News And Blogs

“Building [the Auntie Sewing Squad]...has been a radical experiment in generosity, intersectional alliances, and a paradigm outside of capitalism…If this is the end, we go down sewing,” Kristina Wong wrote of her experience founding the Auntie Sewing Squad—a mutual aid group born from the pandemic and the subject of her latest play, Kristin...

Going down sewing with the Auntie Sewing Squad

Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord, opening the Kirk Douglas Theatre season this February, recounts Wong’s rise to “mutual-aid doomsday cult leader” and “sweatshop overlord” after creating a community of Aunties to sew masks for vulnerable communities at the start of the pandemic. This group then grew nationwide, and her performance about...

Getting to know Kristina Wong

In Elephant Room: Dust from the Stars, an eclectic triad of magicians turned astro-nots take you on a virtual trip through time and space. You’ll arrive in the distant year 2020 against a dystopian backdrop of near total planetary collapse—a mysterious plague ravages the earth, temperatures are heating up, chaos rules the streets, democracy han...

The Journey to the Elephant Room

Mike Birbiglia made his Broadway debut last fall with The New One, but he is probably already on your radar thanks to his Off-Broadway shows (including Sleepwalk with Me and My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend), his films (he wrote, directed, and starred in Don’t Think Twice and acted in features including Trainwreck and The Fault in Our Stars), his stan...

All of Us Are in a Room with Mike Birbiglia

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

According to John Leguizamo, “we are all morons”—himself included, as he explains in his new show Latin History for Morons (onstage at the Ahmanson September 5 – October 20, 2019). In a classroom-like setting, the play hashes out a chronicle of Latin culture, one that is absent from the pages of conventional American textbooks—and both La...

‘We Are All Morons’

John Leguizamo’s Latin History for Morons, his new solo show onstage at the Ahmanson September 5 – October 20, 2019, has a simple premise: Leguizamo’s young son has been bullied at his upscale private school. According to the bully, there are no Latinx heroes in the history books. Leguizamo sets out to rectify this problem by excavating the l...

John Leguizamo’s Pan-Latinx Vision

For nearly 30 years, John Leguizamo has been creating and starring in landmark solo theatre productions that draw on his life to bring audiences around America laughter, understanding, and even catharsis. At the same time, of course, he’s graced our screens in everything from his recent Emmy®-nominated turn in When They See Us and roles in To Wo...

John Leguizamo Is Going to Rock You

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

Ian Barford—who plays the central character of Wheeler in Linda Vista—told us in a recent interview, “Having done second productions on several occasions, I must say that this one does not feel like a remount. It feels like a new production altogether.”...

Meet the Actors ‘Fearlessly Exploring the Human Condition’ with Tracy Letts