News And Blogs

In Spring of 2017, the bar Eastide 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

Center Theatre Group has a great reputation and is a brand recognized by the theatre community and by many Angelenos, but for most people in Boyle Heights, it’s just three words they haven’t heard of before. An important part of my job as Community Liaison for Center Theatre Group is to provide a face for the organization and to create a person...

Why You Need a Community Liaison

Every time I meet a parent, without fail, I’m asked about programs for their children. It’s wonderful that parents and caretakers want their children to have access to more resources, but I remind them that many of our programs are for adults. Parents and caretakers work hard and deserve their own time to be creative, to socialize, to learn a n...

Designing an Experience for Parents

I’ve come to know that community encompasses more than just a group of people from a specific neighborhood, ethnicity, or age, and so, I’ve developed three “lenses” that I look through as I design community programs: community, Center Theatre Group, and artists. Each lens allows me to see who and what is represented or what spaces are...

The Boyle Heights Chronicles: Use More Lenses, Find More Intersections