Center Theatre Group in crisis: Inside the Mark Taper Forum’s closure and the upheaval in L.A. arts
Amid a financial crisis, Los Angeles’ Center Theatre Group has announced layoffs and is halting some already-announced productions on its three stages. Programming at the Ahmanson Theatre will continue. Programming at Culver City’s Kirk Douglas Theatre will be limited.
But the Mark Taper Forum, where CTG takes its biggest risks and enjoys its greatest rewards, will experience a long dramatic pause. The Taper will close after “A Transparent Musical” concludes its run on June 25 and is expected to remain dark through at least the 2023-24 season.
The pause in programming at the Taper is a particularly big blow to women playwrights and playwrights of color following a firestorm of criticism about gender inequality. After playwright Jeremy O. Harris threatened to pull his Tony-winning “Slave Play” from the Taper stage after mounting complaints in 2021, CTG vowed to program the Taper’s entire 2022-23 season with plays written by women-identifying or nonbinary playwrights, the majority of whom would be BIPOC artists. That season is now cut short.
The first show affected by the Taper’s closure is the world premiere of “Fake It Until You Make It” by playwright Larissa FastHorse, who was set to be the first Native American writer with a main stage production at the theater.
The layoffs and programming changes arrive a month before Snehal Desai, CTG’s incoming artistic director, takes charge of the nonprofit. “I believe artistic directors are creatives, and I’m going to have to creatively figure out how to fashion a season within the resources that I have,” Desai told The Times shortly after his hiring was announced. “That’s the first charge.”
Center Theatre Group announced that it is indefinitely halting programming at the Mark Taper Forum, L.A.’s flagship theater. CEO Meghan Pressman and incoming artistic director Snehal Desai explain their rationale for the controversial decision.
The titan of L.A. theater, Center Theatre Group, is shutting down the Mark Taper Forum for at least a year to save money. Will other theaters follow?
My new play, “Fake It Until You Make It,” commissioned by Center Theatre Group, was about to go into production at their Mark Taper Forum when the organization indefinitely “paused” Taper programming. Real damage has been done to L.A. communities.
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Facing a budget shortfall of millions of dollars, Center Theatre Group on Thursday announced that it will lay off about 10% of its full-time staff and pause season programming at Mark Taper Forum after “Transparent” concludes its run on June 25.
