Sometimes it takes a lifetime to spell out love. Meet Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace Ladd III, two childhood friends who share a lifetime of correspondence, beginning with birthday party thank-you notes and summer camp postcards and ending in one last heartfelt goodbye. Join April Stewart and Courtney R. Hall for this funny and poignant portrait of love and friendship. An "exquisite jewel of a play" named "one of the four or five best American plays of the decade" by Time magazine, Love Letters is a profound theatrical exploration of the powerful, and sometimes painful, connection of love.

The authors of the landmark show, Company, reunite to turn the traditional showbiz musical on its head in this thrilling and compelling Broadway fable about friendship, compromise and the high price of success. Stephen Sondheim and George Furth expertly blend the excitement and energy of a backstage musical with a poignant and emotional contemporary story about the importance of staying true to one's ideals. Merrily We Roll Along begins in the present and moves backwards, tracing the lives of wealthy, jaded composer, Franklin Shepard, and his two estranged friends through each milestone of their personal and professional lives (good and bad).

Writer/performer Mitch Hara returns to L.A. with a newer and even more outrageous version of his hilarious, heart-wrenching, multiple award-winning signature play, Mutant Olive 2.0. Father and son forgiveness is at the core of Hara's manic, brave, tour-de-force performance as Adam Astra, an actor whose past seems to constantly seep into his present. Set during what turns out to be a truly cringe-worthy audition, Astra relays tales of his soul-sucking childhood, monstrous substance abuse, rampant sex, crashed cars, an out of body experience and a black cape - even as he tries out for his dream role in Hamilton: Unplugged.

Paris, 1904. Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso meet at a bar, a favorite spot for struggling artists and writers, with an array of colorful characters and lively repartee. It's just before Einstein's theory of relativity transformed physics and Picasso's transition to cubism opened limitless possibilities for modern art. What might these icons of art and science have discussed while standing on the precipice of greatness? The play imagines, in a light-hearted and humorous way, the similarities of the creative process involved with great leaps of imagination in art and science.

Odyssey Theatre Ensemble presents a revival of Picnic, the sensual, passionate and delightfully funny Pulitzer Prize winning play by William Inge. Set in small town Kansas, this is a sexy world, dangerous and cruel, where residents keep each other in their place while longing to break free. When a handsome young drifter named Hal arrives on the eve of the annual Labor Day picnic, his combination of uncouth manners and titillating charm sends the women reeling - especially the beautiful Madge. Friendships are pushed to the limit and the fragile line between restraint and desire is stretched thin. Winner of the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award.

Based on the novel by E.L. Doctorow, this musical tapestry depicts an African-American family, a Jewish immigrant family, and a wealthy white suburban family in turn-of-the-century America, who collide in pursuit of the American Dream. Nominated for 13 Tony Awards including "Best Musical," and winning for "Best Original Score" and "Best Book of a Musical," Ragtime is a powerful portrait of life during the turn-of-the-century, exploring America's timeless contradictions of freedom and prejudice, wealth and poverty, hope and despair.

This British farce thrilled audiences in its 1982 debut, enjoying a nine year run. The premise: A taxi driver gets away with having two wives in different areas of London because of his irregular working schedule. But after an accident that puts him in hospital, where his contradictory personal information is found, complications pile up rapidly as he tries to keep his life on the same equilibrium as before.

The Echo Theater Company presents the California premiere of The Thin Place by Obie Award-winning playwright by Lucas Hnath (Broadway's A Doll's House, Part 2; Hillary and Clinton; Dana H). Can we talk with the dead? Communicate with loved ones we've lost? In this mesmerizing new play, Linda promises that we can. If you listen - really listen - she can take you to the "thin place," the fragile boundary between our world and the next. Perhaps it's merely a cunning illusion that awakens our deepest desires... but then again, so is this spine-tingling play.

Nearly 30 years after the Los Angeles uprising following the Rodney King verdict, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 returns home to the Mark Taper Forum to be reimagined with an ensemble cast for a new generation of audiences. A powerful piece of living record and one of the most important works in the history of the Taper, Twilight... is a stunning and seminal play that explores the devastating human impact of the five days of uprising following the Rodney King verdict. From nine months of over 300 interviews conducted during the year following the uprising, playwright and scholar Anna Deavere Smith crafted a play that goes directly to the heart of the issues of race and class. Twilight... offers stark insight into the complex and pressing social, economic, and political issues that fueled the flames in the wake of the verdict and ignited a conversation about policing and race that continues today. Originally commissioned by and produced at the Mark Taper Forum, this 30th Anniversary Production is set to captivate our city once again.

A simple audition turns into something much, much more as the lines between fantasy and reality blur. Nothing is what it seems, yet everything we crave. Through the lens of power dynamics and gender roles we explore the erotic longing of sexuality and desire, revealing the truth of the roles we play in our lives, and who we really are beneath our skin.

Odyssey Theatre Ensemble presents the U.S. premiere of Yaacobi & Leidental, a funny, provocative romp with music written by Israeli playwright Hanoch Levin and featuring songs by Alex Kagan. An absurdist tale about a love triangle gone wrong, Yaacobi & Leidental is a comic escapade through the failings of friendship and love. Even as we laugh at the antics of the brash Yaacobi, the insecure Leidental and the not-as-sweet-as-she-looks Ruth Shahash, we are reminded of our own shared human frailty in the face of desire and suffering.