Artistic Director

Sheldon Epps has renewed his contract as artistic director of the Pasadena Playhouse, and Elizabeth Doran will join him as its new executive director after nearly four years as managing director of the Actors' Gang in Culver City. Epps has led the company since 1997 and helped see it through the 2010 financial crisis in which the playhouse closed for eight months, then emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. After shedding more than $1 million in debt, it has regained its balance with two successful seasons, winning good reviews for four of the five plays staged in 2011-12.

Vincent G. Dowling Actor, director gave Tom Hanks early break Actor and director Vincent G. Dowling, 83, who left behind a long career with Ireland's national theater to run a Shakespeare festival in Cleveland where he gave a young Tom Hanks an early break as an actor, died May 10 at a Boston hospital. The cause was complications from surgery, said his wife, Olwen. At 16, Dowling left school in his native Dublin to become an actor and in 1953 joined the Abbey Theatre, Ireland's national theater company.

Sybil Christopher, who died last week in New York at 83, was a noted theater producer and the founder of Arthur, a Manhattan hot spot that attracted a ritzy celebrity clientele during the 1960s. Even if she hadn't become famous as the first wife, and later, ex-wife, of actor Richard Burton, Christopher would still have occupied an important seat in New York high society and culture. "She was very hands on -- as hands on a mother as she was a producer. " said Kate Burton, her eldest daughter.

Two days after news broke that Nicola Formichetti was out as creative director at the French fashion house founded by Thierry Mugler , Italy's denim-based Diesel brand announced Thursday that it had tapped the social-media-savvy stylist and designer -- the one who notoriously styled Lady Gaga in a Franc Fernandez  dress made of raw meat -- to serve as artistic director. According to Diesel's announcement, Formichetti will "oversee all creative activities of the Diesel main line, including the areas of product, communications and interior design," as well as spearhead a project dubbed "Diesel Reboot," for which he plans "to mobilize an emerging global creative community to collaborate with him" via a dedicated tumblr page . Rumors of where Formichetti would go next had been swirling since reports surfaced Tuesday that he and Mugler had parted ways "by mutual agreement," and several hours ago he fittingly took to his Twitter account to confirm where he'd landed, posting in part: "Buongiorno!

LA JOLLA - The controversy over the casting of a new musical set in China with mostly non-Asians provoked a series of heated exchanges at a public forum arranged by the La Jolla Playhouse. The casting of “The Nightingale,” written by Tony-winning “Spring Awakening” collaborators Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater, has drawn sharp criticism. The musical, adapted from the Hans Christian Andersen story and set in ancient China, features a multicultural cast of 12, with two actors of Asian descent in supporting roles.

Are we really living in a post-racial world? It seems like we're back in the 1990s, when all hell broke loose on Broadway after the British star Jonathan Pryce was cast as the Eurasian lead in “Miss Saigon.” The “multicultural” casting of “The Nightingale” at La Jolla Playhouse has provoked a similar backlash, with leaders of the Asian American theater community decrying the way a work set in ancient China has been cast with only two...

"I always had an acting bug," Clara Mamet declared recently during a rehearsal break at the Ruskin Group Theatre in Santa Monica. The confession wasn't exactly startling, coming from the newest member of a growing family dynasty of writer-performers. Clara Mamet, the daughter of actress Rebecca Pidgeon and author David Mamet, grew up reading a play a day and watching her parents shuttle between stages and film sets. One of her half-siblings, Zosia Mamet, also is an actress, portraying Joyce Ramsay on "Mad Men"and the nerdy Shoshanna on "Girls,"HBO's new outer-borough retort to "Sex and the City.

MOSCOW - The artistic director of Russia's famed Bolshoi Ballet was attacked by an assailant who threw acid in his face, police and theater officials said Friday. The assault followed what a colleague said were several weeks of threats and intimidation. Sergei Filin was about to enter his house in downtown Moscow just before midnight Thursday when a masked stranger called him by his name and then flung the acid, Bolshoi's spokeswoman Yekaterina Novikova said. Filin, 42, suffered third-degree burns to his face and damage to the corneas of his eyes.

Two days after news broke that Nicola Formichetti was out as creative director at the French fashion house founded by Thierry Mugler , Italy's denim-based Diesel brand announced Thursday that it had tapped the social-media-savvy stylist and designer -- the one who notoriously styled Lady Gaga in a Franc Fernandez  dress made of raw meat -- to serve as artistic director. According to Diesel's announcement, Formichetti will "oversee all creative activities of the Diesel main line, including the areas of product, communications and interior design," as well as spearhead a project dubbed "Diesel Reboot," for which he plans "to mobilize an emerging global creative community to collaborate with him" via a dedicated tumblr page . Rumors of where Formichetti would go next had been swirling since reports surfaced Tuesday that he and Mugler had parted ways "by mutual agreement," and several hours ago he fittingly took to his Twitter account to confirm where he'd landed, posting in part: "Buongiorno!

