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Michael Ritchie, Artistic Director of Center Theatre Group, announced today that Matthew Broderick, Tyne Daly, Louis Gossett Jr., Thomas Sadoski, Jimmy Smits, Rene Auberjonois, Jon Robin Baitz, Bill Cain, Anthony Crivello, Culture Clash, Merle Dandridge, Tim Dang, Keith David, Shaila Essley, Davis Gaines, Harry Groener, Clint Holmes, David Henry Hwang, Gregory Itzin, Dale Kristien, Doug Labrecque, Tzi Ma, Alan Mandell, Dakin Matthews, Christina Saffran, Benjamin Schrader, Shoshannah Stern, Lisa Vroman, Ed Waterstreet and Aryana Williams are set to take the stage at Center Theatre Group's 50th Anniversary Celebration.

Tribes celebrated its Opening Night on Sunday, March 10 at the Mark Taper Forum. Written by Nina Raine, the Ctg and Barrow Street Theatre production is directed by David Cromer in the play's West Coast Premiere. Celebrities such as Guillermo Diaz, Jonathan Groff, Deidre Hall, Ian Harding, Jane Kaczmarek, Alan Mandell, Ron Perlman, Jeff Perry, Nina Raine playwright, Peter Roth, Joan Van Ark and Charlayne Woodard attended the opening festivities, and BroadwayWorld has photos below...

Three stage productions took home the lion’s share of trophies at the 2012 Ovation Awards honoring performing arts in the greater Los Angeles area Monday night. The 23rd annual event, held at downtown L.A.’s historic Los Angeles Theatre, was hosted by actress Jane Kaczmarek and playwright/actor Herbert Siguenza of the performance group Culture Clash. The awards, produced by the L.A. Stage Alliance, saw 400 productions competing in 36 categories. The Centre Theater Group’s staging of Waiting for Godot won awards for best production of a play in a large theater, acting ensemble, lead actor Alan Mandell, featured

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Academy Award nominee and three-time Emmy Award nominee James Cromwell who will play Pozzo, Hugo Armstrong Lucky and Lj Benet Boy will join the previously announced prominent Beckett actors Alan Mandell and Barry McGovern in the classic tragicomedy Waiting for Godot opening at the Center Theatre GroupMark Taper Forum March 21, 2012. Written by Samuel Beckett and directed by Michael Arabian, Waiting for Godot begins previews March 14 performances will continue through April 22.

Academy Award nominee and three-time Emmy Award nominee James Cromwell who will play Pozzo, Hugo Armstrong Lucky and Lj Benet Boy will join the previously announced prominent Beckett actors Alan Mandell and Barry McGovern in the classic tragicomedy Waiting for Godot opening at the Center Theatre GroupMark Taper Forum March 21, 2012. Written by Samuel Beckett and directed by Michael Arabian, Waiting for Godot begins previews March 14 performances will continue through April 22.

The Center Theatre Group's Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles has announced a thrilling slate of productions for this venerable venue's 45th season in 2012. New plays by David Mamet and Jon Robin Baitz are on the roster, as well as the classic tragicomedy "Waiting for Godot"  by the immortal absurdist scribe Samuel Beckett, set to star Alan Mandell and Barry McGovern.Also red-hot on this slate are the local bows of Bruce Norris' 2010 Pultizer and Olivier award-winning  "Clybourne Park"  and John Logan's  2010 Tony-winning play, "Red," which will star Alfred Molina.The icing on this sinfully rich cake is a world premiere musical, "Los Otros,"  by Ellen Fitzhugh and the gifted Broadway writer-tunesmith Michael John Lachiusa ("The Wild Party," "Marie Christine," "See What I Wanna See"), who for many years has been a welcome L.A.  mainstay, collaborating with  Daniel Henning at the Blank Theatre Company on local renditions of his works.

The Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, which consists of L.A.-area theater journalists in various media, has announced nominees and special awards for its 41st annual awards ceremony, to be held March 22 at Burbank’s Colony Theatre.Awards will be given in 20 categories, honoring excellence in theater over the past year. Eight special awards will include a special citation to actor Kirk Douglas for his lifetime contribution to Los Angeles theatre, as well as the new Milton Katselas Award for career or special achievement in direction, sponsored by Camelot Artists.The 2009 Special Awards include:– The Ted Schmitt Award for the world premiere of an outstanding new play: Julie Marie Myatt for the bittersweet domestic drama "The Happy Ones," which premiered at South Coast Repertory. The award is accompanied by an offer to publish and a $1,000 check funded by Samuel French, Inc.– The Polly Warfield Award for an excellent season...

Chicago – “A Serious Man” isn’t the story of Joel and Ethan Coen’s lives. But you might not necessarily know it. While the brothers continue to turn their films into Hollywood gold, this 1967-set black comedy is among the more personal projects in their repertoire.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

That gamut is growing into a serious catalog with “Burn After Reading,” 2007 best-picture Oscar winner “No Country for Old Men,” “The Ladykillers,” “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” “The Big Lebowski,” “Fargo” and “Raising Arizona” now under their yamakas over the course of two decades.

While the yamaka is designed to signify deference to god, “A Serious Man” pays homage to the Coens’ culture in an authentically Jewish way. But this is more than just one of the more Jewish films you’ve seen since “Schindler’s List”. “A Serious Man” is powered by a highly internal script and actors who externalize a series of very unfortunate events.

Chicago – In our latest comedy/drama edition of HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 50 admit-two passes up for grabs to the Chicago screening of the highly anticipated new film “A Serious Man” from Oscar-winning directors Joel and Ethan Coen!

Joel Coen and Ethan Coen are the creators of “Raising Arizona,” “Fargo,” “The Big Lebowski,” “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” “No Country for Old Men” and “Burn After Reading”. “A Serious Man” stars Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick, Aaron Wolff, Jessica McManus, Peter Breitmayer and Alan Mandell.

To win your free pass to the Chicago screening of “A Serious Man” courtesy of HollywoodChicago.com, all you need to do is answer our question below. That’s it! This screening will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2009 at 6:30 p.m. in downtown Chicago. Directions to enter this Hookup and immediately win can be found beneath the graphic below.

“A Serious Man...

Joel and Ethan Coen have an almost chronic aversion to being taken seriously. Their darkest movies are nevertheless laced with black humor, and in interviews, they tend to rebuff the idea that their work is about anything other than what appears on the surface. Even to the actors who have worked with them, their intentions are frequently opaque. One need only glance at "Barton Fink"'s withering portrait of an Odets-ian playwright nattering on about his designs for proletarian theater to see what the Coens think of artists who advertise their themes.

The title of "A Serious Man," then, can only be ironic -- and indeed, the Coens make it nearly impossible to take anyone in the film seriously. Their unlucky protagonist, physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), is an affable bumbler on whom misfortunes rain like in an unceasing torrent. In short order, he's asked for a divorce, threatened...

Here's the new poster and UK trailer for the Coen Brothers latest movie entitled A Serious Man to accompany the Us trailer that we've posted previously. It's set for release in the UK November 20th and stars Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Peter Breitmayer and Alan Mandell.

Synopsis: Larry Nidus is a good man. He is a loving husband, a committed father, and a dedicated professor who always does the fair and just thing in the face of daily temptations. But one day, everything starts to go wrong. His wife leaves him for reasons she can’t explain, and her smug new lover manages to convince Larry that he should be the one to move out of the house and into a cheap motel – all for the children’s benefit, of course.