Center Theatre Group News & Blogs

Seven Writers Walk into a Room…

Center Theatre Group — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 23:49:00 -0700

One might expect this workshop to function as a talent farm—a place for Center Theatre Group to reap new plays for productions on our stages—but the truth is that Center Theatre Group lays no claim on the plays developed through the Workshop. In fact, many writers use the Workshop to complete commissions for other theatres around L.A. and the country.

Why? The goal of the Workshop is to "connect with the next great generation of master playwrights," said Center Theatre Group Literary Manager Joy Meads. "We are living in a Golden Age of playwriting. This is a uniquely gifted and dynamic generation of writers and they are creating a new American drama for a new American audience. Based on the sheer number of exceptional writers living here now, I believe that this time in Los Angeles will be seen as the site of a great period of artistic vitality. If we want to be a part of that as an organization, then we have a responsibility to invest in these writers and their work."

The seven participating playwrights in the 2015/16 Season created work on subjects ranging from epigenetics and the effects of trauma across generations to the relationship between hair and sexuality. Over the course of eight months, they got input from experts (including a UCLA psychiatrist and a scholar of restorative justice at Loyola Marymount University), met regularly with one another, and conferred with Center Theatre Group staff about their projects.

There is nothing more exciting than meeting with these artists and seeing their work progress from initial readings to full productions on our stages or even elsewhere.

Miles Benickes, Center Theatre Group Artists and Educators Forum Founder and Board of Directors Member

The goal is to come away from the process with a solid first draft, but finishing a draft is not a requirement. "This is a very genuine experience. It never shuts you down," said playwright Tom Jacobson. “It feels good and safe and free for a playwright to complete their work—however they need to."

Added Meads, "The playwrights have to be free to make mistakes—to go down paths that may not directly lead to their finished play. It’s hard work but good work." The reward for that work is a culminating event in which the playwrights gather at

Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday by Angela Y. Davis

Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s by Daphne D. Harrison

Mother of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey by Sandra R. Lieb

Ma Rainey and the Classic Blues Singers by Derrrick Stewart-Baxter

Lucy Alibar & Co.—Badass Women Writers of the South

Emily Moneymaker — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 18:46:00 -0700

Alibar’s voice is indubitably her own—has anyone else, anywhere in America, written a Christmas story about a raping goat?—but she is part of a long and awesome tradition of badass southern women who write. Here are six others in that pantheon.

Flannery O'Connor

I have found that anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic, wrote O’Connor, a Georgia native, in her 1960 essay “Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction.” O’Connor, a short story master and one of the preeminent writers of the “Southern gothic” style, was known for her dark humor. She won the 1972 National Book Award for Fiction for her posthumously published The Complete Stories, which includes the much-anthologized “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

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Marsha Norman

The Kentucky-born Norman rose to fame in 1983 when her play ’night, Mother (set in an unnamed rural locale that may be Kentucky) was honored with both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Drama Desk Award. ’night, Mother is a dark drama that begins with a daughter telling her mother she is going to commit suicide. But Norman is also a frequent collaborator on Broadway musicals; she wrote the libretto for The Color Purple, which takes place in the Deep South, and the book for

Center Theatre Group — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 21:31:00 -0700

"You’re always figuring out how to do something that you don’t know how to do," said Thiels of working in the props department. "It’s never boring. Every show is a completely different world," he said. "It could be any time period, but fantasy is the most fun and challenging. Nothing from a fantasy world exists for purchase in the real world. Everything is built from scratch."

Being true to the time period—or the fantasy—can often require a "wild goose chase," he explained. "Often you have to find something you’ve never seen before—an antique or a rare item." His favorite prop adventure he’s undertaken for Center Theatre Group was for A Distant Shore at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, which required a row of airplane seats. "Near Palmdale there is a commercial aircraft graveyard. As far as the eye can see are dozens of retired commercial jets, just rotting in the Mojave Desert," said Thiels. "You salvage your part, and they sell it to you by weight. I got to go into a 747 and unbolt airplane seats."

I think good theatre not only makes you think and question, but also fosters a sense of community. That's the power of theatre, and that’s the power of art.

