News And Blogs

Some of Samuel Beckett’s most renowned interpreters have appeared on our stages in a number of his iconic works. As Bill Irwin takes the stage of the Kirk Douglas Theatre September 13 – October 27, 2019 in On Beckett, here is a look back at the history of our mainstage Beckett productions....

Samuel Beckett at Center Theatre Group

From Appalachia to Hollywood, drama to comedy, A Play Is a Poem is a cross-country cross-section of American theatrical history. Consisting of five short plays of disparate settings and genres, the fundamental connection these pieces share doesn’t begin onstage. Rather, it all starts with over a decade’s worth of collaboration between playwrigh...

Collaboration, Cast, and Poetry: What Makes a Play?

He’s regularly called a virtuoso, a master of his craft, and even a genius (per the MacArthur Foundation) and a clown prince (by no less than PBS). You’ve seen him in everything from TV shows like CSI and Sesame Street to his Tony Award®-winning stints in plays like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Fool Moon (roles he reprised with Center...

Bill Irwin Makes Beckett Pure Pleasure

In the midst of their June 5 – July 7, 2019 Ahmanson run, the company of Indecent celebrated their 300TH performance of this production, which has moved from New York to Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company and finally to Center Theatre Group over the past few years. A number of cast members, as well as playwright Paula Vogel and director Rebecc...

The Woman who Knows the Sounds of ‘Indecent’ Better than Anyone

From the earliest productions of God of Vengeance to the similar rediscoveries of the work by both playwright Paula Vogel and director Rebecca Taichman, Indecent represents the culmination of over 100 years of social, cultural, religious, and theatrical history. For greater context, here are some of the milestones of the creation and production of...

A Journey of Passion

It took 20 years—or 100 years, depending on how you count—for Indecent to get to Broadway. It all started in Poland in 1907, when a young Yiddish writer named Sholem Asch wrote a play called God of Vengeance. Or perhaps it all started in the stacks of the library at Yale Law School in the late 1990s, when a graduate drama student encountered th...

An Extraordinary Journey to Broadway and Beyond