News And Blogs

“Building [the Auntie Sewing Squad]...has been a radical experiment in generosity, intersectional alliances, and a paradigm outside of capitalism…If this is the end, we go down sewing,” Kristina Wong wrote of her experience founding the Auntie Sewing Squad—a mutual aid group born from the pandemic and the subject of her latest play, Kristin...

Going down sewing with the Auntie Sewing Squad

Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord, opening the Kirk Douglas Theatre season this February, recounts Wong’s rise to “mutual-aid doomsday cult leader” and “sweatshop overlord” after creating a community of Aunties to sew masks for vulnerable communities at the start of the pandemic. This group then grew nationwide, and her performance about...

Getting to know Kristina Wong

The writers of the 2022/2023 Season at the Mark Taper Forum convened to discuss their roles and work in a monumental season—the first in which each play was written by a woman-identifying, transgender, or nonbinary artist.

A Historic Season of Firsts

After a year and a half of our theatres being dark, we’re slowly transitioning back to live performances. For Marike Splint and Center Theatre Group, that transition involves a pair of your best headphones, a specially designed mobile app, and a trip to Los Angeles State Historic Park. 32 ACRES–a soundwalk for the Los Angeles State Historic Par...

Rediscovering Los Angeles with '32 ACRES–a soundwalk'

“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’