Theater Companies

Ten new plays produced by Latino theater companies from around the United States will have their world premieres in downtown Los Angeles in 2014, in the inaugural installment of a National Latino Theater Festival and Conference that's envisioned as a biennial event. The festival, still in its planning stages, came to light Tuesday when the National Endowment for the Arts announced a round of grants that includes $50,000 to the L.A.-based Latino Theater Company, which will host the gathering at the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

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.

In another boost to the fledgling arts district here, the Community Redevelopment Agency on Thursday approved a loan increase of $400,000 to the American Renegade Repertory Company. The loan will be used to pay off the theater's balance on its mortgage and to install theater lighting. David Cox, artistic director for the company, said the loan will improve the quality of productions and the theater's ability to rent out space, an important revenue source.

So you think your family is nuts? The fraternal train wreck of Gary Lennon's "A Family Thing," now having its world premiere in an Echo Theater Company production at Stage 52, will have you feeling Norman Rockwell-y about even those relatives whose loose-cannon remarks make you want to dive under the dining room table during the holidays. Compared with Lennon's crew - one's an addict, one's a felon, one's a suicidal writer - most of us can claim fairly normal pedigrees. Or at least we can be grateful that we're not reliving a version of the Cain and Abel story, relocated to the mean streets of Martin Scorsese's New York.

Stagelight Family Productions will conduct the city's children and teen-age theater programs for another year, according to an agreement unanimously approved this week by the City Council. For two years, the Yorba Linda-based company has provided acting, dancing and voice lessons to Brea residents and non-residents. The company runs the Youth Theatre and the Young Actors Theatre.

A small meeting room at the Pacific Club here held a select gathering of luminaries earlier this week, although not a single face there would have drawn attention on the average American street. It was a reception for Performance Workshop, hailed as Taiwan's premier theatrical company, which is bringing its world-tour production of "Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring" to the Irvine Barclay Theatre for a sold-out performance tonight. Gov.

After Julius Caesar's forces crossed the Rubicon River en route to Rome, there was no turning back. "Crossing the Rubicon" became a way to describe a risky but irrevocable decision. When the Rubicon Theatre Company started in 1998, founders Karyl Lynn Burns and James O'Neil chose the name Rubicon to affirm the value of taking risks. And certainly this married couple's decision to build the first professional theater company in Ventura entailed some risk.

What they really want to do is direct--and write, sing, act, produce, choose the cast, do a little hoofing and, if necessary, move the sets and wash the costumes. Laural Meade, 32, writer of the play-with-music "Harry Thaw Hates Everybody," currently onstage at downtown's Los Angeles Theatre Center, says she learned during her student years first at Occidental College, then as a UCLA master's student in playwriting, that the best way to get a play on its feet is to do it yourself.

Early Monday morning, Richard Maltby Jr., director of the new musical "Fosse: A Celebration in Song and Dance," called the show's associate producer Marty Bell to ask him what he thought about the reviews. Produced by Livent Inc., the Broadway-bound musical due to arrive at L.A.'s Ahmanson Theatre on Oct. 14 had just had its world premiere in Toronto on Sunday, and the critics had been respectful. ("In the main--nothing but good news," reported the Toronto Sun.

"Blackbird," Scottish playwright David Harrower's daring two-hander about a young woman who confronts the older man who sexually abused her as a girl, gave Rogue Machine one of its most memorable hits last summer. Would you believe that it was something of a miracle that this highly respected little company was even allowed to produce the play, especially after it became a succès d'estime off-Broadway in a Manhattan Theatre Club production starring Jeff Daniels and Alison Pill?

Cinemark USA Inc., one of the world's largest theater chains, on Friday announced plans to sell off all of its Mexican theaters. The Texas-based chain, the third-largest theater company in the U.S., plans to sell its 31 theaters in Mexico -- representing 290 screens -- to two Mexican theater companies, Grupo Cinemex and Cadena Mexicana de Exhibicion.  “This transaction allows us the opportunity to provide greater focus on the growth...

“What's in a name,” quoth the Bard of Avon in “Romeo and Juliet.” In the offices of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, one of the deep South's flagship theater companies, marketing director Meg Lewis has been trying to brainstorm over that very question. On Sunday, a bluesy young rock band fronted by a woman who reminds a lot of listeners of Janis Joplin has a shot at Grammy Awards for best new artist and best rock performance, and the art director for its debut album is a contender for the award for best recording package design.

You might have loved watching Jack, Janet, Chrissy and Furley on "Three's Company" when you were a kid. And once it went off the air you were glued to its reruns. Today those reruns have gotten a little, well a lot, stranger thanks to Sock Puppet Sitcom Theater, which is committed to reviving classic sitcoms through the use of sock puppets. This week at the Echo, the sitcom being revived features your favorite threesome. The Echo, 1822 W. Sunset Blvd., L.A. 7 p.m. Sat. $10. (213) 413-8200, http://www.theecho.com .

Before the ashes and the anguish, before the 1965 riots and the spotlight of attention that followed, there was a pocket of people already fighting for Watts. They fought for the arts and for the black community from a building on Grandee Avenue and 104th Street. It was there, in the community she was raised in, that Jayne Cortez founded the Watts Repertory Theater Company, an ensemble she used to unearth and highlight racial inequalities. Cortez, a performance artist whose evocative, surreal poetry tackled racial and sexual oppression, died Dec. 28 of heart failure at a hospital in New York City, said her husband, Melvin Edwards.

Just because they run their own theater companies doesn't mean they can't look forward to what's ahead on other stages in 2013. We asked some of Los Angeles' theater community leaders what they resolve to see in the new year - at some place other than their own house. Daniel Henning, founding artistic director at the Blank Theatre Company: "I can't wait to see 'American Misfit' at Boston Court. I love American history, and I love when we can tell historical stories in the theater, and this seems to be a fantasia on those ideas.

Ten new plays produced by Latino theater companies from around the United States will have their world premieres in downtown Los Angeles in 2014, in the inaugural installment of a National Latino Theater Festival and Conference that's envisioned as a biennial event. The festival, still in its planning stages, came to light Tuesday when the National Endowment for the Arts announced a round of grants that includes $50,000 to the L.A.-based Latino Theater Company, which will host the gathering at the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

Cinemark USA Inc., one of the world's largest theater chains, on Friday announced plans to sell off all of its Mexican theaters. The Texas-based chain, the third-largest theater company in the U.S., plans to sell its 31 theaters in Mexico -- representing 290 screens -- to two Mexican theater companies, Grupo Cinemex and Cadena Mexicana de Exhibicion.  “This transaction allows us the opportunity to provide greater focus on the growth...

With power restored to much of downtown New York over the weekend, many theaters south of Midtown were finally able to open their doors for business following several days of literal darkness. Last week, theaters across the city were forced to close to the public because of power outages caused by Hurricane Sandy. On Saturday, electricity started returning to lower Manhattan, and with it performances resumed at some of the city's premier theater companies. The Public Theater opened Saturday, with performances of the musical "Giant" and other productions.

Let's congratulate the Actors' Gang for at least bringing some novelty to our classical repertory. When American theater companies feel an itch to revive a work by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, they inevitably reach for "The School for Scandal," which has come to epitomize that post-Restoration genre known as 18th century comedy. "The Rivals," Sheridan's first play, is a more unwieldy affair, but there are hearty laughs to be had from this scattershot spray of silliness from 1775. To enjoy them, however, one most be willing to plod through dizzying stretches of ludicrous plot.