News And Blogs

"It feels like I'm coming home to this theatre because in many ways my career began here back in 2009,” said playwright Rajiv Joseph of returning to Center Theatre Group with the World premiere of Archduke. "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo was my first significant production,” he recalled. “We spent two consecutive spring times in Los Angeles...

From Baghdad to Sarajevo—And Back To Center Theatre Group

On April 25, 2001, global cinema changed forever, and a new era began in French cinema with the release of Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (called simply Amélie in the U.S., and the movie on which the new musical onstage at the Ahmanson Theatre through January 15, 2017 is based). Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet—who had previously directed...

The Cinematic Sensation that Was ‘Amélie’

Parents are our best cheerleaders and (sometimes) our greatest adversaries—a contradiction that artists have explored (and exploited) for as long as there has been art. Playwrights are no exception. Among the most terrifying theatrical mothers is Mag in The Beauty Queen of Leenane (which played the Mark Taper Forum November 9 – December 18, 201...

Eight Theatrical Mothers We’d Need to Tell Our Therapists About

Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane (November 9 – December 18, 2016 at the Mark Taper Forum) takes place in the eponymous Leenane, a town in the mountains of Connemara, County Galway, Ireland. For introductory purposes, one only need know that Leenane is drab, perpetually wet, and generally lacking in activity and jobs. The language u...

A 'Beauty Queen of Leenane' Glossary

Garry Hynes has been breaking new ground in theatre since the 1970s, when she, along with two friends from the National University of Ireland, founded Druid in Galway—the country’s first professional theatre company to be based outside Dublin. Two decades later, Hynes discovered an unsolicited script in Druid’s inbox by a young, unknown playw...

Groundbreaking Director Garry Hynes Is Back

“I believe that, right now, art can do something that is harder for the media to do,” Jon Robin Baitz has said of his new play Vicuña, which makes its World premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre through November 20, 2016. Baitz’s tale of a presidential candidate and his tailor is in excellent company this election season, which has galvanized...

Theatres and Theatre Artists Respond to Election 2016