Often, the goose chase doesn’t pan out, or the found objects require altering. His favorite built prop? "The dead bodies for The Lieutenant of Inishmore at the Mark Taper Forum," he said, adding that they were the most challenging to create and looked really successful onstage. "The bodies had to be very realistic so that the audience could see them being cut up, and hear bone cracking and breaking every night, and then be cleaned and reset for the next performance and done again," he said. "We worked with a Hollywood special-effects house to develop that prop."

Thiels also gave a lot of credit to his team, and the outside artists who come on board for individual productions. "I love that my job is very collaborative," he said. "A position like this is special because you work with so many amazingly talented people—many designers from L.A., New York, and London pass through here, and you get to watch and learn from all of them."

You’re always figuring out how to do something that you don’t know how to do...It’s never boring. Every show is a completely different world.

In his spare time, Thiels collaborates with friends—some of whom are Center Theatre Group colleagues—on vintage-style portraits that recreate old Hollywood. The photos "recreate the very constructed lighting" of the era and include period make-up and costumes as well. "I started a few years ago on a whim with my friend Elizabeth Leonard, Center Theatre Group’s Facilities Manager," he said. "I’ve always loved photography, and while I’m a completely untrained amateur, I’ve been taking photos of my friends in some variety for over 10 years. It’s fun, and something creative to do outside of work."

Thiels, who majored in drama at Seattle University and has been working in professional theatre for 14 years, remains deeply committed to his work, and to Center Theatre Group’s mission. "Theatre is a reflection of ourselves, and I really do believe that by watching our stories play out across a stage, by looking at ourselves in that mirror, it’s possible to better understand not only ourselves as individuals, but the people around us that make up our community," he said. "I think good theatre not only makes you think and question, but also fosters a sense of community. That's the power of theatre, and that’s the power of art."

‘Grey Gardens’ Guests Delight Donors

Tricia Gunter — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 19:57:00 -0700

Ritchie began by making a few remarks about Center Theatre Group’s 50th Anniversary before launching into questions about the production.

Buckley, York, and Wilson discussed how the production began at the Bay Street Theater in the Hamptons last summer, not far from Grey Gardens. They had a chance to visit the property, where they learned that Sally Quinn, the current owner, bought the ramshackle house for $200,000 and transformed it into a home that is now worth $27 million.

When Wilson accepted the offer to direct Grey Gardens, he immediately envisioned Buckley staring as Big Edie, he told the audience. Buckley, however, had something else in mind. In a hilarious and uncomfortable phone call, she mistakenly assumed he was asking her to play Little Edie. After that was resolved, months of consideration followed—with Buckley ultimately accepting the part, much to audiences’ delight.

Ritchie concluded the conversation by asking how Center Theatre Group’s audiences compare to other audiences around the country. Wilson joked that some audience members leave a little early so they can get to their cars and beat traffic. Nonetheless, Buckley, York, and Wilson all agreed that Los Angeles has an incredible sophistication and enthusiasm for theatre.

Overall, the evening was a success. “It went well,” said host James Goren. “Perfect weather, perfect people—all theatre lovers.”

2015/16 L.A. Writers’ Workshop Culminates in a Circus of Ideas and Stories

Jalon Matthews — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 18:44:00 -0700

The program kicks off with a salon in the fall where playwrights interview community members who have expertise in their plays’ subject matter and concludes in this two-day retreat where a diverse company of actors reads the playwrights’ first drafts.

Joy Meads, Center Theatre Group’s Literary Manager, was the ringleader in this circus of new ideas, point of views, and stories demanding to be told. She encouraged a spirit of support for playwrights she frequently described as “brave, bold, and generous.” There was a deep sense of trust in not only the stories but also in the actors, playwrights, and staff members who were open to hearing them.

Day one of the retreat featured three plays read by what can only be described as a pack of fearless actors. The writers worked tirelessly up until the last moment making edits and rewrites, sometimes seconds before the beginning of a reading, pens ablaze. The actors took the changes in stride, providing breadth and depth despite the fact that they had gotten the meticulously crafted material on such short notice. The cold readings were “exhilarating,” said actor Herbert Siguenza, a member of Culture Clash most recently seen at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Chavez Ravine, “because of the unknown and blind curves that come at you as an actor trying to convey and tell the story for the first time.” Siguenza and his fellow actors handled these curves professionally, allowing the work to inform them and in the process help the playwrights inform their pieces.

