Mark Taper Forum
The Mark Taper Forum is a 739-seat thrust stage at the Los Angeles Music Center designed by Welton Becket and Associates on the Bunker Hill section of Downtown Los Angeles. Named for real estate developer Mark Taper, the Forum, the neighboring Ahmanson Theatre and the Kirk Douglas Theatre are all operated by the Center Theatre Group; the Mark Taper Forum opened in 1967 as part of the Los Angeles Music Center, the West Coast equivalent of Lincoln Center, designed by Los Angeles architect Welton Becket. The smallest of the three venues, the Taper is flanked by the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the Ahmanson Theatre on the Music Center Plaza. Becket designed the center in the style of New Formalism; the circular Taper is considered one of his best works, featuring a distinctive decorated drum of a design with its exterior wrapped in a lacy precast relief by Jacques Overhoff. The lobby has a curving, abalone wall by Tony Duquette. Charles Moore described Becket's design for the Music Center as "Late Imperial Depression-Style cake".
Becket designed the building not knowing. Various proposals included chamber music concerts, or grand jury meetings. Dorothy Chandler, the Los Angeles cultural leader, convinced Center Theater Group artistic director Gordon Davidson to use the Taper. For 38 years, Davidson was the artistic director of Center Theater Group, which ran the Ahmanson and the Kirk Douglas Theater in Culver City; the Taper became known for its thrust stage, jutting into a classical, semicircular amphitheater, which creates an intimate relationship between audience and performer. The building bears an architectural resemblance to Carousel Theatre at Disneyland designed by Welton Becket and Associates in 1967, it is similar in design concept and size to the Dallas Theatre Center, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and the original Tyrone Guthrie Theatre, in Minneapolis. On October 8, 1993, a memorial was held in the actor Richard Jordan's honor, it was the same day. A $30-million renovation of the Taper led by the Los Angeles firm Rios Clementi Hale Studios began in July 2007 after the 2006/2007 season.
The theater reopened on August 30, 2008 for the first preview of John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves. The Taper, as designed, was a case study in what happens when a theater is built without a tenant in mind. Fitting the auditorium into the circular building left a tiny backstage and only a narrow, curved hallway for a lobby; the renovation updated nearly everything, not concrete and did not disrupt the building's circular shape. To create a larger main lobby, the designers reduced the ticket booth and removed about 30 parking spaces from the lower-level garage to move the restrooms below ground as part of a stylized lounge with gold, curved couches and mosaics of mirrored tiles that fit the era in which the building was designed; the theater seats are wider and total capacity was reduced from 745 to 739. The entrance was moved to the plaza level and an elevator added to increase the accessibility of the theater; the original theater had few women's restrooms opening with four women's stalls for a 750-seat hall.
The renovation increased the number of stalls to 16. Backstage, changes included removing an outdated stage "treadmill" and old air-conditioning equipment, installing a modern lighting grid, enlarging the load-in door to 6 feet by 9 feet. A wardrobe room was constructed in the space occupied by the air-conditioning equipment; the auditorium was renamed the Amelia Taper Auditorium after a $2 million gift from the S. Mark Taper Foundation; the Taper has presented innovative plays since its 1967-opening of The Devils from playwright John Whiting about the sexual fantasies of a 17th-century priest and a sexually repressed nun. The play received a great deal of protest from local religious leaders and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, although the production continued; the production of such plays as Murderous Angels, The Dream on Monkey Mountain, Children of a Lesser God, The Shadow Box, The Kentucky Cycle and Angels in America has established definition of a "Taper play". The Taper has been host to world premiere productions of many notable plays including The Shadow Box, Zoot Suit, Children of a Lesser God, Neil Simon's I Ought To Be In Pictures, Lanford Wilson's Burn This, Jelly's Last Jam, Angels in America, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, David Henry Hwang's revised version of Flower Drum Song, August Wilson's Radio Golf and the musical 13.
In all, the theater has 5 Tony Awards to its credit. Hunt, Total Design: Architecture of Welton Becket, New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1972
Delta Kappa Epsilon
Delta Kappa Epsilon known as DKE or Deke, is one of the oldest North American fraternities, with 56 active chapters across America and Canada. The fraternity was founded at Yale College in 1844 by 15 sophomores who were disaffected by the existing houses on campus, they established a fellowship "where the candidate most favored was he who combined in the most equal proportions the gentleman, the scholar, the jolly good fellow." The private gentleman's club the DKE Club of New York was founded in 1885 and is in residence at the Yale Club of New York City. The fraternity was founded June 22, 1844, in room number 12 Old South Hall, Yale College, New Haven, Connecticut. At this meeting, the Fraternity's secret and open Greek mottos were devised, as were the pin and secret handshake; the open motto is "Kerothen Philoi Aei". The fifteen founders were: William Woodruff Atwater, Dr. Edward Griffin Bartlett, Frederic Peter Bellinger, Jr. Henry Case, Colonel George Foote Chester, John Butler Conyngham, Thomas Isaac Franklin, William Walter Horton, The Honorable William Boyd Jacobs, Professor Edward VanSchoonhoven Kinsley, Chester Newell Righter, Dr. Elisha Bacon Shapleigh, Thomas DuBois Sherwood, Albert Everett Stetson, Orson William Stow.
