John Guare ( / ɡ ɛ r / GERR ; born February 5, 1938) is an American playwright and screenwriter. He is best known as the author of The House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation .
29-664: Center Theatre Group is a non-profit arts organization located in Los Angeles, California. It is one of the largest theatre companies in the nation, programming subscription seasons year-round at the Mark Taper Forum , the Ahmanson Theatre and the Kirk Douglas Theatre . Center Theatre Group is led by Artistic Director Snehal Desai and Managing Director/CEO Meghan Pressman. Charles Dillingham
58-601: A "Taper play"; one which is provocative, political and liberal. The Taper has been host to world premiere productions of many notable plays including The Shadow Box (1975), Zoot Suit (1978), Children of a Lesser God (1979), Neil Simon 's I Ought To Be In Pictures (1980), Lanford Wilson 's Burn This (1987), Jelly's Last Jam (1991), Angels in America (1992), Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (1994), David Henry Hwang 's revised version of Flower Drum Song (2001), August Wilson 's Radio Golf (2005) and
87-402: A 2002 Tony Award nomination, Book of a Musical. His play A Free Man of Color was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama . The Pulitzer citation said: "An audacious play spread across a large historical canvas, dealing with serious subjects while retaining a playful intellectual buoyancy." Guare wrote the screenplay for Louis Malle 's film Atlantic City (1980), for which he
116-725: A Musical. He wrote the songs for Landscape of the Body . Guare wrote narration for Psyche , a tone poem by César Franck , which premiered at Avery Fisher Hall in October 1997, conducted by Kurt Masur with the New York Philharmonic . He revised the book (uncredited) of the Cole Porter musical comedy Kiss Me, Kate for its 1999 Broadway revival. He wrote the book for the musical Sweet Smell of Success , which premiered on Broadway in 2002, for which he received
145-748: A Solo , produced at the Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival in January to March 1977, with a cast that featured Joel Grey, Anne Jackson, Madeline Kahn, and Sigourney Weaver. Bosoms and Neglect was produced on Broadway in 1979, and revived Off-Broadway in 1998 by the Signature Theatre Company. Moon Over Miami was produced at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 1987 and then at
174-491: A curving, abalone wall by Tony Duquette . Charles Moore described Becket's design for the Music Center as "Late Imperial Depression-Style cake". Becket designed the building not knowing who would use it. Various proposals included chamber music concerts, or even grand jury meetings. Ultimately Dorothy Chandler , the Los Angeles cultural leader, convinced Center Theater Group artistic director Gordon Davidson to use
203-679: A domestic drama by turns wildly comic and despairingly poignant, premiered Off-Broadway in 1971 at the Truck and Warehouse Theatre. It was revived Off-Broadway at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in 1986 before transferring to Broadway later in 1986. The play was revived on Broadway in 2011, starring Ben Stiller , whose mother, Anne Meara , had appeared in the 1971 production. According to Marilyn Stasio writing in Variety
232-491: A modern lighting grid, and enlarging the load-in door to 6 feet by 9 feet. A wardrobe room was constructed in the space previously occupied by the air-conditioning equipment. The auditorium was renamed the Amelia Taper Auditorium after a $ 2 million gift from the S. Mark Taper Foundation. The Taper has presented innovative plays since its 1967-opening of The Devils from playwright John Whiting about
261-519: A year later. A $ 30-million renovation of the Taper led by the Los Angeles firm Rios Clementi Hale Studios began in July 2007 after the 2006/2007 season. The theater reopened on August 30, 2008, for the first preview of John Guare 's The House of Blue Leaves . The Taper, as originally designed, was a case study in what happens when a theater is built without a tenant in mind. Fitting the auditorium into
290-408: Is Guare's peculiar aptitude for exposing these grandiose lies of ours that makes his work so magical. Gregory Mosher , formerly the artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater, said that Guare, "along with David Mamet, Sam Shepard and a handful of other dramatists, reshaped the face of contemporary American theater over the past quarter century." All plays for the stage unless otherwise noted. He
319-697: Is similar in design concept and size to the Dallas Theatre Center , designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and the original Tyrone Guthrie Theatre , in Minneapolis . On October 8, 1993, a memorial was held in the actor Richard Jordan 's honor. It was the same day his final movie Gettysburg was released. In June 2023 the Center Theatre Group announced an indefinite pause of shows at the Mark Taper Forum. It re-opened
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#1732772323921348-632: The Yale School of Drama , graduating in 1962 with a M.F.A in Playwriting. Under the direction of Georgetown's Donn B. Murphy , his play The Toadstool Boy , about a country singer's quest for fame, won first place in the District of Columbia Recreation Department's One-Act-Play competition. In 1960, the Mask and Bauble presented The Thirties Girl, a musical for which Guare did the book, much of
377-693: The Emperor and Empress of Japan. Guare has also been involved with musical theatre. His libretto with Mel Shapiro for the musical Two Gentlemen of Verona was a success when it premiered in 1971 and was revived in 2005 at the Public Theater 's Shakespeare in the Park . It won the two men the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical as well as the Tony Award for best Book of
406-680: The Forum, the neighboring Ahmanson Theatre and the Kirk Douglas Theatre are all operated by the Center Theatre Group . The Mark Taper Forum opened in 1967 as part of the Los Angeles Music Center, the West Coast equivalent of Lincoln Center , designed by Los Angeles architect Welton Becket and Associates . Peter Kiewit and Sons (now Kiewit Corporation ) was the builder. The dedication took place on April 9, 1967, at an event attended by Governor Ronald Reagan. The smallest of
435-653: The New Plays Reading Room Series at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts and teaches in the Playwriting department at the Yale School of Drama . In his foreword to a collection of Guare's plays, Louis Malle wrote: Guare practices a humor that is synonymous with lucidity, exploding genre and clichés, taking us to the core of human suffering: the awareness of corruption in our own bodies, death circling in. We try to fight it all by creating various mythologies, and it