The first play of the weekend was the story of how a woman’s academic research collides with her personal life as she tries to uncover her father’s traumatic past, and in turn becomes her own cognitive behavioral case study. Another piece later in the day was an unfinished work featuring a kaleidoscopic and experimental group of vignettes that employed exile as a lens through which to explore longing, desire, loneliness, and fear. In the discussion afterward, a question from the playwright about the piece’s structure provoked a conversation about the way his journey creating it might mirror the action of the story. This discussion and others added new depth to the pieces and created an atmosphere of discovery for the playwrights.

“It was an extra lovely treat to engage with playwrights who were so open to catching a creative spark from all of the insightful and intelligent feedback,” said actor Sameerah Luquaam-Harris, who was recently seen at the Mark Taper Forum as Penny in

This profile also revealed the grueling rehearsal process that makes van Hove’s work possible:

Van Hove hates auditions: he makes decisions quickly, and resents the time lost to politesse. When working with his permanent company, he casts by fiat, assigning actors to play characters who, among other things, may have to fight each other or have sex with each other—both fairly frequent occurrences in van Hove productions. 'Because he knows everyone very well, sometimes he likes to make explosive combinations—like a kid who lets insects fight,' Eelco Smits told me. 'Sometimes the chemistry between actors is really sexual, and he uses it.' Actors are expected to be "off book"—know all their lines—from the first day of rehearsal, a practice that Americans often find disconcerting. Van Hove likes to rehearse only five hours a day. Juliette Binoche [who starred in van Hove’s Antigone] told me, 'It has to print inside you very quickly. You don’t go back often. It is very raw. In a way, it is very frightening.'

In a conversation with Patrick Healy of The New York Times, van Hove disclosed what first inspired him to reimagine established works after getting his start as a writer/director:

When I was really young and started out as a director, I was not at all interested in texts…But then totally by coincidence, I was asked at a very young age to teach actors in a school in Antwerp. I was 24, so I was teaching people that were 21 and 20, and I had two classes together, so it was a huge group and I thought, well, what to do with them? And then I thought of this play, a very difficult play actually, Troilus and Cressida, by William Shakespeare, and I thought well let's do that…And then I discovered for myself that I could make much [more] personal work through the filter of this old text, so that what I had done before felt to me less personal than when I used the text of Shakespeare. So I discovered the huge potential, even in a text from over 400 years ago or 56 years ago, that I could tell even more about myself—about what I thought of myself, of people, of mankind—by using a text by a good author.

With famed British directors Rupert Goold and Deborah Warner by his side, van Hove explained what inspires him to work on a particular text:

I have to be in love with something, and then I can direct it afterward. If there's no love story going on, then for me it's not worthwhile to do it, not important to do it, and then I better not do it, because I have to inspire [people]…I can be inspired, but I have to give my inspiration to other people because I will not be there onstage…In order to convey the inspiration, to fuel the actors and the team, it has to be a total love story. And for me, love stories, when I look at what I've done, it can also be very awkward ones sometimes. It’s not always the best play, but I need to feel an urge in a text, a necessity to do it.

In a recent interview with The Huffington Post, van Hove discussed how he fell in love with Arthur Miller’s work:

I had a huge misunderstanding. I thought that Miller was a politically correct author who divided people into good and evil. And I was of course totally wrong in this. The plays are very ambiguous, the characters are very complex. So I discovered that I was totally wrong about him, I consider him one of the great—if not the greatest—American playwright.

Van Hove told the Los Angeles Times’ Charles McNulty about why A View From the Bridge resonates in this particular moment:

'It doesn’t make sense to me to go back to the birth of this story for Miller,' [van Hove] explained. 'When you listen to the Republican debates and when you hear how people blame, scapegoat and call one another liars, you realize that this story resonates with what’s going on right now.'

