News And Blogs

You may be familiar with the saying change is the only constant in life. While we deal with small, everyday changes without much thought, how we deal with major changes that challenge what we know and believe are the struggles that keep us up at night, and feature prominently in countless powerful plays. Such is the case with Skylight Theatre Compa...

A British Play Set in the Netherlands Comes to Los Angeles

Music has always been the great bookmark of my life to tell me where I was and what I was doing, said Tony® Award-winning actor and Lackawanna Blues creator Ruben Santiago-Hudson. When I had been telling people about this incredible upbringing, I knew I couldn’t tell it without music.

Staging the Sounds of Blues

A roller derby rink. Choreographed roller skating without wheels. An all-female cast, creative, and design team. These are just a few aspects that set apart For The Love Of (or, the roller derby play)—onstage at the Kirk Douglas Theatre March 7–17, 2019 as part of our third annual Block Party. And these are also some of the many reasons why the...

Getting a Derby Rink on the Douglas Stage

She didn’t know it at the time, but Andi Chapman’s first encounter with legendary playwright August Wilson was prophetic. “He said ‘hello’ and told me I had hands like his mother,” said Chapman—who, 22 years old and beginning graduate school at the Yale School of Drama, wasn’t sure what to think. Today, however, “That’s a specia...

Meet Center Theatre Group August Wilson Program Advisor Andi Chapman

Creator Ruben-Santiago Hudson dedicates his autobiographical play Lackawanna Blues to the memory of Bill Sims Jr.

In Memoriam: 'Lackawanna Blues' Composer Bill Sims Jr.

When Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s Lackawanna Blues first premiered Off-Broadway in 2001 at The Public Theater, The New York Times lauded it as so humble and warm that the honesty of its spirit is never in question. That honesty was in part due to its directness: Santiago-Hudson was both playwright and solo performer embodying the people he lived along...

The Many Lives of ‘Lackawanna Blues’