News And Blogs

“It was great because it wasn’t just for me–this is for us. This is for Black people. I hear a story that I see myself reflected in, and it’s right here. And that’s really special.” —Bruce Lemon, Co-Artistic Director of Watts Village Theater Company

In Not a Moment, But a Movement, 3 Theatres Join in the Pursuit of Elevating Black Artists

For Kemp Powers, 2021 has already been quite the year—and it’s only February. After over two decades of writing, Powers has finally had the chance to experience what so many aspiring creatives can only dream about with the celebration of two debut screenplays. “It’s been surreal, to be honest. It’s weird to have your work out there in th...

Playwright Kemp Powers takes Hollywood by storm before turning to our Digital Stage

In Elephant Room: Dust from the Stars, an eclectic triad of magicians turned astro-nots take you on a virtual trip through time and space. You’ll arrive in the distant year 2020 against a dystopian backdrop of near total planetary collapse—a mysterious plague ravages the earth, temperatures are heating up, chaos rules the streets, democracy han...

The Journey to the Elephant Room

The set of Pulitzer Prize finalist Dael Orlandersmith’s Until the Flood transports audiences back to the late summer of 2014, when Ferguson, Missouri boiled with unrest after teenager Michael Brown was fatally shot by police officer Darren Wilson. In the aftermath of the incident, the town’s grief was palpable, and on the pavement where Brown d...

Mourning, Minimalism & Motion

Dael Orlandersmith starts the conversations her audiences need. In her newest groundbreaking work, Until the Flood—onstage at the Douglas from January 21 – February 23, 2020—that means thinking and talking about Ferguson, Missouri, where in 2014 a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown. After succes...

How Dael Orlandersmith Speaks to People

For any playwright, the opportunity to create and converse in a collaborative setting is a golden one. Especially unique is an environment as immersive and supportive as the L.A. Writers’ Workshop, now beginning its 14th year at Center Theatre Group.

Diverse Stories and Remarkable Talents

Five short plays wrapped into one evening, Ethan Coen’s A Play Is a Poem—onstage September 11 – October 13, 2019 at the Mark Taper Forum—celebrates the one-act play, a form that, over the last century, has endured the ebb and flow of theatre’s evolving landscape....

Revisiting the One-Act Form with Ethan Coen’s ‘A Play Is a Poem’

For nearly 30 years, John Leguizamo has been creating and starring in landmark solo theatre productions that draw on his life to bring audiences around America laughter, understanding, and even catharsis. At the same time, of course, he’s graced our screens in everything from his recent Emmy®-nominated turn in When They See Us and roles in To Wo...

John Leguizamo Is Going to Rock You

In the midst of their June 5 – July 7, 2019 Ahmanson run, the company of Indecent celebrated their 300TH performance of this production, which has moved from New York to Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company and finally to Center Theatre Group over the past few years. A number of cast members, as well as playwright Paula Vogel and director Rebecc...

The Woman who Knows the Sounds of ‘Indecent’ Better than Anyone

From the earliest productions of God of Vengeance to the similar rediscoveries of the work by both playwright Paula Vogel and director Rebecca Taichman, Indecent represents the culmination of over 100 years of social, cultural, religious, and theatrical history. For greater context, here are some of the milestones of the creation and production of...

A Journey of Passion

It took 20 years—or 100 years, depending on how you count—for Indecent to get to Broadway. It all started in Poland in 1907, when a young Yiddish writer named Sholem Asch wrote a play called God of Vengeance. Or perhaps it all started in the stacks of the library at Yale Law School in the late 1990s, when a graduate drama student encountered th...

An Extraordinary Journey to Broadway and Beyond