A STATEMENT FROM CENTER THEATRE GROUP
Center Theatre Group (CTG)—along with arts organizations across the country—continues to feel the aftereffects of the pandemic and has been struggling to balance ever-increasing production costs with significantly reduced ticket revenue and donations that remain behind 2019 levels. We are still facing a crisis unlike any other in our fifty-six-year history. It is in this environment that we have to take the extraordinary step of pausing a significant portion of CTG programming beginning this summer and continuing through the 2023/24 Season, as well as taking significant restructuring measures to build a vibrant and sustainable organization that can navigate this new paradigm.
CTG will be announcing a 2023/24 Season in the Ahmanson Theatre and select programming at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. CTG will pause season programming at the Taper beginning this July. This pause will include the postponement of the world premiere of Fake It Until You Make It by Larissa FastHorse and directed by Michael John Garcés, which we plan to feature in a future season. Regrettably, we also need to cancel the previously announced tour of Cambodian Rock Band by Lauren Yee and directed by Chay Yew. Taper subscribers and ticket holders will be contacted directly with further details.
Pausing season programming at the Taper is a difficult but necessary decision that will impact artists and audiences; and is particularly painful for the talented and committed CTG staff who have dedicated so much to bringing great theatre to L.A. The Taper has long been recognized as the heart of CTG’s groundbreaking programming. However, though we will not be programming a season in the Taper this year, we hope during this time to be able to utilize this beloved theatre space in innovative, non-traditional ways through special events and community-centered programs starting as early as the fall. We will also continue to offer our robust Education & Community Partnerships programs, which reach thousands of students each year in all of our spaces and venues.
CTG’s mission is to serve the diverse audiences of Los Angeles. We look forward to collaborating with The Music Center, the County of Los Angeles, and the greater L.A. arts community to envision and create a stronger future. Our hope, in this moment, is that these challenging times will present an opportunity for us to come together and collectively write the next great chapter in CTG’s storied history. Most importantly, we need you, our community, to join us and support local theatres—both here in Los Angeles and across the country. With your substantial support and advocacy, we will not only return to the legendary Mark Taper Forum, but together build a vibrant future for a cornerstone of culture in L.A.
and the Center Theatre Group Board of Directors
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Frequently Asked Questions
Center Theatre Group recently announced a reduction of programming at the Mark Taper Forum for the year ahead. We’ve received a lot of questions from concerned and caring members of our community, and we want to share some of our most frequently asked questions for all interested parties. We’d like to express our sincere gratitude to the many members of our community who have reached out, sharing stories of their love for the Taper with the hope of seeing a full return there soon. We are with you! Thank you to all of those who support Center Theatre Group by buying a ticket or a subscription, and especially those able to go above and beyond with a gift to the theatre. Your continued patronage is so vital to all that we do.
If you have additional questions, please email info@ctgla.org.
Recently, CTG announced the postponement of the final scheduled production of the Mark Taper Forum 2022-23 season, Fake It Until You Make It by Larissa FastHorse, along with a pause in season programming at the Taper for 2023-24. This means we won’t have a full subscription season at the Taper, but we will continue to have special presentations at the venue throughout the season, including community gatherings, special limited performances, and more to be announced later this summer after our incoming Artistic Director Snehal Desai joins us.
The Ahmanson will continue to present shows next season with a season to be announced soon, and the Kirk Douglas Theatre will offer select programming through the calendar year. At some point near the beginning of the new year, a construction project adjacent to the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City is expected to begin, which will affect our ability to program at the Douglas while construction is underway. We will provide updates as we know more about this impending project.
We remain committed to our robust Education & Community Partnership programs, which include free Student Matinees, a new Digital Library for theatre education resources, ongoing programming in Boyle Heights libraries, our New Play Development programs like our L.A. Writers’ Workshop, and we seek to do all this work while maintaining the commitments we’ve made as an organization to anti-racism, equity, diversity, and inclusion.
The easiest thing you can do to help is buy a ticket to a show and continue to support live theatre, not just at Center Theatre Group, but throughout Los Angeles. Better yet, organize a theatre party. Subscribe. Buy tickets to our shows at the Ahmanson and the Douglas, and join us for our special events and community engagements. And if you have the means, now is the time to donate to Center Theatre Group, big or small, it will go a long way in helping us navigate this next year and hopefully reopen the Taper as soon as possible.
This is a particularly challenging and hard time for all theatres and CTG is not immune. What we’re seeing at CTG and elsewhere is a huge acceleration due to an unprecedented pandemic that not only stopped our work but changed audiences’ relationship to theatergoing.
Currently, Into the Woods just opened at the Ahmanson for a special exclusive engagement featuring much of the starry Broadway cast. The Los Angeles Times called it the best production of Into the Woods in our lifetime! Fetch Clay Make Man, directed by the legendary Debbie Allen, is playing at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, and has also been the recipient of fantastic reviews and word of mouth. Please support us by buying a ticket to these incredible productions. You don’t want to miss them! And coming later this summer, we are proud to present Our Dear Dead Drug Lord at the Douglas and Peter Pan Goes Wrong at the Ahmanson, fresh off its own successful Broadway run.
We hope to resume regular season programming at the Taper as soon as possible. We have only announced a pause for the 23/24 season.
You will be contacted directly by email if you had tickets to our upcoming show with options for how to handle your tickets. If you regularly subscribe to the Taper or Douglas, we will have some special offers for you coming up later in summer for our Ahmanson season, as well as for select non-subscription programming at the Douglas and, of course, our special programming at the Taper this coming year. If you would like to reach someone who can answer further questions, please contact Audience Services directly at 213.628.2772.