464-580: The Sun was presented on Broadway at the Vivian Beaumont Theater from February 22, 1992, to April 19, 1992, and was nominated for the 1992 Tony Award, Best Play. Lake Hollywood (1999) and A Few Stout Individuals (2002) both received their world premieres at Signature Theatre. A Few Stout Individuals is set in nineteenth century America, with a cast of characters that includes Ulysses S. Grant , Mark Twain , soprano Adelina Patti and
493-684: The Taper. For 38 years, Davidson was the artistic director of Center Theater Group, which also ran the Ahmanson and eventually the Kirk Douglas Theater in Culver City. The Taper became known for its thrust stage, jutting into a classical, semicircular amphitheater, which creates an especially intimate relationship between audience and performer. The building bears an architectural resemblance to Carousel Theatre at Disneyland , also designed by Welton Becket and Associates in 1967. It
522-535: The Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven in February 1989. Guare's cycle of plays on nineteenth-century America are: Gardenia (1982) Lydie Breeze (1982) and Women and Water (1985). The so-called Lydie Breeze series, also called the "Nantucket" series, "follows a group of idealistic 19th century characters and their attempts to create a utopian society. " Six Degrees of Separation
551-470: The circular building left a tiny backstage and only a narrow, curved hallway for a lobby. The renovation updated nearly everything that was not concrete and did not disrupt the building's circular shape. To create a larger main lobby, the designers reduced the ticket booth and removed about 30 parking spaces from the lower-level garage to move the restrooms below ground as part of a stylized lounge with gold, curved couches and mosaics of mirrored tiles that fit
580-513: The era in which the building was designed. The theater seats are wider and total capacity was reduced from 745 to 739. The entrance was moved to the plaza level and an elevator added to increase the accessibility of the theater. The original theater also had very few women's restrooms opening with four women's stalls for a 750-seat hall. The renovation increased the number of stalls to 16. Backstage, changes included removing an outdated stage "treadmill" and old air-conditioning equipment, installing
609-719: The music and the lyrics, again under Murphy's tutelage. Set in Hollywood's turbulent 1920s, it deals with the dethronement of a reigning diva by a fresh-faced starlet. Guare's early plays, mostly comic one-acts exhibiting a flair for the absurd, include To Wally Pantoni, We Leave a Credenza , produced at Caffe Cino in 1965 and Muzeeka (1968). Cop-Out premiered on Broadway at the Cort Theatre on April 7, 1969, and closed on April 12, 1969, as part of two one-act plays, including Home Fires . Cop-Out starred Linda Lavin and Ron Leibman . The House of Blue Leaves ,
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#1732772323921638-536: The musical 13 (2007). In all, the theater has 5 Tony Awards to its credit. John Guare He was raised in Jackson Heights, Queens . In 1949, his father suffered a heart attack and subsequently moved the family to Ellenville, New York , while he recovered. His father's relatives lived there, making it an idyllic experience for him. Guare did not regularly attend school in Ellenville because
667-461: The play "sets the bar for smart comic lunacy." Chaucer in Rome , "said to be a sequel of sorts to ... 'The House of Blue Leaves' and includ[ing] the son of one of the earlier play's characters" received its world premiere at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in July 1999 and was produced Off-Broadway in 2001 at Lincoln Center Theater 's Newhouse Theater. Later plays include Marco Polo Sings
696-492: The school's daily practices were not in keeping with the recommendations of the Catholic Church, causing his father to suspect the school had communist leanings. Instead of attending school, Guare was assigned home study and took exams intermittently, which allowed him time to go to the movies and see all the hits of the time. This had a lasting influence on Guare and his career. He attended Georgetown University and
725-528: The sexual fantasies of a 17th-century priest and a sexually repressed nun. The play received a great deal of protest from local religious leaders and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors , although the production continued. The production of such plays as Murderous Angels , The Dream on Monkey Mountain , Children of a Lesser God , Savages , The Shadow Box , The Kentucky Cycle and Angels in America has established definition of
754-580: The three venues, the Taper is flanked by the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the Ahmanson Theatre on the Music Center Plaza. Becket designed the center in the style of New Formalism , which emphasized geometric shapes. The perfectly circular Taper is considered one of his best works, featuring a distinctive decorated drum of a design with its exterior wrapped in a lacy precast relief by Jacques Overhoff . The lobby has
783-805: Was nominated for an Oscar. He was an original member in 1965 of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford , Connecticut and Resident Playwright at the New York Shakespeare Festival , during which time he wrote Landscape of the Body , Rich and Famous , and Marco Polo Sings a Solo . He is a council member of the Dramatists Guild . He is Co-Executive Editor of the Lincoln Center Theater Review , which he founded in 1987. He co-produces
812-573: Was originally produced Off-Broadway by Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in June 1990. Six Degrees of Separation is an intricately plotted comedy of manners about an African-American confidence man who poses as the son of film star Sidney Poitier . It has been the most highly praised and widely produced of Guare's full-length plays. It was made into a film in 1993, starring Stockard Channing and Will Smith . Four Baboons Adoring
841-764: Was the Managing Director of the Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles from 1991 through, June 30, 2011. 34°3′28.84″N 118°14′51.2″W / 34.0580111°N 118.247556°W / 34.0580111; -118.247556 Mark Taper Forum The Mark Taper Forum is a 739-seat thrust stage at the Los Angeles Music Center designed by Welton Becket and Associates on the Bunker Hill section of Downtown Los Angeles . Named for real estate developer Mark Taper ,
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