News: Artists

Celebrating the Playwrights in Our Backyard

Walk into restaurants, boutiques, and bookstores across Los Angeles, and you’ll find chefs and salespeople touting all things “local”: steaks from locally raised cows, handbags by local artisans, and books by local authors. But you hear this buzzword far less often in the city’s theatres, despite the fact that “Los Angeles is a playwritin...

Celebrating the Playwrights in Our Backyard

On the Phone with God and His Head Writer

It’s not every day that you get on a conference call with God. But He’s easier to get hold of when He has a show coming to the Ahmanson Theatre from January 30 through March 13, 2016. In advance of An Act of God, Center Theatre Group got on the phone with Him on a Friday afternoon, along with playwright and former The Daily Show with Jon Stewa...

On the Phone with God and His Head Writer

Having 'Salad' - and Eating It, Too

The Center Theatre Group Writers’ Workshop, a program designed to foster the next generation of great American playwrights, has generated approximately 70 new plays in the past decade. Many of these shows have gone on to acclaimed world premieres, but only two have made their way back to Center Theatre Group’s stages. The second is Sheila Calla...

Having 'Salad' - and Eating It, Too

On Sex, Detective Fiction, Dinner Parties, and Edward Albee

Bathsheba Doran’s The Mystery of Love & Sex, which plays the Mark Taper Forum from January 27 through March 6, 2016, begins with a dinner party thrown by two college students, Charlotte and Jonny, for Charlotte’s parents—a party teetering on disaster as Charlotte invites her parents to dine on undressed salad and unbuttered bread while se...

On Sex, Detective Fiction, Dinner Parties, and Edward Albee

A Conversation with Pulitzer Prize-Winning Writer Marsha Norman

Marsha Norman’s credits span the spectrum of performance from tragic plays to HBO series and have earned her top awards and prizes including a Tony and a Pulitzer. But what drew her to the tale of housewife and World War II war bride Francesca Johnson and inspired her to write the book for the musical adaptation of The Bridges of Madison Count...

A Conversation with Pulitzer Prize-Winning Writer Marsha Norman

Playwright Young Jean Lee on Why We Hate Losers

How does the woman The New York Times has anointed “the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation” follow up a silent play featuring an all-nude feminist cast? If you’re Young Jean Lee, you ask yourself the same question you ask yourself when you start any play—what don’t I want to write—then tackle a genre you’ve never w...

Playwright Young Jean Lee on Why We Hate Losers