Steppenwolf Theatre Company artistic director Anna D. Shapiro has been named an associate artist with Los Angeles’s Center Theatre Group, a move that both companies described this morning as bolstering an ongoing relationship between the two major theaters.
Center Theatre Group, which comprises three theater venues in L.A. (the Ahmanson Theatre, Mark Taper Forum and Kirk Douglas Theatre), hosted the national tour of Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County, directed by Shapiro, in 2009 at the Ahmanson; Shapiro brought Bruce Norris’s A Parallelogram, which also originated at Steppenwolf, to the Taper in 2013.
“This expanded relationship creates a great opportunity to build a bridge between Chicago and Los Angeles, where many of our ensemble members live and work, allowing for more cross-collaboration between two like-minded theaters and exciting opportunities for Steppenwolf to make connections with new artists, which can only enhance the important work we're doing at home,” Shapiro said in a statement.
“With Anna as an Associate Artist at Center Theatre Group we can guarantee that conversation and collaboration will be constant, and certainly for us, the Los Angeles audience will have the great benefit of seeing more of the world-class work that Anna and the Steppenwolf Theatre regularly create,” said CTG artistic director Michael Ritchie.
Shapiro is one of three new associate artists announced by Center Theatre Group today, along with choreographer Matthew Bourne and playwright and actor Danai Gurira.
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