News And Blogs

Before its Academy Award-nominated film adaptation in 1984 and its Broadway debut in February this year, A Soldier’s Play by Charles Fuller opened the Mark Taper Forum’s 16th season in 1982....

Scenes From the Vault—A Soldier's Play

The set of Pulitzer Prize finalist Dael Orlandersmith’s Until the Flood transports audiences back to the late summer of 2014, when Ferguson, Missouri boiled with unrest after teenager Michael Brown was fatally shot by police officer Darren Wilson. In the aftermath of the incident, the town’s grief was palpable, and on the pavement where Brown d...

Mourning, Minimalism & Motion

Five and a half years ago, Ferguson, Missouri, became the focus of national attention following the shooting of teenager Michael Brown. Until the Flood—onstage at the Douglas January 24 – February 23, 2020—is acclaimed playwright and performer Dael Orlandersmith’s latest solo show, an urgent exploration of the social uprising that succeeded...

Ferguson, Missouri: A Timeline

Dael Orlandersmith starts the conversations her audiences need. In her newest groundbreaking work, Until the Flood—onstage at the Douglas from January 21 – February 23, 2020—that means thinking and talking about Ferguson, Missouri, where in 2014 a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown. After succes...

How Dael Orlandersmith Speaks to People

It’s the fall of 1977 in the Hill District. The urban area just west of downtown Pittsburgh is predominantly African American, and in a time of de facto segregation, untraveled by run-of-the-mill taxis. Transportation options are limited, and unlicensed “jitney” cabs are as common there as legal yellow cabs are in white neighborhoods.

Community, Empowerment & Being Human in August Wilson’s 'Jitney'

Ruben Santiago-Hudson describes August Wilson’s Jitney—onstage at the Mark Taper Forum Novermber 22 – December 29, 2019—as “two parallel love stories.”

An Opportunity to Celebrate

To portray the vast canvas of American periods and locales on display in A Play Is a Poem—Ethan Coen’s World premiere collection of short plays onstage at the Mark Taper Forum September 11 – October 13, 2019—it takes a large and capable cast. In just under two hours, the action onstage goes from the East Coast to the West Coast—twice—an...

Play or Poem; It Takes a Village

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?

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