This first chapter was denoted Phi chapter. The Objectives of Delta Kappa Epsilon are: The Cultivation of General Literature and Social Culture, the Advancement and Encouragement of Intellectual Excellence, the Promotion of Honorable Friendship and Useful Citizenship, the Development of a Spirit of Tolerance and Respect for the Rights and Views of Others, the Maintenance of Gentlemanly Dignity, Self-Respect, Morality in All Circumstances, the Union of Stout Hearts and Kindred Interests to Secure to Merit its Due Reward; the pin of Delta Kappa Epsilon shows the Greek letters ΔΚΕ on a white scroll upon a black diamond with gold rope trim and a star in each corner. DKE's heraldic colours are azure, or, gules, its flag is a triband of those colours with a dexter rampant lion in the middle. Within three years of the founding at Yale, chapters were founded at Bowdoin, Princeton University, Colby College, Amherst College. DKE has initiated over 85,000 members across North America. Traditionally an Eastern Seaboard fraternity, DKE's Yale chapter had an early reputation as a Southerner's fraternity.
Two of the original founders were from the South and 13 out of 38 members of 1845 and 1846 were from the South. Although Vanderbilt University claims DKE's first chapter in the South, Vanderbilt University was not founded until 1873. Psi chapter at the University of Alabama was founded in 1847. Syracuse University's chapter house was used as a safe harbor by Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, William Still during passage into Canada via the Underground Railroad. Delta Kappa Epsilon's first West Coast chapter was founded at the University of California, Berkeley on Halloween night, 1876; the DKE chapter at Colgate University is one of the only DKE chapters having a Temple building, one which only can be entered by Mu DKE members. The Lambda Chapter at Kenyon College in 1854 built the first fraternity lodge in America; the Delta Kappa Epsilon Club of New York was founded in 1885 and is in residence at the Yale Club of New York City. Delta Kappa Epsilon became an international fraternity with the addition of the Alpha Phi chapter in 1898 at the University of Toronto, Canada.
Delta Kappa Epsilon experimented with expansion to the United Kingdom, but this was not successful, chapters are located in only the United States and Canada. As of July 2018, Delta Kappa Epsilon has 15 colonies, including Harvard University, Cornell University. RPI, University of Colorado - Boulder, University of Texas, University of Western Ontario, North Carolina State, Simon Fraser University, Ithaca College, University of Tennessee, the University of Illinois - Springfield. However, Ithaca College does not recognize fraternities. Delta Kappa Epsilon members have included five of forty-five Presidents of the United States. Rutherford B. Hayes Theodore Roosevelt Gerald Ford George H. W. Bush George W. BushFranklin D. Roosevelt was a member of the Alpha Chapter of DKE at Harvard and would be considered the sixth DKE brother to serve as President of the United States. In the election of 1876, the Republican Party chose between two DKE members, nominating Hayes rather than rival and fellow DKE James G. Blaine.
Blaine ran unsuccessfully for President. Vice President of the United States, Dan Quayle, became a DKE brother at DePauw University. Theodore Roosevelt, Harvard Gerald Ford, Michigan George H. W. Bush Many American and Canadian politicians, sports figures, artists have been members, including Joe Paterno, Herb Kelleher, J. P. Morgan, Jr. William Randolph Hearst, Cole Porter, Bradley Palmer, Henry Cabot Lodge, Dick Clark, Tom Landry, David Milch, George Steinbrenner. DKE flags were carried to the North Pole by its discoverer, Admiral Robert Peary and to the Moon by astronaut Alan Bean. During the Civil War, the first Union officer killed in battle was DKE member Theodore Winthrop of Phi; the dying Edwin S. Rogers of Maine was attended to by a Confederate Psi from Alabama, who observed the DKE pin and sent it to the family. During the Spanish–American War, the first American officer to be killed was a DKE member, Surgeon John B. Gibbs. DKE member J. Frank Aldritch died. Yung Wing, the first Chinese graduate from an American university in 1854, was a member of the Phi Chapter of
Hollywood Bowl
The Hollywood Bowl is an amphitheater in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It was named one of the 10 best live music venues in America by Rolling Stone Magazine in 2018; the Hollywood Bowl is known for its band shell, a distinctive set of concentric arches that graced the site from 1929 through 2003, before being replaced with a larger one beginning in the 2004 season. The shell is set against the backdrop of the Hollywood Hills and the famous Hollywood Sign to the northeast; the "bowl" refers to the shape of the concave hillside. The Bowl is owned by the County of Los Angeles and is the home of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, the summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the host venue to hundreds of musical events each year, it is located at 2301 North Highland Avenue, west of the French Village, north of Hollywood Boulevard and the Hollywood/Highland subway station, south of Route 101. The site of the Hollywood Bowl was chosen in 1919 by William Reed and his son H. Ellis Reed, who were dispatched to find a suitable location for outdoor performances by the members of the newly formed Theatre Arts Alliance headed by Christine Wetherill Stevenson.
