News And Blogs

Spring has arrived, and with it, the season of the spring musical. At this very moment, school auditoriums all over the country are filled with students who are singing, dancing, and acting their hearts out.

Conversations from the Classroom: A Teacher’s Guide to Directing Musicals

Monologues are one of the ultimate forms of theatrical expression. When delivered with skill, precision, and passion, they thrill audiences and deeply satisfy artists.

The Art of Teaching Theatre: Mastering the Audition Monologue

Fetching coffee. Filing. Making photocopies. For a lot of us, internships are synonymous with drudge work, useful mostly for how they look on your resume after they’re finished. But the Internship Program at Center Theatre Group is an entirely different beast—one that changes the lives and career paths of undergraduate and graduate students, an...

Supervising Interns, Creating Colleagues

The American Civil War is the backdrop of Suzan-Lori Parks’ new play, Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3), which plays the Mark Taper Forum April 5–May 15, 2016. But this tale of a slave who must decide whether to fight in the war on the side of the Confederacy also offers insight into racial dynamics and identity issues w...

Conversations from the Classroom: Teaching Theatre Students About Access, Equity, and Inclusion

Each time audiences enter the lobby of the Kirk Douglas Theatre, they’re taking part in an experiment that fuses ideas from theatre, the Apple Store, and game design. For The Convert in 2013, which told the story of a young woman trapped between ancient African traditions and Christianity, audiences were invited to “visually vote” for their o...

Is It a Lab or a Theatre Lobby - The Kirk Douglas Theatre Experiences with Engaging Audiences

For many audience members, Lucas Hnath’s The Christians, which plays the Mark Taper Forum through January 10, 2016, doesn’t end when the curtain falls. In fact, the moment the actors take their bows marks the beginning of an even deeper engagement with this play about the mystery of faith: it’s when the post-show discussion begins. Instead of...

The Art of Teaching Theatre: Creating Vibrant Post-Performance Dialogues