Kirk Douglas Theatre

'I've Never Been So Happy' Where: Kirk Douglas Theatre 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Fridays; 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays; through Oct. 23 Price: $20-$30 Contact: (213) 628-2772 or http://www.centertheatregroup.org Running time: 2 hours, 14 minutes

There's a lot more to culture in the Lone Star state than dry rub barbecue, the Dallas Cowboys and the collected writings of Rick Perry. For starters, there's the Rude Mechs, although rubes from cow towns like New York and L.A. may find it hard to comprehend that an ensemble-based theater company with the conceptual savvy of a semiotics professor and the physical explosiveness of the Sex Pistols could call Austin its hometown. Even now, roughly 17 years after a handful of renegades formed the collaborative then known as the Rude Mechanicals, company members and their co-conspirators still get dubious stares when they reveal their profession to Texans and non-Texans alike.

"I'm in a play called 'This.' " "OK, what is it called?" "No, no, it's called 'This.' " "Yes? What? It's called what?" With a lighthearted laugh, Eisa Davis says she often encounters this response when revealing that she is in a new production of "This," which recently opened at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. The perplexity may be fitting for the universe playwright Melissa James Gibson has created: a world of confusion in which close friends enter a vulnerable time of unforeseen circumstances testing their expectations -- a time also known as middle age. Davis' work as an actor and a playwright has contributed to a textured career.

At a youthful 55, Roger Guenveur Smith is at least a few decades too old to carry baseball cards in his wallet, but the one he takes out to show has a special meaning. The memories he discusses on the outdoor patio of an Echo Park coffee shop are not serene: The card — which he found at a swap meet a few years ago — is a replacement for one he burned more than 40 years ago. On the card is Juan Marichal — then a San Francisco Giants pitcher — who, one summer day in 1965, at bat in the third inning of a close game, hauled off and hit Dodgers catcher John Roseboro, who he thought had provoked him. He hit Roseboro hard, with his bat, in the head, three times — enough to draw blood from a 2-inch gash.

As you pass through the Center Theatre Group's Kirk Douglas Theatre, on your way into Martin McDonagh's Irish tragicomedy "The Cripple of Inishmaan," you may be startled by the comfy sofas, the flattering amber lighting and the personable young man who urges you to take your Guinness into the house. Right, you think. They'll really let you waltz past the usher with a brimming pint. But he's serious. You feel so hip, and so ineffably Irish. The CTG's other two theaters, the Ahmanson and the Mark Taper, are located downtown at the Music Center.

In a major step toward the return of the Jazz Bakery, the itinerant jazz venue has found a new home in downtown Culver City and is moving forward with ambitious plans for the space. This week the Bakery, which has been homeless since 2009, has seen the convergence of two key elements that began coming together last summer. The first was a $2-million seed grant from the Annenberg Foundation, and the other was an agreement with the Culver City Redevelopment Agency, which approved the club for exclusive negotiation rights to develop a vacant property at 9814 Washington Blvd.

'Titus Redux' Where: Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City When: Sunday to Sept. 12 Admission: $35 Contact: (877) 369-9112 or CircusTheatricals.com

What could be more quintessentially convivial than a Greenwich Village bartender chatting with a regular customer? That's how John Farmanesh-Bocca and Jack Stehlin came to know each other. Now, at a remove of 15 years and 3,000 miles, they've reunited to put on a play that is one of the least convivial dramas ever written: "Titus Andronicus. " With Farmanesh-Bocca as adaptor and director, Stehlin plays the titular Roman warrior as a traumatized American general back from fighting not the Goths but the Taliban.