2016 | Center Theatre Group

Parents are our best cheerleaders and (sometimes) our greatest adversaries—a contradiction that artists have explored (and exploited) for as long as there has been art. Playwrights are no exception. Among the most terrifying theatrical mothers is Mag in The Beauty Queen of Leenane (which played the Mark Taper Forum November 9 – December 18, 201...

Eight Theatrical Mothers We’d Need to Tell Our Therapists About

Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane (November 9 – December 18, 2016 at the Mark Taper Forum) takes place in the eponymous Leenane, a town in the mountains of Connemara, County Galway, Ireland. For introductory purposes, one only need know that Leenane is drab, perpetually wet, and generally lacking in activity and jobs. The language u...

A 'Beauty Queen of Leenane' Glossary

Since our founding in 1967, Center Theatre Group has been sending shows to Broadway. Our very first World premiere at the Ahmanson Theatre, the musical The Happy Time from songwriting team John Kander and Fred Ebb, directed and choreographed by Gower Champion, and starring Robert Goulet and David Wayne, transferred to The Broadway Theatre, and rece...

From Center Theatre Group to Broadway

Garry Hynes has been breaking new ground in theatre since the 1970s, when she, along with two friends from the National University of Ireland, founded Druid in Galway—the country’s first professional theatre company to be based outside Dublin. Two decades later, Hynes discovered an unsolicited script in Druid’s inbox by a young, unknown playw...

Groundbreaking Director Garry Hynes Is Back

Immerse yourself in the theatrical world of playwright Martin McDonagh before you see his The Beauty Queen of Leenane at the Mark Taper Forum.

A Martin McDonagh Primer

Google Martin McDonagh—whose play The Beauty Queen of Leenane is onstage at the Mark Taper Forum November 9 – December 18, 2016—and you very quickly learn a few things. One is that in 1997, he famously (and drunkenly) cursed off Sean Connery. (Which is true.) Another is that in that same year, he became the first playwright since Shakespeare...

The Irascible Irish Genius of Martin McDonagh

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

“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

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

“God can kiss my ass,” says Levee, the young, ambitious, and angry trumpet player in August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (onstage at the Mark Taper Forum through October 16, 2016).

Two Levees in Conversation

Lillias White has wanted to play Ma Rainey for a long time.

Lillias White Plays the Mother of the Blues in August Wilson's 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom'