News And Blogs

"It feels like I'm coming home to this theatre because in many ways my career began here back in 2009,” said playwright Rajiv Joseph of returning to Center Theatre Group with the World premiere of Archduke. "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo was my first significant production,” he recalled. “We spent two consecutive spring times in L...

From Baghdad to Sarajevo—And Back To Center Theatre Group

On April 25, 2001, global cinema changed forever, and a new era began in French cinema with the release of Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (called simply Amélie in the U.S., and the movie on which the new musical onstage at the Ahmanson Theatre through January 15, 2017 is based). Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet—who had previously...

The Cinematic Sensation that Was ‘Amélie’

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 played the Mark Taper Forum November 9 – December...

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 pla...

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 langua...

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 p...

Groundbreaking Director Garry Hynes Is Back