Mark Taper Forum/Center Theatre Group

Mark Taper Forum/Center Theatre Group, Los Angeles, one of the most important and enterprising theatre organizations in Los Angeles, a city which with several notable commercial theatres, including the James A. Doolittle Theatre (formerly the Huntington Hartford) and the Shubert Theatre, ranks as one of the most exciting theatrical areas in the United States outside New York. Center Theatre Group began with the founding of the Theatre Group in 1959 under the auspices of the University of California at Los Angeles and Artistic Director John Houseman. Its first full productions, at UCLA in 1960, were T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral and Chekhov's Three Sisters, both directed by Houseman. In 1966 the Theatre Group moved downtown to become the Center Theatre Group at the Music Center of Los Angeles. The non-profit organization now had a home in two theatres, the Ahmanson (2,071 seats) and the Mark Taper Forum. The Taper, which has a thrust stage and a semicircular auditorium seating 760, has no permanent company, but assembles excellent casts and designers from all over the country. Under Gordon Davidson (1933– ), its Artistic Director/Producer since 1965, the Taper has been responsible for the world premières of several important plays, including Daniel Berrigan's The Trial of the Catonville Nine (1970; NY, 1971), Michael Cristofer's The Shadow Box (1975; NY, 1977), and Mark Medoff's Children of a Lesser God (1980; NY, 1980; London, 1981), all of which were directed by Davidson himself. Other Taper programmes include Taper, Too, an intimate 90-seat theatre for new and experimental works; ITP (Improvisational Theatre Project), the Taper's theatre for young people; and Sundays at the Itchey Foot, the Taper's literary cabaret, a series of Sunday afternoon entertainments at the Itchey Foot Ristorante. New Theatre For Now, Taper Lab, and the Taper Lab New Work Festival are designed to help create and explore new work in progress.