Taylor Mac's 'Hir': Just Your Average Kitchen-Sink, Genderqueer Family Drama
The performance artist-turned-playwright wrote his first naturalistic play about gender, family and trans issues, and along the way he fell in love with the form.
Category Archives: December 2014
Jason Phelps’s Banquet of Empathy
In ‘Feast of My Heart’ at Salvage Vanguard, eight playwrights and eight directors approach the theme of compassion. But don’t call it a holiday show.
Daniel MacIvor’s Lessons in Love and Dramaturgy
The Canadian playwright of “The Best Brothers” didn’t know he had a play in him about an annoying but ultimately lovable new best friend.
The Very Model of Modern Gilbert and Sullivan
The Hypocrites’ plucky, stripped-down takes on the G&S canon have become something of a sensation, and now they’re running them in a three-ring rep.
The Style and Substance of Tim Robbins’s Actors’ Gang
After three decades, the punk-rock/commedia troupe founded by a bunch of UCLA theatre grads has become an international force, and its star leader is still fighting the good fight.
Longform Improv Goes the Distance
More than an acting exercise or a comedy gimmick, improv may have grown into the legit theatrical genre some of its pioneers always envisioned.
Impro Raises the Theatrical Bar
How a troupe of L.A.-based improvisers reawakened one critic’s taste for the possibilities of live theatre.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Die Onstage
The distance from the Royal Shakespeare Company to the Improvised Shakespeare may not be as far as you think.
The Conspiracy Theory Theatre of ‘Danny Casolaro’ and ‘Superheroes’
Two new plays in two different cities raise new questions about shadowy government plots of the 1980s. Coincidence?
Gabriel Kahane, a Musical Theatre ‘Ambassador’
The composer’s new hybrid work takes on myths and truths of Los Angeles, as well as one of his recurring subjects: the musical-theatre form itself.
