The Geffen Playhouse will honor Dick Van Dyke and Lin-Manuel Miranda at its 16th annual “Backstage at the Geffen” fundraiser on May 19. The event supports the theater's mission to produce original, quality work and raises funds for its award-winning education and community engagement programs. The programs bring live…

UDPATED with Chrissy Metz having left production in January: The Geffen Playhouse today said it was removing its production of Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig from the Los Angeles theater’s 2017-2018 schedule. The axing of the play, which at one point was to star This Is Us‘ Chrissy Metz in her stage debut, comes less than two…

Chrissy Metz, a key ensemble player in NBC’s popular series This Is Us, will make her stage debut this spring in a Geffen Playhouse revival of Neil LaBute’s disturbing 2004 drama Fat Pig. The production will replace LaBute's The Way We Get By, with preview performances beginning May 16 and opening night May 23. The…

All the world’s a stage — including courtrooms. The Geffen Playhouse is on the receiving end of a lawsuit filed today by its former longtime artistic director that claims age and disability discrimination, fraud, slander and “a succession of lies” The filing lands one day after Game of Thrones helmer Matt Shakman…

Matt Shakman, a theater, film and television director who helmed the celebrated August 6 “Spoils of War” episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones, has been named artistic director of the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood. Shakman succeeds departing a.d. Randall Arney, who announced his intention to move on in February after 17…

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who’s lent his name and financial backing to stage shows by Colin Quinn, will produce Letters From A Nut by Ted L. Nancy, slated to run at the Geffen Playhouse’s intimate Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater from June 23 through July. The show will be presented under the banner of the Geffen’s…

The Geffen Playhouse will have to update its playbill. The UCLA-adjacent theater said today that it has hired Jessica Buzzard as director of marketing. She’s spent the past 12 years at Sundance Institute. Buzzard will lead the venue's marketing strategy to engage and expand its current audiences by capitalizing on the…

Among the things the Beatles share with William Shakespeare is this: Bend, twist and reshape them as you will, they’re impervious to humiliation. Set Billy Big Boy in the Wild West or Las Vegas or on Mars; he springs back untainted. Filter the Fab Four through an elevator speaker or the Berlin Philharmonic; they…

Cates, vice-chairman of the prominent nonprofit theater founded in 1995 by his father, has been named executive director after leading in an interim capacity since February. "On behalf of the Board of Directors, we are delighted to announce Gil as Executive Director,” board Co-Chairs Martha Henderson and Pamela…

In a move not entirely unlike casting Michele Pfeiffer in a film role originated onstage by Kathy Bates (which is what happened when Frankie And Johnny In The Clair De Lune became Frankie And Johnny), Amber Tamblyn will play a woman who emphatically terminates her four-year relationship with her boyfriend when she…

I spent some time this week at the Geffen Playhouse seeing two much-talked about premieres. I’d been invited by the theater to see both shows — the first starring Orson Bean in marvelous form as a wise old professor in Steven Drukman’s twisty Death Of The Author and the world premiere of Donald Margulies’ <a href="https://deadline.com/tag/broadway/" id="auto-tag_broadway"…

Blythe Danner is joined by Scott Foley (Scandal), Eric Lange (Weeds), David Rasche (Speed-The-Plow Broadway, Lunch Hour), Emily Swallow (The Mentalist), and fast-rising star Sarah Steele (Lincoln Center Theater’s Slowgirl, CBS’ The Good Wife) for the world premiere of Donald Margulies' The Country House. It’s a…