'other desert cities' at the mark taper forum

Jon Robin Baitz's newest play was a huge hit on Broadway last season and was subsequently nominated for multiple Tony Awards including Best New Play. I'm happy to be part of the company as the understudy in the role of Brooke Wyeth. Robin Weigert plays the part, and she's just lovely in it. The entire production is aces and the cast features the talents of JoBeth Williams (who played my mother earlier this season in The Fall to Earth), Robert Foxworth, Jeannie Berlin and Michael Weston, directed by Robert Egan. For more information about the production, you can link to the program PDF here.

If you're in Los Angeles before January 6, I hope you'll make it to downtown L.A. for a performance and to enjoy the gorgeous Christmas tree alight in the plaza of the Music Center.

thanks, steven stanley

Anyone who's anyone in Los Angeles theater knows S.S. and his website, StageSceneLA. Independent of any publication, Steven attends hundreds of shows in L.A. every year and reports on what he sees. This past season, he was especially supportive of "Caught," attending the play eight times including opening and closing nights and revisiting his assessment of the experience with each cast change over the course of ten months. He also saw "Eccentricities of a Nightingale" which ran during the same time.

Steven is a passionate supporter of stagecraft in this theater town, and I'm grateful that he named me in one of his top honors this year.

"four places" nets 3 LADCC awards including best production

With Mark at Jerry's Famous Deli, 1:21 a.m.

The accolades for this gem of a play keep coming. On March 14, the team of "Four Places" received three more awards from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, including the biggie for Best Production. The award will sit alongside its kin from the Ovation and recently-announced Garland Awards. Folks have been asking me what I'll produce next, but I'm not ready to give details, yet. I'd like to revel in this one a bit longer. Thanks to everyone who supported this beautiful play, written by the wonderful Joel Drake Johnson, and congratulations to my fellow producers, John Perrin Flynn and Matthew Elkins and to director, dear friend and frequent collaborator Robin Larsen. So continuously proud of our cast, Tim Bagley, Anne Gee Byrd, Roxanne Hart, and Lisa Rothschiller Ragsdale on their win for Best Ensemble. A dream cast if ever there was one. And thank you to all of our designers and technical and house staff at Rogue Machine and publicist Judith Borne. You all did a marvelous job keeping that show running through its many extensions in 2010.

The party continued early into the next morning with heaps of corned beef and chicken soup at Jerry's Famous Deli on Ventura Blvd, in a booth not unlike the one in the play....

uh, yeah, there's a little bit of theater in L.A.

When my then-boyfriend-now-husband and I moved to L.A. from Chicago, I was pretty sure I was kissing legitimate theater goodbye. The rap about Los Angeles theater being all bad showcase projects had jaded me before I even landed at LAX. I'm sure I'd even muttered some of it myself, before I knew any better.

I'm not often this glad to have been 180 degrees off the mark. Los Angeles' theater community is as vibrant and varied, as talented and troubled as of that in any of the major market in the U.S. It's nowhere near perfect (another post on that when I'm less hung-over), but when it's good, it is top-notch. Chicago taught me my first lessons on living a life in the theater, and L.A. continues that schooling.

Congratulations to all of the nominees at last nights' Ovation Awards. Congratulations to all who toil and triumph, persevere and prosper onstage in the land where the screen would be king. Just being a part of this community makes me as proud as winning Ms. Ovation herself.

Congratulations to you wherever you live, so long as you make theater that truly means something to you.