KIRK DOUGLAS THEATRE 2008-2009 SEASON ANNOUNCED

Center Theatre Group Celebrates Fifth Anniversary Season At Its Newest Theatre

Center Theatre Group celebrates a milestone at its newest theatre, the Kirk Douglas Theatre, with the announcement today by CTG Artistic Director Michael Ritchie of the 2008-2009 season at the intimate, 317-seat gem of a theatre located in the heart of Culver City. 

It is the fifth anniversary season for this young theatre, a theatre which is already establishing itself as a place where the telling of good stories is paramount, and risk-taking is the norm.

For the new season, Ritchie has selected a wide range of topics and plays that carry on this tradition:   a lively discussion of evangelism in America in “This Beautiful City” developed by the acclaimed theatre troupe The Civilians; a hilarious take on Hollywood’s attempts to package the American dream in the Tony Award-nominated Best Play of 2007, “The Little Dog Laughed” by Douglas Carter Beane; solo artist supreme Danny Hoch’s latest piece, “Taking Over,” which details how gentrification is re-casting many of our American communities; the search for meaning in the madness of war in the beautiful new play “Bengal Tiger in the Baghdad Zoo” by Rajiv Joseph; and Elizabeth Meriwether’s free-wheeling “Heddatron,” where humans and robots alike strive to break free from society’s strictures.

“All of these plays have an edge and an air of the unexpected that make them perfect for the new season at the Douglas,” said Ritchie.  “They discuss the things that make us who we are – our pop culture, our religions, our hometowns, our wars, and our wonder at science and its children – who can resist a romp with robots? These pieces are distinctly American in character. The humor and humanity and imagination of our country come across loud and clear.”

Regarding the Douglas Theatre’s fifth anniversary season, Ritchie said, “We’re just hitting our stride, and it feels good.”

 

“This Beautiful City”

September 21 – October 26, 2008

 

The 2008-2009 season at the Kirk Douglas Theatre opens with the West Coast premiere of “This Beautiful City,” a new play with music that details the explosion of America’s evangelical Christian movement.

Set in Colorado Springs at the base of the majestic Pike’s Peak, “This Beautiful City” was commissioned and developed by the Obie Award-winning troupe The Civilians, written by Steven Cosson and Jim Lewis, and has music and lyrics by Michael Friedman (whose work was seen at the Douglas in January in the world premiere of “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson”).

Directed by Cosson, and co-produced with New York’s Vineyard Theatre, “This Beautiful City” will have performances at the Douglas, September 21 through October 26, 2008.  Opening is September 28.

“This Beautiful City” was created from fascinating and revealing interviews with church members, civic leaders, progressive activists and individuals from all walks of life in the Rocky Mountain town that has rapidly become the epicenter of the Evangelical movement.

Colorado Springs has also become a microcosm of issues facing the country as a whole, such as the broad chasm between the religious right and the secular left and of the shifting line between religion and government as these churches increasingly wield power in the shaping of national policy.

Charles Isherwood of The New York Times said of “This Beautiful City” in its presentation in March at this year’s Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, “It is a thoughtful, exploratory foray into a world that, as the interviews make clear, was alien territory to the show’s creators.  Voices of faithful believers are juxtaposed with those of critics of the movement’s power and its prerogatives.”

The interviews for “This Beautiful City” were conducted by Emily Ackerman, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Brad Heberlee, Stephen Plunkett and Alison Weller, along with the writers Steven Cosson and Jim Lewis.

“This Beautiful City” will open at the Vineyard Theatre in New York in early 2009.

The New York-based Civilians, whose other works include the musical hit “Gone Missing” and their recent “Paris Commune,” was founded in 2001 by Artistic Director Steven Cosson. The renowned company develops original projects inspired from investigations into real life, using methods that combine documentary and artistic practices. The Civilians’ seven original shows have been presented by numerous regional theatres, arts festivals and a range of venues that include La Jolla Playhouse, The Public Theater, A.R.T., HBO’s US Comedy Festival, the Humana Festival, London’s Soho Theatre, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (Fringe First 2006) and other venues worldwide. 

