All stories by Bill Raden on BroadwayStars

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Why Is Theater Not Diverse Enough? SoCal's Stage Leaders Discuss by Bill Raden

The artistic directors of Southern California's regional theater powerhouses came together Monday night on the Pasadena Playhouse stage for what was billed as a panel discussion "on the stat…

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 03:25PM
Monday, November 11, 2013

Young Jean Lee's Play Shows How Life Is Terrible and Stars a 'Terrible' Performer -- Herself by Bill Raden

"The thing that is so amazing about music," exclaims the excited voice over the phone, "is I feel that it is so much more immediate. ... It's just like ... I don't know, it's just like, I me…

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 05:02PM
Tuesday, October 22, 2013

A Haunted House That Aspires to Be Intelligent, Truly Interactive Theater by Bill Raden

At Silver Lake's old Bethany Presbyterian Church on a recent Thursday night, a gathering of well turned out Angelinos murmur with nervous anticipation. A sudden hush falls over the room as …

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 11:00AM
Wednesday, September 25, 2013

An Experimental Play About Our Health Care System by Bill Raden

In the new theater production Hospital, Wunderbaum, the irreverently incisive Rotterdam theater collective, whose work has wittily examined the abrasive interstices between culture and the l…

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 04:25PM
Monday, September 23, 2013

A Theater Festival Resurrects Broadway Movie Palaces by Bill Raden

In 2011, much of the inaugural edition of Radar L.A. -- the biennial festival of new works by renowned international and L.A.-based theater companies and artists -- was centered around downt…

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 04:36PM
Friday, September 20, 2013

Radar L.A. Festival: 5 Most Promising Shows by Bill Raden

For theater-habituated Angelenos with an appetite for the cutting edge, the Radar L.A. Festival is more than the mere gathering of "the world's most influential performing ensembles" and "in…

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 10:30AM
Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Dee Smith's Play Wasn't Very Good. So She Fired the Director and Started Over by Bill Raden

When it comes to putting up a show, Los Angeles' small theater community isn't generally known for its readiness to give a play a second chance. The custom here is to roll the dice, stoicall…

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 04:37PM
Monday, June 24, 2013

Mary, Queen of Scots and Indie Rock Star by Bill Raden

Back in 2007, stage director Becca Wolff and composer Byron Kahr got to talking. They had just been to see Spring Awakening, the smash, musical Broadway reworking of the 1891 Frank Wedekind …

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 03:53PM
Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Jaime Robledo, the Poor Man's Julie Taymor by Bill Raden

See also: *Our Latest Theater Reviews Inside East Hollywood's Sacred Fools Theatre on a recent Sunday afternoon, actor Donal Thoms-Capello is capering through a bizarre step of percussive,…

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 04:46PM
Tuesday, June 4, 2013

A New Play About the Scandalous Astronaut Lisa Nowak by Bill Raden

"I've come to believe that all theater is 'experimental theater,'" declares Los Angeles stage auteur Joseph Tepperman. "But I don't know -- there's a problem with using that word because the…

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 12:00PM
Friday, May 31, 2013

Silver Lake's Moving Arts Celebrates 20th Anniversary By Bringing Back 20 of Its Plays by Bill Raden

Theater is ephemeral. No matter how transformative or transcendent or thrillingly hair-raising a particular production might be, unlike a TV show or a movie or a YouTube clip, once the final…

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 12:00PM
Monday, April 15, 2013

Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally Celebrate 10 Years Together By Returning to Where They Met: the Stage by Bill Raden

See also: *Our Latest Theater Reviews *12 Comedy Acts to Watch in 2013 Ask someone to define "Hollywood marriage" -- as in the working-actor-to-working-actor kind -- and chances are the ans…

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 07:14PM
Wednesday, March 27, 2013

A New Play About...LAUSD School Lunch? by Bill Raden

Cornerstone Theatre Company does not believe in art for art's sake. Nor, for that matter, do they believe in merely putting on plays. At least not in the marbled-restroom, big-ticket-opulent…

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 06:48PM
Tuesday, March 26, 2013

L.A.'s Premiere LGBT Stage Celebrates 30th Anniversary, As Its New Artistic Directors Discuss the Future of Queer Theater by Bill Raden

Only in Los Angeles could you expect to find a star-studded gala in a shopping center parking structure. But that's because only Burbank would think of squeezing its premiere legitimate stag…

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 02:25PM
Saturday, March 9, 2013

Mike Tyson's One-Man Show at the Pantages Theater Is Surprisingly Good by Bill Raden

See also: *More theater reviews Former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world Mike Tyson scored one of the more impressive comebacks of his colorful career last night. That he did so …

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 02:39PM
Friday, February 22, 2013

Jason Reitman Directed an All-Female Glengarry Glen Ross Reading at LACMA Last Night by Bill Raden

When former New York Times (and ex-LA Weekly) movie critic Elvis Mitchell took over LACMA's film curatorship two years ago -- with Film Independent, which runs the L.A. Film Festival and the…

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 07:43PM
Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Alex Lyras Talks About Performing a Solo Show About iPhones That Created a Scandal for Its Original Author, Mike Daisey by Bill Raden

See also: *Our Latest Theater Reviews It did not take Alex Lyras long to realize that there was something uniquely different about performing Mike Daisey's solo play The Agony and Ecstasy …

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 02:00PM

Director Richard Maxwell Has Amazed and Confused New York Theater Audiences for a Decade. Now He Makes His L.A. Debut by Bill Raden

Richard Maxwell confesses that he had never even heard of Eugene O'Neill's S.S. Glencairn plays prior to getting a fateful call in 2011 -- "totally out of the blue" -- from the acclaimed Woo…

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 01:00PM
Tuesday, February 5, 2013

John Lithgow Discusses The Magistrate, His Hit British Play You Can Watch in an L.A. Movie Theater by Bill Raden

It has been said that actors are born, not made. And though it may be more accurate to say that they are born and then made, there are certain performers whose will to act seems to be singul…

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 03:14PM
Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Children's Plays Are Naive and Sappy. 24th Street Theatre Is Bringing Them to the Dark Side by Bill Raden

See also: *Debbie Devine and Jay McAdams profiled in our People Issue Take a look at what passes for children's theater in this country and one might well conclude that childhood constitut…

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 11:00AM
Wednesday, December 26, 2012

What Are Those Weird Ads for the Broad Stage All About? by Bill Raden

In recent weeks, a baffling teaser ad that has been running in print and on the sides of Metro buses around town has been provoking "Wtf!?" bewilderment from readers of the Los Angeles Times…

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 01:00PM
Friday, December 21, 2012

An L.A. Theater Company Moves Into...a Retirement Community? by Bill Raden

See also: *Our Latest Theater Reviews *5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week Whatever else it might entail, making live theater begins with real estate -- a plot of land and a building to …

SOURCE: LA Weekly at 01:00PM

All that Chat

2023-2024 BROADWAY SEASON
May 30, 2023: Grey House - Lyceum Theatre
Jun 26, 2023: Just For Us - Hudson Theatre
Jul 24, 2023: The Cottage - Hayes Theater
Nov 16, 2023: Spamalot - St. James Theatre
Dec 18, 2023: Appropriate - Hayes Theater
Mar 07, 2024: Doubt - Todd Haimes Theatre
Apr 14, 2024: Lempicka - Longacre Theatre
Apr 17, 2024: The Wiz - Marquis Theatre
Apr 18, 2024: Suffs - Music Box Theatre
Apr 25, 2024: Mother Play - Hayes Theater
Jun 10, 2024: The Drama Desk Awards