News And Blogs

If you’re doing something new, there is always a sense of fear or foreboding, but you’re in new ground and you have to get out your machete and cut a new path, superstar composer Jeanine Tesori explained in an interview a few years ago....

Five Reasons Jeanine Tesori Inspires us to Go for our Dreams

As the self-described only even nominally Chinese person who’s ever written a Broadway show, Chinese American playwright David Henry Hwang has gone on quite a few meetings with Chinese entertainment producers who want to create a Broadway show of their own. Why are they interested? Two words that also happen to be the title of Hwang and Jeanine T...

‘Soft Power’: The Show, The Theory, The Inspiration

Theatre makers around the country are grappling with cultural appropriation and nontraditional casting right now. But the Asian American speakers at a recent Community Conversation are also coming to terms with their own “internal crisis” about beloved (but problematic) classics like Miss Saigon and The King and I....

Orientalism and the Portrayal of Asian Americans in Musicals

How does a new (play with a) musical get made? To quote Soft Power, It Just Takes Time. In this case, that’s four years, 13 readings and workshops, and the partnership of a crackerjack creative team of American theatre all-stars. But before all that, there was breakfast, as Center Theatre Group Artistic Director Michael Ritchie and playwright Dav...

Four Years, Two Breakfasts, and One Big Commission

Why don’t we see more Asian Americans onscreen and onstage with accents that aren’t played for laughs? Is it OK for a Japanese actress to play Korean or Taiwanese? And why, if they live in New York City, don’t the characters on Friends have any friends who aren’t white?

The Politics of Casting

Almost every performance you see onstage at Center Theatre Group is a collaboration. And we’re not just talking about the obvious—the team of actors, writers, directors, producers, designers, and artisans who have come together for the show’s run. More often than not, the production you’re seeing took collaboration among theatre companies a...

Center Theatre Group Hits The Road

In 2018, Ahmanson audiences will experience Soft Power, a World premiere from theatrical titans David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly) and Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home).

Center Theatre Group Partners with East West Players on 'Soft Power'

What is it about 'The Red Shoes' that attracts you as a story to adapt for dance? It’s the story that Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger fashioned around Hans Christian Andersen’s story of The Red Shoes for their seminal 1948 movie that really attracted me. The Andersen fairy tale is a little difficult to relate to today with its the...

How 'The Red Shoes' Came to Life

Toby the Rat is Christopher’s closest friend and companion that gets taken everywhere with him throughout The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The production’s animal wrangler, Cara Kilduff, tells us what life is like for rodent and wrangler on the road....

A Day in the Life of Toby the Rat

Oh, what a night! Please excuse the cliché—I imagine every writer on the planet who has ever penned anything about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons begins with that lyric. But in this case, it would be true, so please allow me to indulge. Three crackerjack teachers from Hawthorne High School joined us for opening night of the Broadway smash hi...

Connecting Students with History through 'Jersey Boys'

Forget about show-stopping finales. In Jersey Boys, the smash-hit musical about the rise and fall of The Four Seasons, the pinnacle of excitement comes about 45 minutes into the first act. That’s when back-to-back presentations of three of the group’s biggest hits—Sherry, Big Girls Don’t Cry, and Walk Like a Man—are greeted with enough th...

What Really Happened—Rick Elice Talks about the "Jersey Boys" Phenomenon