News And Blogs

On November 18th, Center Theatre Group hosted its first Black-owned business event before the evening performance of Clyde’s. The play takes place in a local business– a truck-stop diner where the main characters work. In the spirit of the play’s theme, patrons were treated to offerings from six different Black owned businesses local to the L...

Highlighting Black-owned businesses in Los Angeles

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

This month’s 2:22 – A Ghost Story at the Ahmanson Theatre follows a couple and their friends as they attempt to discover what is haunting their home at 2:22 am each evening. But 2:22 – A Ghost Story isn’t the only spectral sensation to have appeared on our stages. Take a look back at some of the spooky stories that have graced our stages....

A Haunted History: Ghastly Ghosts of Center Theatre Group’s Past

Eleven Participants Are Part of the Inaugural Group That Recognizes and Supports Excellence in Emerging Leaders As we continue to look at our organization and see how to grow and improve, and in response to Center Theatre Group’s “Commitments to Change,” the organization launched the CTG Leadership Circle, a program intended to uplift, celebr...

Center Theatre Group Launches CTG Leadership Circle

Before its Academy Award-nominated film adaptation in 1984 and its Broadway debut in February this year, A Soldier’s Play by Charles Fuller opened the Mark Taper Forum’s 16th season in 1982....

Scenes From the Vault—A Soldier's Play

When the World premiere of Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo was produced at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in 2009, an exciting artistic partnership between Center Theatre Group and Rajiv Joseph was born. Not only was it Joseph’s first large-scale production at a major regional theatre, but the following year, the show was trasnferred to the Mark Taper...

Scenes from the Vault—Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo

When Center Theatre Group’s Founding Artistic Director Gordon Davidson met with Luis Valdez to commission a play that was quintessentially Los Angeles—what came from their meeting redefined theatre history. When Luis Valdez’s Zoot Suit first premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in association with Teatro El Campesino in 1978, it made history as...

Scenes from the Vault: Zoot Suit

With America preparing for its annual 4th of July celebration—albeit in a physically distanced way, perhaps unlike any time before—it must be remembered that the meaning of independence has never been equally applied to all Americans. This point is clearly taking center stage in the national dialogue, especially leading into this year’s Indep...

Exposing America's History Onstage

Center Theatre Group was lucky enough to bring Los Angeles audiences a number of works from the great playwright Terrence McNally at both the Mark Taper Forum and the Ahmanson Theatre. Some of the most talented actors in the world spoke his words on our stages, including Nathan Lane and Richard Thomas in The Lisbon Traviata and Audra McDonald and Z...

Remembering Terrence McNally

The following letter is excerpted from Reflections, The Taper at Twenty, a publication produced by Center Theatre Group in recognition of the Mark Taper Forum’s 20th Anniversary. In this section, actor René Auberjonois, who appeared at the Taper regularly over its first twenty years and was a founding member of the Mark Taper Forum Repertory Com...

Within This Concrete O

It’s the fall of 1977 in the Hill District. The urban area just west of downtown Pittsburgh is predominantly African American, and in a time of de facto segregation, untraveled by run-of-the-mill taxis. Transportation options are limited, and unlicensed “jitney” cabs are as common there as legal yellow cabs are in white neighborhoods.

Community, Empowerment & Being Human in August Wilson’s 'Jitney'