 

“The Little Dog Laughed”

November 16 – December 21, 2008

 

            Julie White will reprise her Tony Award-winning performance in “The Little Dog Laughed,” the razor-sharp, Tony Award-nominated farce by Douglas Carter Beane, in the second production of the Douglas’ new season, November 16 through December 21, 2008.  Opening is November 23.

            Five-time Tony Award-nominated Scott Ellis (including “Curtains” and “Twelve Angry Men”) will direct.

            White portrays the brash, fast-talking Hollywood agent Diane, whose client has a chance to make it to superstar status, if only he stays in the closet.  A sweet, sexy man enters his life and makes the ruse difficult, even as this new love interest has complications of his own – a naïve, needy girlfriend.  

But nothing derails Diane in her pursuit of power and money as she skillfully and hilariously manipulates all within her reach. With twists and turns that keep audiences guessing, “The Little Dog Laughed” cleverly reflects America’s celebrity-obsessed culture.

Ben Brantley of The New York Times, who called the play a “. . . trenchant satire about truth and illusion Hollywood-style . . .,” described what makes Diane run: “That’s unadulterated ambition, the kind that makes people forgo sleep, ethics, regular meals and personal lives.  Such energy scalds those who get too close to it.  But as channeled by Ms. White, at a safe distance to savor, it is the perfect wattage for filling a Broadway house with incandescent light.”

Louise Kennedy of The Boston Globe called “The Little Dog Laughed,” “Sharp, stinging and neat . . . a heady comic cocktail of a play . . . acutely observed and cleverly written.. . .”

Douglas Carter Beane, who received the 2008 Tony Award nomination for his work on the Broadway musical “Xanadu” (Best Book of a Musical), also wrote the plays “As Bees In Honey Drown,” which played at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York City in 1997, and “The Country Club.”  His screenplays include “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar.”

            “The Little Dog Laughed” was originally produced off-Broadway in February 2006 at the Second Stage, and then moved to Broadway in November of the same year.

 

“Taking Over”

January 21 – February 22, 2009

 

Obie Award-winner Danny Hoch returns to Center Theatre Group with his latest solo performance, “Taking Over,” a riveting study of the effects of gentrification and how this is changing the face of many American cities, January 21 through February 22, 2009.  Opening is January 23.

Tony Taccone, artistic director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where “Taking Over” had its world premiere earlier this year, will direct.

In “Taking Over,” Hoch seamlessly transforms himself into the vividly diverse characters from his hometown, the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, and into the real estate agents and developers who are shepherding radical changes into the district’s character and nature.

Filling the stage with compelling, impeccably drawn, multicultural portraits, Hoch captures the complexities of the transition of a poorer urban community, once vibrant and colorful – if also crime- and cocaine-ridden – into a culture that is wealthier, less diverse, and the cause of higher rents, property values and the displacement of long-term residents. 

Robert Hurwitt of the San Francisco Chronicle said, “Hoch is as exhilaratingly energetic and astonishingly versatile a performer as ever.  If anything, the founding father of hip-hop theatre seems even more polished in telling his story and more uncompromising in his artistic goals.. . .”

Hoch’s “Some People” (Obie Award) was part of CTG’s 1995 Taper, Too season, while his “Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop” was presented as a CTG special event in 1998 at The Actors’ Gang.

Danny Hoch’s other works for the stage include “Pot Melting” and “Till the Break of Dawn.”  His writings on hip-hop, race and culture appear in The Village Voice, The New York Times, Harper’s, The Nation, American Theatre and in various books.  “Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop” was made into a movie that is now available on DVD.  Hoch founded the Hip-Hop Theater Festival in 2000 and has since presented over 100 hip-hop generation plays from all over the world.  He has recently been named the 2008-2009 Guggenheim Fellow for Drama.

 

“Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo”

May 10 – June 7, 2009

 

 A lyrical, haunting new play set against the backdrop of the war in Iraq, “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” by Rajiv Joseph, will have its world premiere at the Douglas Theatre, May 10 through June 7, 2009.  Opening is May 17.

Tony Award-nominated Moisés Kaufman (“I Am My Own Wife”) will direct.

            In “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” the lives and, in some cases, the afterlives,  of two American soldiers, an Iraqi translator, the ghosts of Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Ousay, and a Bengal tiger all intersect in a surreal, darkly humorous and gently balanced view of war and its aftermath.

