"Straight White Men," written and directed by Young Jean Lee, will open this Sunday, November 22 at 6:30 p.m. at the Center Theatre Group/Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City.
The West Coast premiere of the production, presented in collaboration with Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, will have previews on Friday, November 20 and Saturday, November 21 at 8 p.m. and will run through December 20.
In "Straight White Men" Young Jean Lee offers a traditionally structured take on the classic American father-son drama. Ed and his three adult sons come together to celebrate Christmas. They enjoy cheerful trash-talking, pranks and takeout Chinese, but find themselves confronting a problem that even being a happy family can't solve: when identity matters, and privilege is problematic, what is the value of being a straight white man?
The four-man cast features Frank Boyd, Richard Riehle, Brian Slaten and Gary Wilmes.
Lee is a renowned playwright who experiments with theatrical forms in a continual effort to, in her words, "get past audiences' defenses against uncomfortable subjects and open people up to confronting difficult questions by keeping them disoriented and laughing."
Lee has been called "the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation" by The New York Times and "one of the best experimental playwrights in America" by Time Out New York.
"Straight White Men" was co-commissioned by Center Theatre Group (with a CTG completion grant made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University, The Public Theater, steirischer herbst, Festival d'Automne à Paris and Les spectacles vivants du Centre Pompidou. It was produced by Young Jean Lee's Theater Company.
Funding support was generously provided by the Doris Duke Performing Artists Awards program; the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Theater Project, with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts; and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.
"Straight White Men" was developed at Brown University's Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Providence, RI. Residency support was provided by the Park Avenue Armory, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Spaceworks NYC and Columbia University.
Tickets are available online at http://www.CenterTheatreGroup.org, by calling CTG Audience Services at (213) 628-2772, in person at the Center Theatre Group box office (at the Ahmanson Theatre at the Music Center in downtown Los Angeles) or at the Kirk Douglas Theatre box office two hours prior to performances.
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November 16, 2015
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