In accepting his Tony for A View From the Bridge—his Broadway debut—van Hove talked about the improbability of it all:

I came here for the first time when I was 20 mainly to see David Bowie in The Elephant Man at the Booth Theatre. I was sitting on a bench and a woman came to me. She asked me what I want to be. I said, 'I want to be a theatre director,' and she grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and asked me to sign it, because she said, 'You never know.' And indeed you never know. She's watching now, and she's now thinking, 'See? I was right.'

The Edies After ‘Grey Gardens’

Center Theatre Group — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 18:23:00 -0700

The documentary (and the footage that became a sequel) was shot by the Maysles brothers over just five weeks in 1973. In the next two years, the Beales continued to go about their lives—retreating in Miltonian solitude from the goings-on of the outside world. After the documentary’s release in 1975, the two Edies found themselves thrust into the public eye. In the wake of the film’s success, they became the unwitting subjects of an ongoing debate about exploitation surrounding the film. While they may have only received a paltry $5,000 for their involvement in the Maysles' documentary, the two Beale women did remain friendly with the filmmakers for the rest of their lives. In fact, Big Edie even told an interviewer at the time, [The film is] the greatest thing that ever happened to me in my old age. You know, I'll be 81 in October. Nobody else wanted to take my picture. I'm thrilled.

In July 1976, Big Edie suffered a terrible fall, which would prove the beginning of a swift and brutal decline. In December, the furnace at Grey Gardens malfunctioned, leaving the aged mansion (and its occupants) unprotected from the harsh New York winter. Weakened, Big Edie contracted a case of pneumonia, which would take her life just two months later. Ironically, she died away from the home that had become her world. In February 1977, Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale passed away in the Local South Hampton hospital, leaving her daughter to return to the crumbling mansion alone.

Anyone who has seen the documentary is well aware of Little Edie’s stage ambitions. As a young woman, she spent five years (1947–1952) living in New York City while she pursued a career in show business.

About a year after her mother’s death Edie got another chance at stardom. In 1978, she returned to New York City as the star in her very own cabaret show at the Reno Sweeney nightclub in Greenwich Village. At the time, she reportedly told her nephew, This is something I’ve been planning since I was 19 years old. I’m just going to have a ball.

Unfortunately, the critics were less than excited about the event. According to the same nephew, they “thought the whole idea of this 60-ish woman, dressed in her homemade version of cabaret clothes, singing and dancing, and bantering was—in a sense—outlandish.”

But according to a People account of the event, Edie’s audience loved her.

The crowd—many of them gay—cheered as she vamped uncertainly through 'Tea for Two,' 'As Time Goes By,' and two songs she wrote herself. She padded her act to a half hour by answering written questions from the audience (What do you think of television? 'It's wonderful for national emergencies!')

After a 10-performance limited engagement, the show ended as many such engagements do—with a limp and a whimper. One year later, Edie famously sold Grey Gardens to Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee for $200,000. After the sale, she hopped around the continent, living in Miami Beach, Oakland, and Canada. Photos taken during that time show the smiling ex-socialite lounging on leather furniture, posing with family members, and—generally—enjoying her life. By all accounts, Edie returned to the world of wealth and pomp with the grace and poise that had always resided beneath the patina of her circumstance.

After bouncing around between relations for some years, Edie eventually resettled in Bal Harbour, Florida to live her autumn years out in quiet seclusion. There, according to a local resident, she frequented the local Bal Harbour shops where she was often mistaken for a statue because she used to sit in one of the atrium’s benches very still, very theatrically, and didn’t speak or move for hours. Sometimes, she would hold a script or a letter in mid-air, and would stare at it through her dark glasses without even varying her position.

When Edie wasn’t re-enacting the Pageant of the Masters, she reportedly spent her time in the ocean, swimming nearly every day in the warm Gulf Coast sun. She continued to do interviews over the phone and to speak with her fans. She even occasionally called Albert Maysles to chat about the past, Grey Gardens, and the 2000 presidential election. She died in 2002 of natural causes. According to her obituary in The New York Times, “She had not owned a cat in five years.”

The Gay Icons of ‘Grey Gardens’

Center Theatre Group — Tue, 09 Aug 2016 22:51:00 -0700

Michael Wilson, who directs our production of a camp classic, one of the most prominent and oft-cited entries in the canon of gay culture. Drew Barrymore told the Los Angeles Times that her greatest fear in playing Little Edie in the HBO narrative film version of Grey Gardens was upsetting her gay friends and fans: What if I do something that doesn’t feel right with them?

