L.A. Theatre Works brings you the LATW Podcast series, hosted by Susan Loewenberg and featuring some of our most outstanding performances, along with one-of-a-kind interviews and extras.
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Agnes of God
By: John Pielmeier
Directed by: Nancy Malone
Starring: Barbara Bain, Emily Bergl, Harriet Harris
In this contemporary murder mystery, set within the confines of a convent, Agnes is a devout, innocent young nun accused of infanticide. As a psychiatrist, herself a lapsed Catholic, and the Mother Superior struggle over Agnes' fate, the play plunges deeply into the mystery of faith and the consequence of truth. Includes an interview with Dr. Kevin Orlin Johnson, author of Why Do Catholics Do That.
Recorded by a live audience at the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles in October of 1999.
Becky Shaw
By: Gina Gionfriddo
Directed by: Bart DeLorenzo
Starring: Emily Bergl, Matt Letscher, Marsha Mason, Mandy Siegfried, Josh Stamberg
Suzanna sets up Max, her best friend, on a blind date with her husband's co-worker, the mysterious Becky Shaw. What follows is a series of cataclysmic events that forever changes all their lives. Mixing sharp wit and humor with the taut suspense of a psychological thriller, Becky Shaw is a comedy of romantic errors—and a Pulitzer Prize finalist—that will keep you guessing.
Recorded before a live audience at the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles in February of 2011.
Boy
By: Anna Ziegler
Directed by: Debbie Devine
Starring: Sarah Drew, John Getz, Travis Johns, Amy Pietz, Bobby Steggert
Anna Ziegler’s Boy is a powerful statement about gender identity and the mystery of what makes us who we are. After a baby boy is seriously injured in an accident, a doctor persuades his parents to raise the child as a girl. As the child grows up, the child—known as Samantha and Adam at different times—faces an extraordinary challenge to carve out a place in the world.
Recorded in Los Angeles before a live audience at The James Bridges Theater, UCLA in July of 2016.
Boy is part of L.A. Theatre Works’ Relativity Series featuring science-themed plays. Major funding for the Relativity Series is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, to enhance public understanding of science and technology in the modern world.
Completeness
By: Itamar Moses
Directed by: Stephen Sachs
Starring: Jason Ritter, Mandy Siegfried, André Sogliuzzo, Mia Barron
A play about love between gun-shy young scientists. Just how does a computer scientist romance a molecular biologist? Elliot offers to build a computer program to help Molly with her latest research project, but they discover that love just might be the winning formula—if they can only move beyond their fear and past heartbreak.
Includes a conversation with Dan Rockmore, the Chair of the Department of Mathematics and a Professor of Computer Science at Dartmouth College.
Recorded in Los Angeles before a live audience at The James Bridges Theater, UCLA, in October of 2011.
Completeness is part of L.A. Theatre Works’ Relativity Series featuring science-themed plays. Major funding for the Relativity Series is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to enhance public understanding of science and technology in the modern world.
Fabulation (or the Re-Education of Undine)
By: Lynn Nottage
Directed by: Stuart K. Robinson
Starring: Charlayne Woodard
Knocked-up and seriously broke, a successful publicist is plunged into a topsy-turvy world of welfare mothers and drug addicts, and forced to confront the family she left behind. Fabulation is Lynn Nottage’s darkly comic rags-to-riches-to-rags tale of falling down and reaching up to find the goodness within.
Recorded before a live audience at the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles in October of 2004.
The Heiress
By: Ruth Goetz, Augustus Goetz
Directed by: Nick Olcott
Starring: Amy Irving, Chris Noth
Ruth and Augustus Goetz’s Tony® Award-winning play is based on the novel Washington Square by Henry James. Set in New York City in 1850, the play centers on the painfully shy Catherine and her austere father. When Catherine falls in love with a handsome suitor, her father threatens to disinherit her, convinced that the young man could only be interested in Catherine’s fortune. A co-production with The Smithsonian Associates and Voice of America.
Recorded before a live audience at the Voice of America, Washington D.C. in February 0f 1998.
Molly Sweeney
By: Brian Friel
Directed by: Kyle Donnelly
Starring: Jenny Bacon, Robert Brueller, Rick Snyder
Molly and Frank are a married couple who live in a remote Irish village. Molly has been blind since infancy, but now a surgeon—Mr. Rice—believes he may be able to restore her sight. In a series of interwoven monologues, Brian Friel takes us into the minds of three people with very different expectations of what will happen when Molly regains her vision. A Steppenwolf Theatre Company co-production. Original music by Rob Milburn.
Recorded before a live audience at the DoubleTree Suites, Santa Monica in April of 1997.
The Motherf**ker With The Hat
By: Stephen Adly Guirgis
Directed by: Jace Alexander
Starring: Chris Rock, Bobby Cannavale, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Annabella Sciorra, Yul Vazquez
Addiction, pain, and explosive tempers are not exactly what you’d call the ingredients for a side-splitting comedy. Yet Steven Adly Guirgis has created a profane, hilarious masterpiece that earned a “hatful” of theatrical accolades in 2011, including a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play for Bobby Cannavale.
Recorded in Los Angeles before a live audience at The James Bridges Theater, UCLA in January of 2013.
Steel Magnolias
By: Robert Harling
Directed by: Jessica Kubzansky
Starring: Shannon Holt, Jeanie Hackett, Brittany Snow, Frances Fisher, Jocelyn Towne, Amy Pietz
Within the walls of Truvy’s beauty shop are six women whose lives increasingly hinge on the existence of one another. Together, they absorb the passing seasons, just like the weathered wooden structure of the salon “home” that they share.
Recorded in Los Angeles before a live audience at The James Bridges Theater, UCLA in October of 2015.
Things You Shouldn't Say Past Midnight
By: Peter Ackerman
Directed by: Gordon Hunt
Starring: Jeffrey Donovan, Richard Kind, Mandy Siegried, Alan Mandell, Clea Lewis, Joey Slotnick
Peter Ackerman’s bedroom farce about three couples who say what they oughtn’t, do what they shouldn’t, and deliver terrific one-liners while doing it! The funniest play we have ever recorded!
Recorded before a live audience at the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles in March of 2001.
This is Our Youth
By: Kenneth Lonergan
Directed by: Mark Brokaw
Starring: Josh Hamilton, Mark Ruffalo, Missy Yager
In 1982, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, three pot-smoking teenagers are resoundingly rejecting the 1960’s ideals of their affluent parents. In hilarious and bittersweet detail, This is Our Youth follows forty-eight turbulent hours in the lives of three very lost souls at the dawn of the Reagan Era. Starring Mark Ruffalo, Josh Hamilton, and Missy Yager—the original cast was reunited for the L.A. Theatre Works performance of Kenneth Lonergan’s This is Our Youth.
Includes an interview with playwright Kenneth Lonergan, director Mark Brokaw, and the three actors who originated the roles of Warren, Dennis, and Jessica—Mark Ruffalo, Josh Hamilton, and Missy Yager.
Recorded before a live audience at the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles in March of 2009.
Top Secret
By: Geoffrey Cowan and Leroy Aarons
Directed by: John Rubinstein
Starring: Diane Adair, Bo Foxworth, John Getz, James Gleason, Gregory Harrison, John Heard, Raphael Sbarge, Russell Soder, Susan Sullivan, Peter Van Norden, Tom Virtue, Geoffrey Wade
Geoffrey Cowan and Leroy Aarons’ timely docudrama about The Washington Post’s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, a top secret study documenting U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The subsequent trial tested the parameters of the First Amendment, pitting the public’s right to know against the government’s desire for secrecy.
Recorded before a live audience at the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles in March of 2008.