News And Blogs

A peace pipe. A vial of arsenic. A mango-wheat beer. A necklace that can ward off evil spirits. An intricately carved jewelry box.

From Product Design to Props

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

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'

In Spring of 2017, the bar Eastside Luv was transformed into a theatre. Inside the tiny Boyle Heights venue young crowds danced to 1980s pop, drank sangria, and gossiped in English and Spanish. It was quintessentially Los Angeles. It was Chisme y Queso.

Chisme y Queso

From 2012–2016, three of Southern California’s leading regional theatres programmed ambitious initiatives to engage local communities—primarily Latinx—they felt were underrepresented as patrons at their theatres. With funding from the James Irvine Foundation’s Exploring Engagement fund, all three companies experimented with partnerships...

Working in Community

Across the street from Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights, tucked tightly onto a corner, is a very small bar. And although it’s early on a Sunday evening, inside the very small bar is a very big party.

Gossip, Cheese, and Theatre in Boyle Heights

“Los Angeles is a city where, in many ways, it is hard to connect with other human beings,” said Center Theatre Group Director of Social Strategy, Innovation and Impact Leslie Johnson.

Creating Connection Through Community Conversations

When playwright and MacArthur “Genius” Luis Alfaro was a child, his mother would bring him to shows at the Ahmanson Theatre and Mark Taper Forum—but she would wait in the parking lot of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power while he sat in the audience, enraptured. Alfaro became an usher in 1979 and eventually became part of Center Th...

The Local Theatre Movement

When we first developed our Boyle Heights programming three years ago, we laid what would become the foundations of our work at a community engagement strategies brainstorming session. One of the many lists we made was titled “Barriers of Participation,” alongside another list of solutions for said barriers. Here’s what we’ve learned about...

Location, Location, Location!

When we first developed our Boyle Heights programming three years ago, we laid what would become the foundation of our work at a community engagement strategies brainstorming session. One of the many lists we made was titled “Barriers of Participation,” alongside another list of solutions for said barriers. One of the first items we listed was...

Making Sure No One Gets Lost in Translation

We offer all of our free community workshops in and around The Shop, Center Theatre Group’s costume and prop shop in Boyle Heights, in Spanish and English. At any given workshop we host, at least three quarters of the participants are Spanish-only speakers, and almost everyone is bilingual.

Teaching Artist and Prop Master Extraordinaire Merrianne Nedreberg