes for his life, instead seeking success on his own terms. Whereas Hamlet carries out the ambitious visions of his father, Biff refuses both the wishes of his father and the very worldview that precipitated them.

The father-son play has not been limited to straight white men. In Wole Soyinka’s 1975 play, Death and the King’s Horseman, which is set in colonial-era Nigeria, a father neglects his duties as a Yoruba spiritual figure, and they end up falling to his Western-educated son. And in August Wilson’s 1983 play Fences, Troy attempts to block his son from playing high school football in pursuit of a college scholarship. Troy, a garbage collector, is still scarred from the extreme discrimination he faced as a black man playing professional baseball, and he fears that his son’s bright future will be dashed in the same way. Both of these sons must forge their own paths—in opposition to their father’s wishes—to become adults.

Conflict-laden father and son relationships have become expected—not just in theatre but also in films, TV shows, novels, and songs ranging from Star Wars and The Godfather to Arrested Development and “Cat’s in the Cradle.” More recently, the expected out-of-touch father and the self-actualizing son who rejects him have become the target of parody and satire. In Not Another Teen Movie, the popular high school jock Jake says to his father “I don’t want your life!” for comedic effect.

But even if we’ve seen straight white men and their fathers duke it out many times before, we haven’t seen them done by Young Jean Lee. In Straight White Men, she explores our assumptions of what it means to reach maturity, become a man, and navigate that father-son relationship. The conflict between son Matt and father Ed does not dominate the play, and unlike previous incarnations of the theme, Matt does not transform into an adult as a result of this conflict. Indeed, it is Matt’s refusal to take on the mantle of manhood and maturity that is culturally expected of him that forms the main conflict in Straight White Men.

Lee, who is neither a father nor a son, has taken an outsider’s view of the typical father-son relationship. While writing the piece she “was trying to inhabit that identity as a woman of color,” as she told American Theatre. Lee asks us to reconsider the relationships between fathers and sons we have seen dramatized so many times before, and perhaps revaluate how we perceive those relationships in our own lives.

Teaching Theatre: Crash Course Style

Emily Alpren — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 14:19:00 -0800

As one of the teaching artists at Center Theatre Group’s recent Theatre Crash Course for Educators, I was part of a team that helped teachers tackle this unique challenge. Using Suzan-Lori Parks’ Father Comes Home From The Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3), which plays at the Mark Taper Forum in spring 2016, we guided participating educators through a condensed, intensive version of the entire process of mounting a professional theatre production.

After a dramaturgical exploration of the play and playwright, we split off into three groups exploring costume design, set and lighting design, and acting and directing. Led by teaching artists, educators discussed how their particular group might approach the show. Directors and actors focused on the major themes of the production and how to illustrate them through staging. Costume designers researched clothing of the era and imagined how characters might dress. Lighting and set designers approached the play through their senses, imagining how the world of the play felt, sounded, looked, tasted, and smelled, and how to evoke that on the stage.

The workshop culminated in a presentation of scenes, set models, and costumed maquettes that would make Suzan-Lori Parks proud. The presentations also inspired a deeper conversation about how theatre educators are expected to know and do it all. For instance, how does a costume designer dress a cast of 40 with a tiny budget? How does a theatre teacher with a background in acting teach students about lighting? What are some good resources for age-appropriate plays? At the end of the day, the teachers walked away having done it all—and feeling like they might just be able to teach it all, too.

Want to give your own students a crash course in theatre? Here are some tips from my fellow teaching artists and me to support you:

Emily Alpren—Acting & Directing

Emily Alpren is a Los Angeles-based actor, writer, and teaching artist you can see performing in L.A., independent films, and commercials, and producing for Upright Citizens Brigade.

Invest in research: Before you read a play, discuss the context of the work. Where and when does the play take place? What is its underlying social and political landscape? When was the play written? Who wrote the play? The more the students can understand the play dramaturgically, the more they can connect to what resonates to them!

