News And Blogs

The writers of the 2022/2023 Season at the Mark Taper Forum convened to discuss their roles and work in a monumental season—the first in which each play was written by a woman-identifying, transgender, or nonbinary artist.

A Historic Season of Firsts

Center Theatre Group was lucky enough to bring Los Angeles audiences a number of works from the great playwright Terrence McNally at both the Mark Taper Forum and the Ahmanson Theatre. Some of the most talented actors in the world spoke his words on our stages, including Nathan Lane and Richard Thomas in The Lisbon Traviata and Audra McDonald and Z...

Remembering Terrence McNally

The following letter is excerpted from Reflections, The Taper at Twenty, a publication produced by Center Theatre Group in recognition of the Mark Taper Forum’s 20th Anniversary. In this section, actor René Auberjonois, who appeared at the Taper regularly over its first twenty years and was a founding member of the Mark Taper Forum Repertory Com...

Within This Concrete O

There are some theatregoers who argue that despite added hassle, the act of going to a theatre and watching a play in-person is virtuous and the very cornerstone of the art.

A Few of The 2018 Tony Nominees We’re Rooting For!

At age 30, Quiara Alegría Hudes had written the book for a Broadway hit, In the Heights. At 35, she had won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, for Water by the Spoonful. Now, at 40, she is one of America’s most widely produced playwrights, and Center Theatre Group is proud to be bringing two of the works in her acclaimed Elliot Trilogy to our stages...

From 'Zoot Suit' to 'Water By The Spoonful'

Pablo Santiago speaks slowly and carefully, pausing between phrases as he considers his words. He brings this same thoughtfulness to his lighting design. Santiago’s unique style has been recognized with the 2017 Sherwood Award for emerging artists.

Pablo Santiago Wins the 2017 Richard E. Sherwood Award

Since the late 1980s, Suzan-Lori Parks’ plays have graced stages in every major American city. She is a recipient of the coveted MacArthur “Genius” Award, the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the first Master Writer Chair at New York City’s Public Theater. Her newest play, Father Comes Home From The W...

Suzan-Lori Parks’ Journey from a New York Bar to Household Name

Historical and contemporary. Dramatic and vaudevillian. A big show and a personal story. The words Jo Bonney uses to describe Father Comes Home From The Wars by Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks are full of contradictions. As is the production itself—and with good reason—said Bonney, who is directing the show’s run at the Mark Tape...

Jo Bonney Directs an Intimate Epic, a Contemporary History

The five plays that make up the 2016 season at the Mark Taper Forum are set across three centuries and two continents. They tackle race and religion, war and family strife, broken hearts and long friendships. But they do have one thing in common: all five plays have a woman playwright and/or a woman director behind them.And perhaps what’s mo...

In 2016, Women Run the Mark Taper Forum

Steeped in anti-war and civil rights movements as a young man, Robert Egan was ﬁrst drawn to theatre because it could help combat the racial and political injustices of the social world in which he found himself. So he threw himself in. He was a Producing Director here at the Mark Taper Forum for 20 seasons. He launched the Taper’s New Work Fes...

A Road Map to Gentleness

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