2016 | Center Theatre Group

The uptight etiquette of ballroom dancing ruled American dance floors at the beginning of the 20th century. This came to an end in the decade during which Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom takes place: the Roaring Twenties and the Prohibition Era. F. Scott Fitzgerald famously documented the social freedom of these years in The Great Gatsby: “The parties...

Let’s Do the Black Bottom

In Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge, two young men, Marco and Rodolpho, attempt to make their mark in the land of the free. Originally from Sicily, Italy, these two dreamers trade orange groves and piazzas to spend nights sleeping on the floor of a cousin’s house and days working on the docks. What drove them to leave their homeland for a...

A 1950s Immigration Story in 21st-Century Los Angeles

“For me every story starts with the script—the words. And Mr. August Wilson was very specific. It’s 1927, Chicago. So that’s your inspiration,” said Tony Award®-nominated costume designer Emilio Sosa on how he got started working on Center Theatre Group’s production of Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (onstage at the Mark Taper Fo...

Emilio Sosa Puts his own Spin on the 1920s

Center Theatre Group mourns the loss of our Founding Artistic Director Gordon Davidson, who passed away on October 2, 2016. Davidson led the company for 38 years, transforming Los Angeles into a center of the regional theatre movement and changing the American artistic and cultural landscape in the process.

Center Theatre Group Mourns Founding Artistic Director Gordon Davidson

June 26, 1996—20 years ago this year—August Wilson ascended the stage at the national conference of Theatre Communications Group, the national service organization for professional theatres, to deliver the keynote lecture. Wilson had long been one of the nation’s most eminent playwrights, and the audience of theatre community members from acr...

The Ground on Which I Stand

In politics, it’s cliché to say that “image is everything,” but in Jon Robin Baitz’s newest play—which is set to have its World premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre October 23 – November 20, 2016—image is the only thing. At the center of Vicuña is a real estate tycoon and reality TV star turned presidential candidate and his tailor,...

A World Premiere Ripped from the Headlines