Completing a directorial swap between California and Kentucky, Actors Theatre of Louisville announced Tuesday that Les Waters, associate artistic director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre since 2003, will be its next artistic director. Waters, a 59-year-old native of northern England, will start his new gig in March, succeeding Marc Masterson, who had led Actors Theatre for nearly 11 years before being grabbed earlier this year as the new artistic director of South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa.

MOSCOW - If spring is a season of rebirth, it seems appropriate, if coincidental, that the Bolshoi Ballet is hoping to move past its recent and ugly scandal with performances of Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring," a dance about the healing power of nature and art. The Bolshoi Theatre festival "The Age of the Rite of Spring - the Age of Modernism" opens this week without its artistic director, Sergei Filin, who had designed the three-week celebration, one...

Sybil Christopher, who died last week in New York at 83, was a noted theater producer and the founder of Arthur, a Manhattan hot spot that attracted a ritzy celebrity clientele during the 1960s. Even if she hadn't become famous as the first wife, and later, ex-wife, of actor Richard Burton, Christopher would still have occupied an important seat in New York high society and culture. "She was very hands on -- as hands on a mother as she was a producer. " said Kate Burton, her eldest daughter.

A leading Bolshoi dancer suspected of involvement in an acid attack on the theater's ballet chief would keep his job if acquitted by a court, the Bolshoi director said Tuesday. Anatoly Iksanov made the statement after 300 Bolshoi employees issued an open letter defending 29-year-old leading soloist Pavel Dmitrichenko, who was arrested last week on suspicion of organizing the Jan. 17 attack on artistic director Sergei Filin that severely burned his eyes and face. Dmitrichenko told a Moscow court last week that he gave his blessing to the attack, but never expected that the assailant would go as far as to throw acid in Filin's face.

Their new home has its own $2-million live theater. So it was fitting that the opening act Wednesday for actors and artists moving into the NoHo Senior Arts Colony was an improvisation. Operators of the 127-unit building had come prepared with a 4-foot-long pair of scissors for their grand opening, but they forgot to order up a ceremonial ribbon. "Do we have a ribbon? Do we have some caution tape? Anything?" asked Tim Carpenter, head of a nonprofit organization called EngAGE that will be in charge of arts classes at the $42-million Magnolia Boulevard development.

Princess Leia is onboard Carrie Fisher has said "yes," she will reprise her role as Princess Leia in "Episode VII" of the "Star Wars" franchise. Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford may be close behind. George Lucas says that three stars of the first trio of "Star Wars" films were in "final negotiations" months ago to appear in the film that Disney is preparing. They'd "already signed," he told Bloomberg in an article published Thursday, or were "pretty much in final stages" of negotiations.

Not to be all paranoid and everything, but is someone out to get me -- er, us? You have to admit, given the week's news, that Buffalo Springfield may have been on to something in the summer of '67: Paranoia strikes deep Into your life it will creep It starts when you're always afraid You step out of line, the man come and take you away. Don't believe me? Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) certainly does. He took one look at a letter from Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. -- in which Holder opined that under “an extraordinary circumstance” a president could order a drone strike to kill an American citizen on U.S. soil -- and promptly stalled the Senate's confirmation of John Brennan as CIA director on Wednesday with a daylong filibuster . I'll spare you the full 13 hours of Paul's talk-a-thon.

Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian filmmaker behind such sexually charged movies as "Last Tango in Paris" and "The Dreamers," will be the guest artistic director at this year's AFI Fest. In the role, the 72-year-old director-writer will screen four of his favorite films: the musical "42nd Street," the silent film "Sunrise" and the French films "La Regle du Jeu" and "Vivre Sa Vie. " The festival also will screen "Electric Chair," a behind-the-scenes look at how Bertolucci put together his upcoming film "Me and You" -- the first Italian-language film he has made in 30 years.

South Coast Repertory announced Thursday that it aims to name a new artistic director in time for the season that begins in September, succeeding artistic director Martin Benson and producing artistic director David Emmes, the co-founders who have led the acclaimed Costa Mesa theater since 1964. Benson, 72, and Emmes, 71, won't be retiring, the theater said in a statement, but will continue under the title of founding directors, advising their successor and taking "an active role" in finding and developing the new plays that have been South Coast's leading claim to fame.

MOSCOW - Police detained and questioned three people, including a principal Bolshoi Ballet dancer, as suspects in the acid attack that almost blinded Sergei Filin, the Bolshoi's artistic director, a crime that cast a shadow on Moscow's iconic company and exposed bitter infighting among its dancers. Principal dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko, detained Tuesday, was reportedly suspected of masterminding the attack. Police also brought in Yuri Zarutski, 35, believed to be Filin's assailant, as well as Andrei Lipatov, a man suspected of driving Zarutski to and from the attack, according to a statement on the Interior Ministry website.

The Watts Village Theater Company's signature for the past three years has been "Meet Me @Metro," a traveling show in which the small nonprofit company rode L.A.'s light rail system, with actors and audiences disembarking and reboarding for performances related to the history and issues of neighborhoods along the route. But after last summer's production along the Metro Gold Line from Union Station to the East L.A. Civic Center, artistic director Guillermo Aviles-Rodriguez's ambitions for "Meet Me @Metro" became a sore spot for the theater's board of directors.