News And Blogs

Fetch Clay, Make Man started with a photograph of Muhammad Ali and Stepin Fetchit in the window of Oakland’s Afrocentric bookstore, Marcus Books.

DUKING IT OUT with Debbie Allen & Will Power

“Nothing in this play is what it appears to be,” Actor Eugene Lee says of A Soldier’s Play.

Soldiering On

February is Black History Month, an annual observance that honors the important people and events in Black culture and the history of the United States. The month highlights the love, success, and bond Black people share and the contributions they have made as a community and for the country, while also honoring and recognizing the strife they have...

The Black Artists of Yesterday, Today, and the Future

Mike Birbiglia’s The Old Man and the Pool begins performances at the end of July at the Mark Taper Forum. This is his second production with Center Theatre Group, his first being The New One, which played at the Ahmanson Theatre in 2019. It is also his fifth solo production with both director Seth Barrish and scenic designer Beowulf Boritt. Thro...

Remembering How to Swim with Mike Birbiglia

When Alex Alpharaoh was two months old, he and his 15-year-old mother were almost killed in a bomb blast in La Limonada, a shantytown in Guatemala City. To escape the violence, they began their journey to the United States, where they would start their lives anew in Los Angeles, albeit in the shadows, undocumented.

Out of the Shadows and onto the Stage

For Kemp Powers, 2021 has already been quite the year—and it’s only February. After over two decades of writing, Powers has finally had the chance to experience what so many aspiring creatives can only dream about with the celebration of two debut screenplays. “It’s been surreal, to be honest. It’s weird to have your work out there...

Playwright Kemp Powers takes Hollywood by storm before turning to our Digital Stage

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?

When Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s Lackawanna Blues first premiered Off-Broadway in 2001 at The Public Theater, The New York Times lauded it as so humble and warm that the honesty of its spirit is never in question. That honesty was in part due to its directness: Santiago-Hudson was both playwright and solo performer embodying the people he lived along...

The Many Lives of ‘Lackawanna Blues’

In a 2018 Q&A with Slate, Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and actor Tracy Letts said, I lie in all these interviews.

A Mostly Candid Tracy Letts on His Career Wins and Woes

It’s hard to imagine that less than a generation ago, Cupertino, California was an agricultural town. Today, it is home to Apple Inc.’s headquarters—a vast, ring-shaped structure made of glass and steel—and one of the wealthiest cities in the country. Yet for playwright, director, and El Teatro Campesino founder Luis Valdez, Cuperti...

‘Zoot Suit’ Creator Luis Valdez Plants New Seeds at the Taper with ‘Valley of the Heart’

A major pillar of Center Theatre Group’s mission is to foster new plays and support local playwrights at every step of the process from conception to production. The ideal example is Quack, a World premiere onstage at the Kirk Douglas Theatre October 21 – November 18, 2018. Playwright Eliza Clark wrote the piece during her residency in the...

From Start to Finish, A Home for New Work