**Event: Waiting for Godot at Geffen Playhouse**

**Location:** Geffen Playhouse, Los Angeles

**Dates:** November 6 - December 15, 2024

**Overview:**
"Waiting for Godot," Samuel Beckett's tragi-comic masterpiece, takes the stage at the Geffen Playhouse, promising an unforgettable theatrical experience. This timeless play, which has captivated audiences worldwide for decades, explores the themes of existence, companionship, and the endless wait for the elusive Godot. With a blend of humor, philosophy, and moments of poignant silence, "Waiting for Godot" remains as resonant and riveting as ever.

**Production:** Directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett and produced in association with Gare St Lazare Ireland, this production features an exceptional cast including Conor Lovett, Aasif Mandvi, and Rainn Wilson, with additional casting to be announced. Gare St Lazare Ireland, celebrated as unparalleled Beckett champions by the New York Times, brings their unique wit and skill to this production, ensuring a Godot for the ages.

**Performance Information:**
- **Running Time:** Approximately 2 hours, including one intermission.
- **Content Advisory:** This production contains staged violence and herbal cigarette smoke.
- **Age Recommendation:** Recommended for ages 12 and above. Please note, all Geffen Playhouse productions are intended for an adult audience; children under 10 years of age will not be admitted.

**Special Nights:**
- **Talkback Wednesdays:** Engage in a post-show discussion with the cast and crew.
- **College Nights:** Special evenings dedicated to college students, offering a unique theatrical experience.

**Tickets:** 
Subscribers to the Geffen Playhouse enjoy the best seats at the best price, flexible exchanges, and many more benefits. Sign up to be notified when single tickets go on sale and ensure your spot at this must-see production.

Don't miss this opportunity to witness a seminal work of modern drama, brought to life by a stellar cast and creative team. "Waiting for Godot" at the Geffen Playhouse promises to be a thought-provoking exploration of the human condition that is as entertaining as it is profound.

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Waiting for Godot

Geffen Playhouse

The artisans and craftsmen who make up The Walt Disney Company are the architects of the impossible, constructing a realm of fantasy the likes of which the world has otherwise never seen. The Soraya honors Disney on its 100th Anniversary, with the official centennial retrospective, a musical salute to the Walt Disney Company’s creative legacy. Featuring hand-picked segments from the Disney catalog of animated films and behind-the-scenes from the fabled “Disney Vault,” audiences will enjoy familiar favorites brought to life by New West Symphony led by CSUN alumnus Richard Kaufman.

Disney in Concert: the Sound of Magic

Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts

From a bandshell stage at the Port of Los Angeles, beachy enclaves along the coast, foothill communities in the San Gabriel Mountains, and multiple regions of Orange County, these two productions will cover a breadth of neighborhoods from June 22 – August 5, 2023 – bringing Shakespeare’s stories to residents and visitors who enjoy storytelling under the stars. 

Twelfth Night - Shakespeare by the sea

Soka University of America

Valley Park

Cesar Chavez Park

Rush Park

Point Fermin Park

Polliwog Park

Hesse Community Park

Garfield Park

Wilson Park

A breathtaking house on a hill—complete with the most state-of-the-art security that excessive wealth can buy—should feel like a refuge for Nami, whose recent firing and eviction have forced him to crash at his brother and sister-in-law’s luxury home. But on this dark and fateful night, a violent uprising outside leaves the three trapped in what they think is an impenetrable fortress. A horror play infused with darkly humorous social commentary, The Ants asks why we spend so much money protecting ourselves instead of investing in our shared humanity.

The Ants

David Tennant (Doctor Who) makes a much-anticipated return to the West End in a blistering reimagining of one of Britain’s most powerful, political plays.

As the world faces its Second World War, John Halder, a good, intelligent German professor, finds himself pulled into a movement with unthinkable consequences.

Olivier Award-winner Dominic Cooke (Follies) directs C.P. Taylor’s timely tale, with a cast that also features Elliot Levey (Coriolanus) and Sharon Small (The Bay). Filmed live at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London.

Good

University of California, Los Angeles

David Harewood (Homeland) and Zachary Quinto (Star Trek) play feuding political rivals in James Graham’s (Sherwood) multiple award-winning new drama. 

