News And Blogs

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 plays the Mark Taper Forum through December 18, 2016). In h...

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

The weekend of November 5–6, 2016 marked the kickoff of Center Theatre Group’s 2016/17 Los Angeles Writers’ Workshop. The seven participating playwrights came together at the Kirk Douglas Theatre for a Salon weekend featuring conversations with local experts—selected by the playwrights individually—on the subjects of their plays. We asked...

Playwrights, Professors, a Politician, and a UFO Researcher Meet at the L.A. Writers' Workshop

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

It’s no secret that politicians spend a lot of time thinking about how they look. After all, as the saying goes, “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” In Vicuña by Jon Robin Baitz, political fashion (and the power of a well-tailored suit) take center stage at the Kirk Douglas Theatre October 23 – Nove...

Seven Key Fashion Moments in American Politics