KCRW's Opening the Curtain

Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins forces us to confront our racist past both outside and inside of the theater.

Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins forces us to confront our racist past both outside and inside of the theater.

Stop what you're doing, wake up your inner child, grab any other children in your life, and go buy tickets to 24th Street Theatre?s production of Man Covets Bird, a lyrical narrative about a young man who finds a bird and goes off to the big city in search of grown up adventures. There is no scary villain like the big, bad wolf. Instead, the obstacles are isolation, losing one's way, and the challenge of saying goodbye.

There may be a drought in Los Angeles, but Anthony says that the city is awash in great theater in October.

For the last decade, the Getty Villa in Malibu has welcomed a theater company to produce an ancient text in their outdoor amphitheater. This year's production -- Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles -- pairs LA playwright Luis Alfaro with Euripedes' classic text and Pasadena's Boston Court Theater.

Los Angeles playwright Luis Alfaro's new play Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles opens September 9 at the Getty Villa. Anthony Byrnes talks with Alfaro about his process, his inspiration, and the challenging balancing act between the Greeks and giving voice to his community.

Luka's Room is one of those plays where plot is key and it falls squarely in the Rogue Machine mold where a mid-play revelation turns everything you've seen on its head.

You can feel it slowly creeping towards us. Maybe it's the flurry of back to school emails, or the work projects that will finally begin "when everyone's back," or just a sense that a summer this nice can't last forever: fall is just around the corner. Before your schedule gets filled up getting back in the swing of things, I have three must-see theater picks from our presenting houses.

You can feel it slowly creeping towards us. Maybe it's the flurry of back to school emails, or the work projects that will finally begin "when everyone's back," or just a sense that a summer this nice can't last forever: fall is just around the corner. Before your schedule gets filled up getting back in the swing of things, I have three must-see theater picks from our presenting houses.

With the 50th anniversary of the Watts Riots, the first anniversary of Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, the murders in South Carolina, the seemingly endless, and senseless, litany of unarmed black men dying at the hands of white police -- with all of this -- it's hard to imagine a more timely subject for the theater to tackle than American racism.

With the 50th anniversary of the Watts Riots, the first anniversary of Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, the murders in South Carolina, the seemingly endless, and senseless, litany of unarmed black men dying at the hands of white police -- with all of this -- it's hard to imagine a more timely subject for the theater to tackle than American racism.

The latest production at the Mark Taper Forum, Bent is a 'Taper play,' one connected to our moment and urged, if only implicitly, towards inclusion and social justice. 

Think about home: the home of childhood. The home where you grew up. The home where your mother was. The home you had to leave.  This summer there are a trio of plays in Los Angeles that you shouldn't miss that are all set there - in that distant and complicated place called home.

This is one of those plays that?ll stick with you, in part because, true to Rogue Machine's reputation, the acting is wonderful, the casting spot on. It?s the decisions that?ll shake you and leave you with profound questions: why are we here? What makes life meaningful? It's one of those plays that's an argument for the theater: that allows us to tackle these dilemmas together as a community. What could be better?

At its core, The False Servant is a Commedia-inspired, biting romantic comedy with a cross-dresser as a catalyst.