There is a historical basis to Grey Gardens’ LGBT appeal. Doug Wright, who wrote the book for the musical, told The Advocate that the attraction was generational for many gay men.

In a closeted culture, there were no public figures who identified as gay. So many gay men came to see themselves in these high-functioning, artistically expressive, heartbreakingly single, and deeply neurotic women. That world undervalued [Edie’s] extravagant expressiveness, and she couldn’t find love in any successful way. If that doesn’t describe your average gay man, circa 1950, I don’t know what does. Our stories were closer to Stella Dallas than John Wayne.

Yet Little and Big Edie appeal to contemporary gay men, too. Actor Bryan Batt, who plays Gould—Big Edie’s gay friend and accompanist—said that everyone, gay or straight, can identify with these women. "We all have some dysfunction in our family," he said. "The fact that they’re somehow surviving in this insane situation is quite fascinating and speaks volumes of the human spirit." At the same time, "they’re two fabulous ladies. They’re living in squalor, but they have earrings and brooches. They have their values," he joked.

Michael Sucsy, who wrote and directed the HBO movie, said that the gay community has embraced Little Edie and Big Edie as fellow humans on the "fringe of society." People love "their indomitable spirit, that they’re themselves despite adversity—that they honor that and they’re proud of that," he said.

Michael Wilson agreed. "The reason the documentary is so famous and has spawned this Tony Award^®-winning musical as well as a live-action feature for HBO is that these women are fierce fighters who have survived," he said. "They are outsiders, they are rebels. Even though they are Bouviers/Beales, and the top of the heap in terms of the American wealth chart, they were always part of what Tennessee Williams called 'the fugitive kind': people that dare to utter the truth about our society."

Location, Location, Location!

Estela Garcia — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 01:59:00 -0700

Where are you located?

Near the Sears building on Olympic.

Where?

Do you know the secondhand store Deseret Industries on 11^th?

Yeah.

We’re further down on the same street.

Oh?

You know where the Dollar Tree is, the one on the corner of Olympic and Camulos?

The one by the Social Security office?

Yes, that one! We’re right behind it on 11^th. 11^th runs parallel to Olympic.

Oh, I didn’t know there was anything over there, just a lot of factories.

Our warehouse is there. It’s where we store everything for our shows, including costumes, props, and sets, and that’s where the workshops take place.

The Barrier

The above conversation was one I had many times when we first started telling people about our Boyle Heights location. Center Theatre Group’s costume shop and prop warehouse, Consistent programming at each library—a space where people were already comfortable—introduced us to future participants for workshops at The Shop.

Execution

Continual visibility at the libraries, farmers’ markets, neighborhood council meetings, and community events were all opportunities to introduce our programs and identify our location.

The initial bilingual flyers and bookmarks we created all had maps indicating each library and The Shop. The maps also included small cross streets and bus stops.

Signage was instrumental in guiding people to The Shop. Our first year, we made signs and placed them at every corner around the building on workshop days. We also put up brightly colored balloons and signs on our door, and purchased four large vinyl banners to show people where we were. Our first logo was incredibly bright and colorful and was used on all collateral.

We also included location information in advertisements in the local independent East Los Angeles newspaper. I spent a lot of my time going door-to-door near The Shop, introducing myself and telling people where we were. It’s important to note that Boyle Heights is a very proud community, and on several occasions I had to prove my street cred and convince people that Center Theatre Group was not there to change the community but was investing in our neighbors.

What We've Learned

In overcoming our location barrier, we’ve learned:

We had to get to know our neighbors first.
Boyle Heights is comprised of many sub-communities, and people like to use the resources from their immediate community.
We had to create multiple locations or multiple access points for residents to get to know us in their immediate community.
We had to find a way to create a “stream” to The Shop to help guide participants to our home.
Part of our ongoing dialogue will include directions to The Shop.
Maps are very helpful.
Lots of bright signs and balloons will not only guide people to the event but will attract passers-by.
Once neighbors feel welcomed, they return and bring other neighbors along.