Use theatrical imagination: Introduce the idea of thinking theatrically. The best part of reading a play is that you can be the director, the designers, and the actors. As you read the play aloud, have students write down any idea or image that comes to mind. Encourage them to underline passages that are meaningful. Later, talk about what stood out to the students. These images, lines, thoughts, and themes will help them direct, design, or act it later on.

Choose Short Scenes: When putting scenes up, two or three pages is plenty! If you only have a couple hours to stage scenes, choose part of a scene instead. While this may be discouraging to ambitious students, a shorter scene promises more rehearsal time. The cleaner and more specific a scene looks when it goes up, the prouder your students can be of it.

Ann Closs-Farley—Costume Design

Ann Closs-Farley is a costume designer whose recent credits include Hopscotch: The Mobile Opera, Pride and Prejudice, Up Here, Billy Elliot, The Musical, and Broadway’s AnnaPurna. She is also a longtime member of L.A.-based theatre companies the Actors’ Gang and evidEnce Room.

Design as a job: Know what you are working with: fees, budgets, and character breakdowns. “Design Last” was the name of my workshop for a reason. A costume designer—which is a job title—must consider, before anything else: How much time do I have to give? How much is the budget, and do I have the resources and skill to make this job happen? Is this play artistically satisfying or financially rewarding? If none of these apply, then maybe it is not the right show for your involvement. I emphasize to my students the importance of asking these questions before committing to a project—and of course this applies far beyond costume design.

Communication and collaboration: When breaking down a script for costume design, ask your students to write down all the questions they may have for other departments. Let’s say you have a character with a missing leg. The director, choreographer, props and special effects department, and the actor will all need to weigh in on the look and function of this particular design. The most important part of costume design is partnering with every department, especially the actors, until the very end of the show.

Research: Doing the research for your design is crucial. Once you have the facts, it opens your design to interpretations that will fit with the direction and action of the play. The Internet is fast, but going to the library or book store is a great way to discover more actual documentation to explore the characters you are creating—and this could even be a fun field trip.

Get crafty and get prepared: Help your students find ways in the early process of design to do something to inspire them. Use scraps and found objects to dress maquettes like characters from the play to have on their desks for inspiration. Brainstorm words together that describe the characters on Post-Its and place them on the wall to see. Students can also cut out images from magazines that remind them of the setting or tone of the play to get ideas for patterns and color. Another helpful thing to do is to record an interview with the actor and take a picture of him or her at measurement day to keep the person in mind during the process.

Design Dialogue: It is important for each student to find his or her voice in the design and to be able to communicate and execute it effectively with collaborators. Designing may come easily for some, but communicating why the design is right for the play is an art in itself. Not every design will work, and students will have to go back and modify or try again until it fits with the direction or with the actor.

Heather Graff—Scenic and Lighting Design

Heather Graff is a light and scenic designer, actor, and educator who is currently the resident assistant lighting designer at the Mark Taper Forum. She has taught and designed at organizations including the Northwestern University Center for Talent Development, Imagination Theater, Steppenwolf, and Second City.

Create the world of the play: Scenic and lighting design transport the audience into the world of the play. So, after reading the script, brainstorm with your fellow or student designers which elements are necessary in the play’s world and what else they imagine there. Remember, scenery or props don’t have to be realistic; they just have to suggest what you want the audience to see. Instead of a full wall, there could just be half a door or a row of bricks. One or two strong images using scenic or lighting design can take the actors and audience to exactly where they need to go. Regardless of its outrageousness, if an idea supports the script, it is right.

Scale models: Beginning to design scenery and lights for a show can be too daunting, so making a scale model can be empowering as well as informative before you do the “real thing.” Collect items you think would work for the model, or brainstorm with your students and then ask them to go out and collect items they think will work for the model. You can light the model with any source—LED flashlights, regular flashlights, clip lights with colored bulbs, etc.—to see what light will do to the model and which angles are the best. Changing the environment and mood with these simple and strong options can make a big impact.

