News And Blogs

“If you don’t see yourself represented outside of yourself, you just feel f*cking invisible,” explains John Leguizamo in Latin History for Morons (onstage at the Ahmanson September 5 – October 20, 2019). Though we’ve never said it in quite this way ourselves, that’s one of the central values of Center Theatre Group’s Student Matinee P...

2019/20 Student Matinees Showcase the Power of Representation

Lighting and sound design. Origami and storytelling. Playwriting and play readings. Zine-making and redacting. Angelenos from across the city engaged in these activities over the course of four free, open-to-the-public workshops Center Theatre Group hosted over the summer to pilot expanding the reach, scope, and audience of our community programmin...

Community Workshops Bring Angelenos Together

Do you remember your first real payday? The work leading up to it probably (hopefully) involved some kind of learning experience and skills acquired, but probably didn’t teach you event planning and production, marketing, and audience engagement, plus offer professional development opportunities in group consensus, time and budget management, mee...

The Next Generation of Arts Leaders Starts Here

On April 29, 2019, 250 local elementary school students sang and danced their hearts out on the Ahmanson Theatre stage for their friends and families, performing some of the tunes most beloved by children around the globe: songs from Disney musicals. Their journey to the Ahmanson for our 2019 Student Share Celebration began months ago, when their s...

Disney Musicals in Schools Spreads Magic across L.A.

“It was almost like talking into the mirror,” said Wayne Mackins of being on the “A” side of a post-show Q&A session with high school students from around the country on a rainy spring night in New York City. Mackins, a senior at Fordham University, is currently making his Broadway debut as an ensemble member in The Prom. But in 2014, h...

Young Artists Inspiring Young Artists

She didn’t know it at the time, but Andi Chapman’s first encounter with legendary playwright August Wilson was prophetic. “He said ‘hello’ and told me I had hands like his mother,” said Chapman—who, 22 years old and beginning graduate school at the Yale School of Drama, wasn’t sure what to think. Today, however, “That’s a specia...

Meet Center Theatre Group August Wilson Program Advisor Andi Chapman

Let’s say you’ve fallen in love with theatre. You think you might want to make a career out of working behind the scenes. You may have some experience with university theatre productions; you may have some experience in a different kind of work setting. But you don’t know anyone who’s done a job like the one you think you want to do. What�...

Center Theatre Group Launches Apprenticeship Program

Amidst news of family separations and migrant caravans at the Mexico-United States border, Luis Valdez’s Valley of the Heart—onstage October 30 – December 9, 2018—could not have come to the Taper at a more pertinent moment.

'Valley of the Heart' Community Conversations Revisit Japanese American Internment and Redress, and Envision a More United America

The Center Theatre Group rehearsal rooms have been the site of many thrilling artistic breakthroughs over the past five decades, but audience members generally have had to use their imagination if they want to know what really happened there. Luckily for our patrons, we offer at least one opportunity to visit the room where it happens and get a gli...

Go Behind the Scenes Before the Performance

The mix of business, artistry, and personal responsibility that comes with a creative career in theatre can be tricky to master, especially for young, emerging professionals. As part of our efforts to support an ever-growing and increasingly diverse theatre community in Los Angeles, Center Theatre Group hosted our first Workforce Readiness Symposiu...

Making Working in Theatre Work for Everyone

It’s easy to take the cold weather attire and accents of the characters of Sweat to mean that the problems they face are endemic to industrial East Coast towns. Yet the reality for so many Angelenos is all too similar to that of the Reading, Pennsylvania working-class characters in Lynn Nottage’s searing play (onstage August 29 – October 7, 2...

Different Coasts, Same Problems