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Who is Young Jean Lee?

Playwright. Director. Singer. Filmmaker. Korean-American. Feminist. Experimental. Adventurous. Provocative. Young Jean Lee and her boundary-pushing, genre-bending, radically inclusive work is impossible to place in any one box. So who is the playwright and director behind Straight White Men, which plays the Kirk Douglas Theatre November 20 through...

Who is Young Jean Lee?

'Appropriate'-Inspired Hauntings in L.A.

Appropriate, at the Mark Taper Forum September 23–November  1, 2015, explores the haunting historical sins of a Southern family while uncovering some contemporary ones along the way. A hidden graveyard, a crumbling plantation mansion, and a chorus of insects make the perfect backdrop for a haunting, and one character even claims to feel “spiri...

'Appropriate'-Inspired Hauntings in L.A.

A Small Gesture, a Powerful Honoring: Floating Lights after ‘Bent’

“Rituals are perhaps the oldest...members of the performance family. Their business in society is to effect transformations that cannot otherwise be brought about.”—Tom F. Driver, Liberating Rites: Understanding the Transformative Power of Ritual...

Why Is ‘Bent’ More Relevant Than Ever?

On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, a landmark decision for gay and lesbian Americans. Exactly a month later on July 26, Bent opened at the Mark Taper Forum in its first major U.S. revival.

Refashioning Oppression–The History of the Pink Triangle

When Martin Sherman’s play Bent premiered on Broadway in 1979, it introduced many audiences to the story of gay persecution in the Holocaust.  Over the past few decades, this history has become more widely known, thanks in part to the re-appropriation of the pink triangle the Nazis forced gay male prisoners to wear.

David Gere on ‘Bent’

In 1980, just out of college, I moved to New York where my older brother, the actor Richard Gere, was already making a big name for himself. That was the year of American Gigolo with Lauren Hutton, and it was also the year he starred on Broadway in Martin Sherman’s Bent.