CTG Has Big Plans for Its 30th

Is it a preview of coming attractions? Center Theatre Group will produce a reading of Bertolt Brecht’s “Galileo” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Saturday at 8 p.m., as part of a cluster of spring events that will continue CTG’s ongoing 30th birthday party for itself. The reading is in conjunction with the museum’s “Exiles and Emigres: The Flight of European Artists From Hitler” exhibition. Taper literary manager Frank Dwyer will direct. Alfred Molina will read the title role.

CTG artistic director-producer Gordon Davidson and two of the original co-producers of “Galileo,” T. Edward Hambleton and Norman Lloyd, will publicly discuss the play following the reading. Reservations are available through LACMA at (213) 857-6010.

Davidson had earlier said that he wanted to revive the massive “Galileo” at CTG’s Ahmanson Theatre on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the play’s first performance--at L.A.’s Coronet Theatre on July 30, 1947. It didn’t make the current Ahmanson season, but it remains a possibility for a future season, said an Ahmanson official.

(As a matter of fact, the fourth slot of the 1997-98 season hasn’t been announced yet--and Davidson has said that he wants to do an original CTG production of a non-musical play in that slot.)

CTG included the “Galileo” reading on a list of CTG 30th birthday events, although the connection is a bit tenuous--original “Galileo” co-producer John Houseman later was the artistic director of UCLA’s Theatre Group, the precursor to Center Theatre Group.

But other 30th birthday events coming up in the next few weeks is full of talent from CTG history. Perhaps the most stellar event on the list is an April 9 panel featuring playwright Tony Kushner (“Angels in America”) and playwright-performers Anna Deavere Smith (“Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992”) and Athol Fugard (“Valley Song”).

The panel and two other evenings of special programs will be offered at the Mark Taper Forum with 1967 ticket prices of $7.50.

Besides the panel, Roscoe Lee Browne and Anthony Zerbe will perform “Behind the Broken Words,” a program of 20th century poetry and drama, on April 8, and “The Best of All Possible Worlds” will feature comedy and song from previous Taper and Ahmanson Theatre performers on April 10. Among those tentatively scheduled to perform are Jack Lemmon, Davis Gaines, John Rubinstein, Culture Clash, Jane Carr, Amanda McBroom, Nancy Dussault, Luis Alfaro and others.

Reservations for the Taper events are available at (213) 628-2772.

On April 6, a mural devoted to Taper history will be dedicated on the south facade of the Music Center Annex (in which CTG’s offices are located), at Temple and Grand. A similar mural recalling highlights of Ahmanson history will be dedicated later on the east side of the same building. The murals were created by Judy Baca and SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center).

KCRW-FM (89.9) will broadcast selections from past Taper works at 6 p.m. on April 6 (“Protest Against the Arrest of Vaclav Havel”), April 13 (“In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer”), April 20 (“Mandelstam’s Witness”) and April 27 (“Darlinghissima: Letters to a Friend”).