Inspired by an AP story detailing the shooting of a rare tiger by an American soldier at the decimated Baghdad Zoo during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the play puts the war into a different and very personal context than what is found in the media and White House pronouncements.

In “Bengal Tiger and the Baghdad Zoo,” combatants, citizens and otherworldly spirits discuss life, death and the pursuit of hope, as they roam the streets of Baghdad, all seeking a catharsis to the chaos and moral complexities of war.

“Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” was developed at the The Lark Play Development Center in New York City.

Rajiv Joseph received his MFA in playwriting from the Tisch School of the Arts  in 2004, and in January 2006 he had his play “Huck & Holden” produced at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York, and then subsequently at the Black Dahlia Theatre in Los Angeles. At Second Stage in New York, Joseph’s “All This Intimacy” premiered in 2006 and this summer Second Stage will premiere his “Animal Out of Paper.” He is the 2008 recipient of the Vineyard Theatre’s Paula Vogel Playwriting Award.

 

“Heddatron”

July 5 – August 2, 2009

 

“Heddatron,” the wildly funny and imaginative new work that gleefully deconstructs Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” and features both actors and fully-functioning robots, will have its West Coast premiere as the final production in the Douglas’ 2008-2009 season, July 5 through August 2, 2009.  Opening is July 12. 

“Heddatron” is written by Elizabeth Meriwether and directed by Alex Timbers  (who was also at the helm of “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” this year).

In “Heddatron,” Ibsen’s story of a woman who is unable to escape the role society has shaped for her is layered with hilarious sub-plots that are chronologically askew and geographically continents apart. 

Jane, an unhappy Michigan housewife is abducted by robots and taken to an Ecuadorian rainforest to star in their production of “Hedda Gabler.” While her husband concocts a plan to rescue her, a hundred years earlier Ibsen is distracted from writing his masterpiece by a shrewish wife, his rival August Strindberg and a lusty maid.

Ben Brantley of The New York Times found “Heddatron” “. . . strangely moving

. . . [it represents] the wild side of theater where audiences’ hearts are mended by the ritualistic breaking of them on stage . . . achieves true, and truly original, theatrical transcendence . . . What could have been merely a novelty stunt, or a facile comment on sensitive souls in a dehumanized world, becomes an exultant celebration of the cathartic powers of theater.”

            Marilyn Stasio of Variety said of “Heddatron,”  “Five of the cutest robots that ever rolled off an engineering ramp interact smartly with human actors in this cheeky send-up of Ibsen and the well-made play.”

            “Elizabeth Meriwether’s strange script cuts to the heart of Ibsen's story: A woman chained up in her own life struggles to break free of social programming. That struggle is mirrored by the robots, who attempt to escape their own programming . . . ,” observed Wired magazine.

Meriwether’s other plays include “The Mistakes Madeline Made” (originally produced by Naked Angels Theater, and subsequently done at Yale Rep and published by Dramatists Play Service) and “Oliver” (in development for the Vineyard Theatre). She is currently working on play commissions for the Manhattan Theatre Club, Yale Repertory Theatre, Ars Nova, and on screenplays for Miramax and Dreamworks.

“Heddatron” was first presented at the HERE Arts Center in New York in February 2006 by the avant-garde theatre troupe Les Freres Corbusier (Alex Timbers, artistic director), who are known for their “irreverent massacre of historical icons and academic esoterica,” including such figures as L. Ron Hubbard in “A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant,” which was presented at the Powerhouse Theatre in Santa Monica, and master builder Robert Moses in “Boozy.”

 

2008-2009 Season Tickets Currently Available by Subscription Only

Tickets for the 2008-2009 season at the Douglas are currently available by subscription only.  For information and to charge season tickets by phone, call the Exclusive Season Ticket Hotline at (213) 972-4444. To purchase online, visit CenterTheatreGroup.org.

For information regarding audio description and Project D.A.T.E. (sign language interpreted performances) and discount subscriptions for the deaf and hard of hearing, call TDD/Voice (213) 680-4017.

Center Theatre Group’s Kirk Douglas Theatre is located at 9820 Washington Blvd. in Culver City.