Mark Taper Forum

The Mark Taper Forum is a theater in Los Angeles, California.

It is one of the four main venues of the Los Angeles Music Center. The theater with its 745 seats was created in 1967 by architect Welton Becket. It is named after the American industrialist and philanthropist Mark Taper. Every year in the Mark Taper Forum of Richard E. Sherwood Award, one of the most important awards in the United States for younger artists awarded.

Since 1967 there were numerous outstanding productions of smaller, experimental plays. The world premiere of Angels in America, an award-winning play by Tony Kushner, Mark Taper Forum was held in May 1990. Also for the repertoire of the theater was in June 2005 Stuff Happens, a historical drama about the origins of the Iraq war, by David Hare ( with Keith Carradine and Julian Sands in the lead roles ). In August 2005, ended in a series of ten performances of Radio Golf, the Tony Award in 2007 for a nominated piece, by August Wilson. More with the Tony Award-winning plays have been shown here.

The Mark Taper Forum (as well as the neighboring Ahmanson Theatre and the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City ) is an operation of the Center Theatre Group, a non-profit arts society. The building has an architectural resemblance to the Carousel Theatre at Disneyland Park in Anaheim, which was built to plans by Welton Becket in 1967. It is similar in size and design concept with the Dallas Theater Center, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and the original Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

The interiors of the Mark Taper Forum in 2007 and 2008 received a major renovation. On 30 August 2008, the theater with the play House of Blue Leaves by John Guare was reopened. The auditorium was due to a donation from the S. Mark Taper Foundation in the amount of two million dollars the name Amelia Taper Auditorium.

Also for the Benaroya Hall in Seattle, there is a S. Mark Taper Foundation.