Posted on August 15, 2008 at 11:21 am

Read the Playbill article here!

Taper’s 2009 Slate Has Donmar’s Parade, Deaf West Pippin, Chekhov, Culture Clash
By Kenneth Jones
14 Aug 2008

The 2009 season of Mark Taper Forum will include a Culture Clash world premiere, an acclaimed London production of Parade, a Pippin collaboration with Deaf West Theatre and more, Michael Ritchie, artistic director of Center Theatre Group, announced Aug. 14.

Newly renovated (at a cost of $30 million) and re-opening in August (with two more 2007-08 season shows to play there before the new year), the Taper will offer six 2009 productions, from Jan. 15, 2009-Jan. 24, 2010.

The acclaimed Donmar Warehouse London production of librettist Alfred Uhry and composer-lyricist Jason Robert Brown’s Parade will play Sept. 24-Nov. 15, 2009. The Tony Award-winning musical (Best Book, Best Score) was co-conceived by Harold Prince, and is directed and choreographed by Tony Award-winning choreographer Rob Ashford.

The Donmar Warehouse production, which opened in London in September 2007 with Ashford in his directorial debut, received seven 2008 Olivier Award nominations, including Best New Musical, Best Theatre Choreographer and Best Director. The Taper presentation will be the first time that the Donmar production — which includes revisions by Brown and Uhry — will be seen in America.

Parade is “the true story of the arrest, conviction and lynching of Leo Frank in post-Civil War Atlanta, Georgia. Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old factory worker, has been murdered on the day of the 1913 Confederate Memorial Day parade. Frank, the factory’s superintendent and a Jewish outsider, is immediately cast as a suspect. [Frank’s] wife, Lucille, passionately works for her husband’s release from jail but public hatred continues to rise to a fever pitch.”

The world premiere of the musical 13, for which Brown wrote the music and lyrics, was presented in the Taper’s 2006-2007 season and will be seen on Broadway in the fall.

Tickets for the Taper’s new season are currently available by subscription only. For information and to charge season tickets by phone, call Audience Services at (213) 972-4444 or visit www.CenterTheatreGroup.org.

*

Center Theatre Group, a non-profit theatre arts organization, is one of the largest and most active theatre companies in the nation, programming seasons year-round at the 740-seat Mark Taper Forum and the 1,600 to 2,000-seat Ahmanson Theatre at the Music Center of Los Angeles, and the 317-seat Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City.

The 2009 season will be the first full subscription season in the new Taper. The Taper actually re-opens this summer with John Guare’s The House of Blue Leaves, Aug. 30-Oct. 19, which is the third production of the Taper’s current season (two 2007-2008 Taper season plays were presented at the CTG/Ahmanson Theatre while the Taper was closed for renovation).