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 Los Angeles...

From Baghdad to Sarajevo—And Back To Center Theatre Group

The name “Gavrilo Princip” may not mean much to you. After all, Princip lived a rather uneventful life in early 20th century Serbia…that is, until he shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, almost single-handedly setting into motion events that would lead to World War I and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Princip and “The...

Six High-Profile Assassins You’ve Probably Never Heard of

The first page of the script of Ngozi Anwanyu’s Good Grief (onstage at the Kirk Douglas Theatre through March 26, 2017) specifies the time (1992–2005) and place (Bucks County, Pennsylvania) where the play’s action occurs.

The Set Design Magic of ‘Good Grief’

Throughout Fun Home, onstage through April 1, 2017 at the Ahmanson Theatre, books serve as markers of different stages in graphic memoir author Alison Bechdel’s life. A book from her dad offers a hint that he might know she’s a lesbian; a bookstore is where she realizes she’s gay. In the graphic memoir especially, books are a means for Bechde...

The 'Fun Home' Reading List

This month, we’re proud to have productions at three theatres—plus a bonus live art theatrical experience—that demonstrate our commitment to diversity in every sense of the word.

Civil Rights, Memoirs, and a World Premiere Playwright

In 1985, Fun Home graphic memoirist Alison Bechdel changed film criticism—or at least feminist film criticism—as we now know it when two of the characters in her long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For tried to go to the movies. In the strip, titled “The Rule,” one woman explains to another her movie-going rule—the three basic req...

Putting 2017 Oscar Nominees to the ‘Fun Home’ Memoirist’s Bechdel Test