In 1968 America, as two men fight to become the next president, all eyes are on the battle between two others: the cunningly conservative William F. Buckley Jr., and the unruly liberal Gore Vidal. 

During a new nightly television format, they debate the moral landscape of a shattered nation. As beliefs are challenged and slurs slung, a new frontier in American politics is opening and television news is about to be transformed forever.

Jeremy Herrin (All My Sons) directs this blistering political thriller, filmed live in London’s West End.

Best of Enemies

It’s April 3, 1968 and Martin Luther King, Jr. returns to the Lorraine Motel after delivering his history-altering “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech. When he orders room service, a young maid arrives with a revelation that calls Dr. King to confront unwelcome truths. As a lightning storm rages outside, the legacy of America’s most revered civil rights leader is laid bare to reveal his profound humanity. A single night’s reckoning with racism, righteousness, and the rocky path toward justice, The Mountaintop imagines what Dr. King’s last night on Earth could have been.

The Mountaintop

The Rogue Machine performance of francisca da silveira's can i touch it? on Monday, May 15, 2023 has been designated as a Black Out Night.
Black Out Night is a purposeful creation of an environment in which an audience, self-identifying as Black, can come together and experience a performance in community. A reception will follow, providing an opportunity for the audience to talk about their experience and hang out.

Can I touch it?

Rogue Machine Theatre

The Matrix Theatre

Okwui Okpokwasili’s new theater piece centers around a young African American girl who loses all of her hair after using a chemical straightener, only to have it restored by the power of a mysterious, unhoused woman. The young girl’s hair comes back with properties that restore genetic and cultural memory and allow her to discover her family’s precolonial past. A work that centers around the complexity of repair, physical and psychic, that will require traveling to the past and into the future.

Okwui Okpokwasili

Walt Disney Concert Hall

“I either write the book or sell the jewels. I’m kinda sentimental about the jewels.” So says legendary Hollywood icon Ava Gardner (Elizabeth McGovern, Once Upon a Time in America, Downton Abbey) to her ghost writer Peter Evans as they begin work on her tell-all biography that will shock Tinseltown. But as Peter attempts to glean the juicy details about her life story, her marriages to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra, and her turbulent relationship to Howard Hughes, an altogether different and unexpected journey unfolds in this theatrical glimpse into the private life of Hollywood's original femme fatale.

AVA: The Secret Conversations

If you can’t find talent at CalArts, you can’t find it anywhere! Talent Show emerges from faculty members Sharon Lockhart and Ariel Osterweis’ CalArts course of the same name. Graduates, undergraduates, alumni, and professional guest artists come together to put on a talent show, featuring acts that may lie outside their formal training. Yes to amateurism! Yes to virtuosity! Yes to awkwardness and adolescence, aspiration, and ambition! From concert performance to clunky experimentalism, Talent Show unites high and low. When is a talent show a freak show, a magic show, a circus, a pageant, a musical, or a TV competition? We’ve held auditions, we’ve made cuts; now it’s your turn to decide who’s got talent!

Talent Show

Embark on an island adventure through a fully reimagined immersive telling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest!

Upon stepping into the experience, you’ll find yourself shipwrecked onto a dark, magical island full of wonder, excitement, clues, and discovery. Guests are invited to explore the island and take in its pleasures, enjoying curated handcrafted cocktails, live music, and interactive moments followed by a world-class production of Shakespeare’s classic final masterpiece. 

The Tempest: An Immersive Experience

Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles

One of the American theater’s seminal writers, Adrienne Kennedy captures the Black experience in America in the 20th century with a trademark embrace of symbolism, lyricism, and mythic figures. In this world premiere production, Etta and Ella Harrison are talented academics on the Upper West Side—as well as sisters and rivals. After a lifetime of competition, they are on the verge of destroying each other. Next-generation director Monty Cole employs a cinematic approach to this intricate blend of monologue, dialogue, voiceover, and prose in a work that is part experimental play, part narrative thriller.

Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side

FAC XTRA RETREAT (FXR) is a studio art pedagogy-themed performance by a temporal grouping of seven Asian American artist-educators based in L.A.: Ei Arakawa, Patty Chang, Pearl C Hsiung, Amanda Ross-Ho, Anna Sew Hoy, Shirley Tse, and Amy Yao. Academia uses acronyms more than Gen Zers! Inspired by the many mandatory online training modules and follow-up quizzes required of instructors by their teaching institutions, FAC XTRA RETREAT (FXR) promises “learning outcomes” with a series of weird, hard, soft, informative, and sometimes physically challenging multiple-choice problems with answers deeply associated with each artist’s teaching philosophy. With the help of suspicious polling devices, costumed performers and all members of the public take on-stage votes. The results of the polls will be acted out, branched out, and change the destination of the performance. Participants will be awarded an FXR certificate of completion at the end.

FAC XTRA RETREAT (FXR)

The Wooster Group returns to REDCAT with a new production of Bertolt Brecht’s 1932 play The Mother. This play was written by Brecht in the style of a “learning play,” intended both to entertain and to incite social change. He used plain language and songs to tell the story of an illiterate Russian woman’s journey to revolutionary action. The Wooster Group’s American translation of The Mother uses the vernacular of early Hollywood gangster movies (one of Brecht’s favorite genres). The production features new music by composer Amir ElSaffar, who works across classical, jazz, and Arabic musical forms. The Mother is The Wooster Group’s first staging of Brecht, and the result is a dialogue between two influential experimental theater methodologies.

The Mother

Mindplay is a love letter to the imperfect mind. Drama Desk Award–nominated theater-maker and mentalist Vinny DePonto leads us on a raucous romp through the back channels of our innermost thoughts, exploring the fragmented and flawed nature of our memories, and asks us to question whether we can trust the voice inside our heads. In the spirit of the Geffen’s long tradition of magic comes an entirely new theatrical event in which your thoughts play a leading role.

Mindplay

After a nationwide increase in sightings of “Asian-looking ghosts,” two Thai brothers struggle to launch a ghost-hunting business. The two brothers–one born in Thailand and the other in the American Midwest–are called to investigate the paranormal hauntings at the home of an African-American couple displaced by Hurricane Katrina in this supernatural thriller. EWP multi-produced playwright and teaching artist Prince Gomolvilas pens a suspenseful, humorous, and compassionate exploration of the trauma of leaving home, whether crossing the country, the globe, or over from the other side. The Brothers Paranormal was originally produced in 2019 by Pan Asian Repertory Theatre in New York City.

The Brothers Paranormal

David Henry Hwang Theater

It’s good to be king. Liz Rico is a powerful sports agent who represents NBA superstars, having fought her way to the top of a male-dominated profession with her skill for cutthroat negotiations. Given the chance to sign Freddie Luna, a once-in-a-generation high school talent with a troubled past, Liz sees an opportunity to take her career to the next level. But when accusations start swirling around the young phenom, Liz must attempt to rebound Freddie’s career or protect her own crown.

King Liz

What if Shakespeare’s craziest characters—and there are lot of them – sought treatment from a therapist? Witness Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet & Ophelia, Othello & Desdemona, Petruchio & Kate, and the Macbeths go beyond therapy.

Drama events in Los Angeles, CA

Waiting for Godot

Geffen Playhouse

Disney in Concert: the So...

The Soraya

Twelfth Night - Shakespea...

Shakespeare by the Sea

The Ants

Geffen Playhouse

Good

L.A. Theatre Works

Best of Enemies

L.A. Theatre Works

The Mountaintop

Geffen Playhouse

Can I touch it?

Rogue Machine Theatre

Okwui Okpokwasili

Redcat - Roy and Edna Disney CalArts The...

AVA: The Secret Conversat...

Geffen Playhouse

Talent Show

Redcat - Roy and Edna Disney CalArts The...

The Tempest: An Immersive...

Shakespeare Center LA

Etta and Ella on the Uppe...

Redcat - Roy and Edna Disney CalArts The...

FAC XTRA RETREAT (FXR)

Redcat - Roy and Edna Disney CalArts The...

The Mother

Redcat - Roy and Edna Disney CalArts The...

Mindplay

Geffen Playhouse

The Brothers Paranormal

East West Players

King Liz

Geffen Playhouse

Classic Couples Counselin...

Theatre West