Mark Taper Forum

Hoping to give audiences something to buzz about in the expanded lobby yielded by its $30-million renovation, the Mark Taper Forum will offer a 2009 season that includes revivals of the Broadway musicals "Pippin" and "Parade" and Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" as well as three new or recent plays concerning Irish terrorism, the Iraq war hitting home on a New Mexico Indian reservation, and a Mexican American family in 1970s Texas trying to cope with a daughter's serious injury.

Young teenagers in Indiana cope with budding adolescent angst and middle school survival -- especially one newcomer who's trying to figure out a way to get all the cool kids to come to his bar mitzvah -- in "13," a world premiere musical comedy by Jason Robert Brown and Dan Elish, directed by Todd Graff. The cast and band are made up entirely of young teens. "13," Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. Opens 2:30 p.m. Sunday (no evening performance). $55 and $65. (213) 628-2772; www.

The Music Center's Mark Taper Forum will receive a $30-million interior renovation beginning in July, Music Center officials said Monday. The remodeling project, expected to continue through mid-2008, will include doubling the lobby space by relocating restrooms to a downstairs lounge and upgrading the auditorium with more comfortable seats and improved acoustics.

The Mark Taper Forum's 2007-08 season has a British accent: The mix of four productions includes two British plays, Alan Bennett's "The History Boys" and Peter Whelan's "The School of Night." And one of the two American works -- the Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's darkly comic musical "Sweeney Todd" -- is directed and designed by Englishman John Doyle. Not an import is American playwright John Guare's "The House of Blue Leaves," also on the schedule.

In 1943, an Austrian farmer named Franz Jagerstatter was executed for refusing to wear a Nazi uniform and serve in the army of the Third Reich. Noted Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol's drama, "iWitness," based on that true story, is set during Jagerstatter's final day in prison, where his friends and loved ones come to plead with him to abandon his principles to save his life.

Exercising his last opportunity to pick a play for the Mark Taper Forum after 38 years as its artistic director, Gordon Davidson will direct "Stuff Happens," David Hare's British hit about the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The U.S. premiere will employ 22 actors in 96 roles. The play combines verbatim quotes -- such as the title phrase from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- with imagined dialogue. But Davidson said "Stuff Happens" isn't a docudrama.

This summer will mark Gordon Davidson's final fling as the artistic director of the Mark Taper Forum. And it might provide some of the most probing fare of his nearly four decades in the job. Don't look for summertime fluff. Davidson is personally staging the American premiere of David Hare's "Stuff Happens," opening June 5, about the path that led the U.S. and Britain into Iraq. Keith Carradine, from the Carradine clan of actors, will play President Bush, from the Bush clan of politicians.