Mark Taper Forum Announces 2004-2005 Season; Gordon Davidson Steps Down

The Mark Taper Forum has announced its 2004-2005 season and has also announced that its artistic director, Gordon Davidson, is stepping down after 37 years of service.

The season will begin with the West Coast premiere of John Kani’s post-apartheid South African drama Nothing but the Truth. Following its 2002 premiere in Johannesburg, the play was presented by the Lincoln Center Theater in New York to great acclaim. In December, Brian Bedford will direct and stars in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s comedy of manners The School for Scandal. An altogether different kind of comedy of manners will follow in February 2005: Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? Resident playwright Luis Alfaro moves the characters from Sophocles’ Electra to a urban barrio for his new drama Electricidad. The fifth production of the Taper season will be a new work by Gordon Davidson that is yet to be announced, and Davidson’s tenure as artistic director will end with the world premiere of August Wilson’s Radio Golf.

“One of the things of which I’m most proud is the home we’ve provided over the years for some of the great contemporary theater artists,” said Davidson. “We’re honored to welcome back to the Taper old friends such as Edward Albee, August Wilson, Brian Bedford, and John Kani, as well as present the mainstage debut of the work of my colleague Luis Alfaro, the Taper’s director of new play development. All these friends make this season, the final season that I will plan for the Taper, truly celebratory.”