Plays

To get into character for a play she was doing in L.A., actress May Alhassen wrapped a black pashmina around her thick, dark hair and tied the loose ends into a bun at the back of her head. Then she stepped out onto the street. She stopped for coffee at Starbucks. She purchased a binder at Office Depot. Everywhere she went, Alhassen felt self-conscious and a little on edge. "I think the thing that surprised me the most was how angry and paranoid it made me: Are they looking at me because?

Leslie Uggams and Lena Horne have crossed paths only a few times. But Uggams feels that the force and power of the iconic singer have always been a part of her. "Lena was a goddess in my house -- my mother played her records all the time, and I was always moved by how beautiful and classy she was," says Uggams. "When I was doing my nightclub act at the Coconut Grove in 1965, she pinned me as a Delta -- we both belong to Delta Sigma Theta. I've always felt like she's been so close to me."

Flowers with a card, a surprise pair of plane tickets, a lovingly crafted mix tape -- these are among the time-honored tools of courtship available to the average mortal. But how about a darkly comic two-act play about tensions and flirtations among succeeding generations of urban immigrants? That's what Oliver Mayer sent to Marlene Forte within a few months of meeting her at a theater retreat in upstate New York in 2003.

It is hardly unusual for an actor to keep an eye on the camera while being photographed, but Anna Gunn's obsession seems to have less to do with vanity than research.

When you're running a matchbook-size theater that contains only 38 seats, it quickly becomes obvious that certain productions are just not physically possible -- extravagant musicals, historical epics and opulent period comedies are just some of the genres that are guaranteed to bust the fourth wall and spill out of the proscenium. Theatre Tribe's micro space in North Hollywood isn't just intimate, it's arguably a claustrophobe's nightmare.

Louis Prima and Keely Smith are struggling to save a marriage. If their relationship goes down in flames, so too might their lucrative lounge act. They have joined forces to become a Las Vegas sensation, but the emotions they tunefully profess in front of the microphone -- infatuation, desire, fidelity -- are the very things that, away from the audience, are tearing them apart.

A playwright's work is never finished -- at least not for Garry Marshall. Marshall, 74, began working on "Everybody Say 'Cheese!' " some 43 years ago. Four decades later, he's still futzing with it. Just last week, the creator of "Happy Days," co-creator of "Laverne & Shirley" and director of the hit films "Pretty Woman" and "Beaches" added new dialogue for the second preview performance of the comedy, which is having its West Coast premiere at his Falcon Theatre in Burbank.

Tim Robbins jokes that he could've given the title "While Rome Burns" to his new festival at the Actors' Gang. Times are tough, people are angry, "and they have every right to be," says the Oscar-winning actor and artistic director of the Culver City-based theater company. "There've been really bad decisions made that we're paying the bill for now." Like most cultural entities, the Gang, one of L.A.'s most accomplished theatrical institutions, has been scorched financially by the economic crisis.

Barack Obama's presidential campaign inspired millions. Now it has inspired a London musical. "Obama on My Mind" will open at a small theater in the British capital in March, producers have announced. The play's book, music and lyrics are by U.S.-born writer Teddy Hayes. Hayes on Wednesday described the show as a humorous romp set in an Obama campaign office, with songs that mix pop, gospel, jazz, "some Motown-ish stuff" and even tango.

It's reasonable to assume that more than a few Southern California theater buffs were left raging against the cruelty of fate and the human condition back in October 2007. They had been victimized not by stone-hearted daughters but by forces of supply and demand that conspired against their scoring tickets to see Ian McKellen and the Royal Shakespeare Company in a very limited run of "King Lear" at UCLA's Royce Hall.