The Reeds selected a natural amphitheater, a shaded canyon and popular picnic spot known as'Daisy Dell' in Bolton Canyon, chosen for its natural acoustics and its proximity to downtown Hollywood. The Community Park and Art Association headed by F. W. Blanchard, was the first organization to begin the building the Bowl. One of the earliest performances at the Bowl was Hollywood High School’s Performance of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night; the Women’s World Peace Concert was held on November 11, 1921. On November 11, 1921 the first Sunrise Service took place at the bowl, in one of its first major events. With the building of the first actual stage, consisting of little more than wooden platforms in and canvas, The Bowl opened on July 11, 1922; the Bowl began as a community space rather than a owned establishment. Proceeds from the early events at the Bowl went to financing the construction of new elements of the bowl such as a stage and seating in 1922 and 1923 respectively. In 1924, a backdrop to the stage was added.
During the early years of the Bowl’s existence, concert tickets were kept at the lowest available price of 25 cents using the slogan popular prices will prevail, coined by F. W. Blanchard. While serving as the venue for concerts by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Bowl served as a community space, being used for Easter services, the Hollywood Community Chorus, as well as Young Artists Nights where younger musicians could perform well known classical music. Children were invited to perform at community events with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Hollywood Community Chorus, beginning with Sibelius’ Finlandia in 1921; the Bowl was home to much more than western music, hosting a variety of Native American tribal events, as well as international music ensembles. In 1924, the land was deeded to the County of Los Angeles. Many of the key influential figures in the founding of the Hollywood Bowl were women, most notably the pianist Artie Mason Carter, whose connections with the Los Angeles arts patrons were vital in the early days of the Bowls existence.
Christine Wetherill Stevenson and Marie Rankin Clarke, who both donated $21,000 to purchase the land on which the bowl was built. E. J. Wakeman, Leiland Atherton Irish, Harriet Clay Penman, composers Gertrude Ross and Carrie Jacobs Bond all contributed to the Bowl through fundraising drives. Lloyd Wright designed the third band shells; the original 1926 shell, designed by the Allied Architects group, was considered unacceptable both visually and acoustically. Wright's 1927 shell had a pyramidal shape and a design reminiscent of southwest American Indian architecture, its acoustics were regarded as the best of any shell in Bowl history. But its appearance was considered too avant-garde, or only ugly, it was demolished at the end of the season, his 1928 wooden shell had the now-familiar concentric ring motif, covered a 120-degree arc, was designed to be dismantled. It was neglected and ruined by water damage. For the 1929 season, the Allied Architects built the shell that stood until 2003, using a transite skin over a metal frame.
Its acoustics, though not nearly as good as those of the Lloyd Wright shells, were deemed satisfactory at first, its clean lines and white, semicircular arches were copied for music shells elsewhere. As the acoustics deteriorated, various measures were used to mitigate the problems, starting in the 1970s with an inner shell made from large cardboard tubes, which were replaced in the early 1980s by large fiberglass spheres that remained until 2003; these dampened out the unfavorable acoustics, but required massive use of electronic amplification to reach the full audience since the background noise level had risen since the 1920s. The appearance underwent other, purely visual, changes as well, including the addition of a broad outer arch where it had once had only a narrow rim, a reflecting pool in front of the stage that lasted from 1953 till 1972. Sculptor George Stanley, designer of the Oscar statuette, designed the Muse Fountain which has stood outside the Hollywood Bowl's main entrance since 1940.
Shortly after the end of the 2003 summer season the 1929 shell was replaced with a new, somewhat larger, acoustically improved shell, which had its debut in the 2004 summer season. Preservationists fiercely opposed the demolition for many years; however when it was built, the 1929 shell was (at least aco
