Titoli in Teatro

The Key and Tone Clusters are two one-act plays by 2009 Man Booker Nominee Joyce Carol Oates. The Key is a hilariously perverse encounter between a vacationing suburban housewife, recently separated from her husband, and a prosperous businessman. Tone Cluster is a chilling comedy that takes the form of an interview between a middle-aged, middle-class American couple and the media.

Inspired by released American hostages, Hotel Oubliette is a darkly comedic play that explores what happens when two emotionally disconnected men are chained to a post with an endless amount of time stretching before them.

This Tony Award-winning play, set in New York City in 1850, centers on the painfully shy Catherine Sloyer, who lives in Washington Square with her father. When Catherine falls in love with a handsome suitor, Dr. Sloyer threatens to disinherit her, convinced that the young man could only be interested in her fortune. The decisions Catherine makes and their surprising consequences mark The Heiress as a complex and satisfying portrait of the American character.

In a thought-provoking new play, 13-year-old Lucy, who suffers from autism, moves in with her estranged, misanthropic mother. Having lived her entire life with her father, Lucy, as well as her mom, struggle with all the difficulties of such an arrangement.

Gregory Itzin portrays the brilliant but flawed Lee Atwater, a self-styled master of negative campaigning and a tightly wound country boy from South Carolina, who rose to the chairmanship of the Republican Party. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance starring Gregory Itzin as Lee Atwater, with Fran Adams, Ed Begley Jr., Judyann Elder, Arye Gross, Richard Masur, Daniel Passer, Harry Shearer, Fred Willard, and Kenny Williams.

In the high-stakes world of cancer research, Dr. William Shumway has just made a stunning breakthrough. But is it really the long-sought cure for cancer? Despite the young scientist’s reservations, a senior mentor pressures him to trumpet his findings to the world. Part medical drama, part suspense-filled thriller, Secret Order turns its microscope on bioethics, money and power.

Smith's edgy and funny The Watts Towers Project focuses on Simon Rodia, the Italian immigrant who spent 33 years building his towers: only to walk away from them, never to return. Smith blends his own childhood, the life of Rodia, and the last quarter-century of L.A. history to create (in the words of Back Stage West) a "wonderfully eclectic piece".

Taking Flight is a deeply compelling, humorous, and truly moving work that brings to the stage a mystical and poignant tale of a friendship tested by tragedy, and of the resilience of the human heart.

In Work Song, tensions between master architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his tempestuous relationships are explored in this uniquely prismatic view of one of the great architects of the modern era. This engaging production includes a panel discussion with Wright biographer Harold Zellman. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Jim Beaver, Amy Brenneman, Chris Butler, Matthew Patrick Davis, Sean Dougherty, Robert Foxworth, Charles Janasz, Kathryn Meisle, Kali Rocha, and Raphael Sbarge.

Moving Bodies is a chronicle of the brilliant life of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Richard Feynman. From his role in the development of the atomic bomb to his controversial testimony at the investigation of the Challenger disaster, Feynman casts a long shadow across the worlds of physics and mathematics. Through playwright Arthur Giron's eyes, we see how Feynman became one of the most important scientists of our time.

In 1943, Los Angeles exploded in the infamous Zoot Suit riots, provoked by the Sleepy Lagoon murder case that railroaded young Chicano gang members who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Valdez masterfully synthesizes fact and fiction, using the case to examine Chicano Zoot Suit culture of the '40s, prejudices, the role of the media in the judicial system, and Latino family culture.

Jon Robin Baitz's commanding drama is about a New York publisher and Holocaust survivor whose decision to publish obscure political tracts threatens the future of both his company and his family.

What happens when conflicting emotions inhabit the same space? When a new vocabulary is devised to disguise the same old thoughts? In this barbed satire of political correctness, Rebecca Gilman's provocative characters spin a web of their own, revealing the latent racism that may lurk beneath the porcelain veneer of a liberated conscience.

In this outrageous new comedy, playwright Mamet skewers everything from sexuality to the justice system to world peace. In a world where nothing is as it seems, prepare to be offended!

The birth of Armageddon. The first H-bomb detonates and the proud father is Edward Teller. But he's on a collision course with Robert Oppenheimer, the inventor of the bomb that obliterated Hiroshima. Now Oppenheimer has turned pacifist and the government will stop at nothing to "neutralize" him. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Jordan Baker, Corey Brill, John de Lancie, Reed Diamond, J. Michael Flynn, Raphael Sbarge, Joe Spano, Matt St. James, Simon Templeman, Granville Van Dusen, Geoffrey Wade and Margaret Welsh.

Sir Laurence Olivier. Orson Welles. Vivien Leigh. Joan Plowright. Kenneth Tynan. When these champions of the theatre get together to rehearse Ionesco's Rhinoceros, mere mortals best step aside. With lightning wit and scathing insight into the true nature of genius, Austin Pendleton's new play opens the private worlds of these very public people, exposing their warmth, their egos, and their glittering madness.

On a spring day in 1947, Mr. Rickey, the powerful General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, summons heavyweight champion Joe Louis, tap star Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and actor Paul Robeson to his hotel room in Manhattan. Rickey wants their support when he taps Jackie Robinson to be the Major League's first black ballplayer. But a power struggle ensues when the eloquent Robeson raises questions about Rickey's motivations to integrate white baseball.

As the '20s roared and the Harlem renaissance thrived, a young woman from rural Florida became the toast of literary New York. Jump At The Sun chronicles the passionate life of Zora Neale Hurston (author of Their Eyes Are Watching God), who went from spinning tales on the front porch of a country store to writing prize-winning stories, novels, and plays. Imbued with the rhymes and rhythms of the Jazz Age, Hurston's story reveals a woman's ferocious appetite for life, literature, and love.

Dr. Melanie Laidlaw is a scientist developing the first use of ICSI, short for intracytoplasmic sperm injection. Her collaborator, Dr. Felix Krankenthaler, turns out to have his own ideas about how to implement their new procedure. The wild card is Melanie's new lover, Menachem Dvir, a fellow scientist. This darkly comic ménage à trois plays out not only in bedrooms and labs, but also in test tubes and under the microscope. A Brave New World indeed!

A pointed look at organized, merchandised religion; the dangers of pride and ambition; the battes for power between generations; and the redemptive power of faith. A face off for control between a legendary Baptist pastor and an ambitious young preacher.