poster for “Puppet Up” (courtesy of CTG)
“L.A.’s Theater” Largely Ignores L.A.
Center Theatre Group’s 2025-2026 Season
“Dream Big” is the name of the Center Theatre Group’s 2025-2026 season. Oh, sweet marketing. The authenticity of that moniker depends on how one defines “dream” and how one defines “big.” Center Theatre Group calls itself “L.A.’s theater.” That depends on how one defines L.A., which seems, from the cluster of incoming shows in CTG’s three theaters (The Ahmanson, The Mark Taper Forum, and The Kirk Douglas Theatre), to have been pretty much left out of the mix.
At a brunch on the fifth floor of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, CTG graciously invited a gaggle of supporters to promote its upcoming season.
Though an annual shindig, it’s an event I’ve never attended before. I asked the check-in person who all these people were in the room, and she reported back sweetly, “donors and influencers.”
“Influencers?” I replied. “You mean, what used to be called press.” She smiled, wistfully.
Publicist Tim Choy was there and explained that they define press as organizations that have editors. Good to know.
To be (even more) churlish for a moment, the lineup of pending CTG productions seems aimed less at the Los Angeles community (whoever that is) and more to a glee club for New York/UK theater fans. CTG, at present, is an import machine, not to be confused with important. There’s scant evidence of any programs, or interest, in the artists this city houses, or what they have to say about their home. Our home. Or, for that matter, what they have to say about anything at all. I can point to a number of “L.A.’s theaters” and, alas, CTG is not among them: Playwright’s Arena, Boston Court Theatre, IAMA Theatre Company, The Geffen Playhouse, Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre, Road Theatre Company, Echo Theater Company, The Fountain Theatre, Rogue Machine. I could go on. I won’t.
Please don’t confuse this with an argument for provincialism. Rather, it’s an argument for, dare the word be said?: inclusion. This extends beyond geography.
After the presentation that included singers belting out ballads from the many incoming musicals, I overheard a conversation between a Snehal Desai, CTG’s artistic director, and what I presume to be a donor, who was making a case for the works of Suzan-Lori Parks, the playwright-poet who lived for a while in L.A., and has since decamped to New York. The donor was very excited by works of hers he’d recently seen. “Yes,” Desai said while nodding. “We’re actually looking for young voices.”
So a 62-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning African-American playwright no longer has anything of pertinence to say to CTG’s audiences, because she’s too old? I looked around the room of “donors and influencers.” There was a smattering of people in their 20s, but mostly the crowd was 50+. Perhaps that’s the dynamic that Desai is trying to change. And, to be fair, I arrived well into the conversation and it’s possible they were talking about the one still-to-be-named production. Even so, if a monumental figure such as Suzan-Lori Parks can no longer get a leg in, because of her age, they have to stop using the words “equity and inclusion,” because an age-lock on the likes of S-LP is neither equitable nor inclusive.
To be completely charitable for a moment, CTG gets a pass on anything at the Ahmanson. The place is a barn. Always was. It’s almost impossible to make that place pay out financially, and the fiscal strains on CTG are no secret.
The Ahmanson closes out its season with Mama Mia! Need I say more?
The barn also includes the jukebox musical And Juliet, a musical re-imagining of Shakespeare’s play in which the ingenue forgoes her suicide for rosier options. It was created by Swede Max Martin and Canadian David West Read (producer on Schitt’s Creek), and premiered in the UK at Manchester Opera House in 2019, before moving to the West End that same year. Three years later, it showed up in Toronto and on Broadway.
The Ahmanson lineup also includes Paranormal Activity, originally developed as an independent feature film in 2007, directed by Oren Peli and released in 2009. This indie flick (that cost $15,000 to make) became a franchise, moving to a partnership of Paramount and DreamWorks, with input from Lion’s Gate Productions, which represented the creator. The scare project extended into a digital comic book, a podcast, a web series, and a video game. UK’s Leeds Playhouse presented the first stage version in 2024, and we’re getting a variant on that. Paranormal Activity shouldn’t present any kind of barrier to young audiences that would preclude accomplished creators over the age of 60 in either of their two other venues.
Let’s move over to the Kirk Douglas Theatre: In partnership with the Jim Henson Company, CTG is presenting Puppet Up! — a foul-mouthed improvised puppet show that’s been around since 2006, when it did four shows at the The Improv, here in L.A. It was created by Brian Henson and Patrick Bristow (of The Groundlings). Perhaps the reason why CTG feels that this needs to be done now will emerge over time.
Also incoming from the UK, Roald Dahl’s The Enormous Crocodile: a British creation based on a story by the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. After winding its way through the animation and audio-book circuits, UK’s Leeds Playhouse created a musical-theater version in late 2023.
An entry with dynamic agit-prop possibilities is a 2019 one-man show by Manuel Oliver, Guac: My Son, My Hero, (2019), the story of a Venezuelan father grappling with the death of his son by gun violence at the Parkland High School shooting in Florida.
And at our Mark Taper Forum, two entries focus on Harlem: A co-production with Mus-Ique, Like It Like Harlem, which is a new musical about the origins of American music in East Harlem; and Ghana-American playwright Jocelyn Bioh Jaja’s African Hair Braiding. Set in a Harlem braiding salon, it investigates the intersection of hair styles and culture. It was commissioned by the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2018, premiered at the Manhattan Theatre Club late 2023, and enjoyed a brief but acclaimed six-week run on Broadway in late 2023. By the time it gets to the Taper, it will have played at Arena Stage, Berkeley Rep, Chicago Shakespeare Festival, and its Taper run will coincide with a booking at the La Jolla Playhouse.
Primary Trust is Eboni Booth’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a lonely 38-year-old man and his imaginary friend. It premiered in 2023 off-Broadway and has since received multiple productions and lavish praise.
And finally, Here Lies Love: This first Filipino musical to reach Broadway was created in 2012 as a collaboration between David Byrne and Fatboy Slim. Those artists initially conceived of it as a concept album based on the life of Imelda Marcos. It opened off-Broadway in 2013, and reached Broadway ten years later.
poster for “Like It Like Harlem” coming to the Taper
I send up a solemn prayer that all of these productions will make CTG a spectacular amount of money, so that they can start investing in local talent. Among the bromides from the promotional brunch: “We send L.A.’s stories out into the world.”
No, CTG, you don’t, if your upcoming season is any indication. But you could, and I hope someday you will. Someday soon. As you once did.
I fully understand and empathize with the fiscal nightmare that plagues our regional theaters at present. This makes it challenging even to have a mission, let alone to fulfill it.
Still, CTG is the pre-eminent theater producing entity in the region, with a lofty and enviable history. It needs to be more than a booking house for touring Broadway and UK shows. It needs to fulfill its role as the centerpiece theater of Los Angeles: This includes generating its own content, responding to what has become a horrific and brutal era in our country. Until it finds a way to balance its current penchant for imported frivolity with a more sober reckoning of what our world has become, with innovative, even comical, ways to reflect that on its stages, it will continue its slide from being an unserious organization into irrelevance.