Resources and materials: Ask your local college and professional theatres or TV/movie studios for leftover supplies; they will usually donate gels and sometimes gobos or old lighting instruments to small organizations or education settings. Usedlighting.com is another good resource for cheap lighting equipment.

Our Fall 2015 Interns Dream Big

Taylor Greenthal — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 13:11:00 -0800

We are dancers, stage managers, data analysts, writers, and more. Most of us are here because of a pre-existing dedication to theatre and an appreciation for non-profits. “I have loved theatre my entire life,” said Katie Lockie, who’s interning with the development team this fall 2015 semester. “I wanted to learn about the different behind-the-scenes aspects that go into running a theatre company.”

Many of us are also pursuing a specific career goal like Kristyn Whitley, in human resources: “My internship at CTG will provide me with the knowledge and skills to be an effective and efficient human resources generalist through providing continuous support to all departments and all levels of management and staff.”

Others are seeking opportunities unavailable on their college campuses, like Jessica Morataya, the Kirk Douglas Theatre’s management intern: “At my university, they only offered one class about [arts management],” she said. “I thought it would be a tremendous opportunity to get a hands-on experience on how to run a theatre on a larger scale.”

But we’re not just here for professional development; it’s personal, too. “I still have much growing to do,” said community partnerships intern Jonathan Garza, who added that CTG’s mission fuels his own “passion to influence through theatre” by working “to educate and spread theatre culture to enrich the lives of those who might have never seen a theatre production, or know of their existence.”

Casting intern Alison Falzetta is using her time at CTG to solidify plans for her future. “I’ve been considering casting as a future career path,” she said. “Being at CTG has only confirmed that casting is something I really enjoy and will continue to consider moving forward.”

Perhaps what is most exciting about this group is the energy we bring to the diverse issues that inspire us. When I asked my fellow interns for their visions for the future of theatre or their respective fields, I was blown away by their enthusiasm and devotion. We want to help make the world a better place.

Adeney Zo, the media and communications intern, is a passionate dancer and teacher. “My dream is to someday travel the world while teaching and learning as many styles of dance as possible,” she said. “I feel that dance, as well as the arts in general, is a universal language that bridges cultural barriers and connects people in such a powerful way.”

Jonathan (in community partnerships), and Kat Chevalier, who is also interning in development, agreed. “Theatre is more than entertaining,” said Jonathan. “It is possible for an individual to come out of a theatre changed, or with a new outlook on life. That’s the power we hold, and that’s how we, together, influence lives and culture.”

Kat added, “Being able to express your emotions in a healthy way and critically think about literature are two amazing things that come from participating in the arts, and function as amazing tools in cultivating self-awareness, emotional stability, and personal growth. I want to be an advocate for incorporating theatre into the American school system and ensuring that every child has the opportunity to be exposed to theatre and performing arts early on in life.”

Many interns are concerned about representation and accessibility in theatre. Literary fellow Rebecca Tessier is particularly dedicated to making change in these areas. “I believe that as an artist and specifically a playwright of color, it is my duty to pair my activism with my art,” she said. “Just by being a female playwright of color, I am opening doors for my fellow brothers and sisters.”

Alison (in casting) wants to see greater diversity everywhere. “I think that diverse works of art come from diversity at the creative level,” she said, “not only writers or directors, but artistic directors, producers, executives, talent agents, casting agents.” Her priority is “bringing unique and diverse creators to the screen or stage.”

As for me, I am dedicated to the integration of theatre and new media. As technology is evolving, so are our desires for entertainment. I think there’s tremendous potential for live performance to become more financially accessible and diverse while maintaining cultural relevance when new technology is embraced.

I am very grateful to be part of this fearless group of problem solvers, and I’m hoping I’ll help contribute to all the incredible things this group will accomplish.