The house managers of LA theaters have many roles to play and many stories to tell. They encounter texters, chicken eaters, sing-along specialists, surreptitious pets, fountain splashers, fans of ’70s TV series and, yes, theatergoers who have problems that, well, stink. READ MORE

Producers Dan Friedman and Jessica Hanna discuss what happened behind the scenes at Monday’s Ovation Awards ceremony. Then the two young siblings, David and Rachael Kartsonis, who streamed the ceremony live and also interviewed the winners on video, provide more details about their unusual vantage point from which to see the festivities.  READ MORE

The fifth of 17 siblings, Rochelle Duffy coaxed stories out of most of them, ultimately focusing on her conversations with one of her brothers when he was incarcerated. This material comes to the Carrie Hamilton Theatre in Pasadena in the premiere of her Prison Is Where I Learned to Fly, directed by Debra De Liso. READ MORE

Since its initial appearance at the small Hudson Theatre, Roger Bean’s Life Could Be a Dream has graduated to bigger theaters for each of the last two years. Now it’s at La Mirada Theatre. Bean and actors Daniel Tatar and Jessica Keenan Wynn say it’s evolving and becoming better at each stop. What’s next — the Pantages? READ MORE

Alan Alda, Gordon Davidson, Michael Ritchie, Susan Loewenberg and Sheldon Epps recall the warmth and versatility of Gil Cates, the Geffen Playhouse producing director who died Monday. READ MORE

Noel Coward didn’t spend all his time examining the foibles of the witty rich. In Peace in Our Time, he also imagined what might have happened in England if it had been taken over by the Nazis. Antaeus Company is reviving his little-seen script. Barry Creyton, who met Coward at a party in 1970, has added songs and deleted some of the original’s many characters. READ MORE

The Shakespeare authorship dispute comes to a head as the  Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles bestows its Crystal Quill Awards on three adherents of different positions in the debate — filmmaker Roland Emmerich, author Bert Fields and professor Martha Andresen. Meanwhile, Coeurage Theatre is presenting Lewis Theobald’s Double Falsehood, which may have Shakespeare-written scenes within it — or is that a literary falsehood? READ MORE

The theme for this year AxS Festival, a project by the Pasadena Arts Council in conjunction with the city’s scientific institutions, is “Fire and Water.” In one of the shows, a site-specific performance at Pacific Asia Museum, Corey Madden follows the saga of poet Craig Arnold, who disappeared while hiking along the rim of a Japanese volcano. READ MORE

Best known to America as Ally McBeal, Calista Flockhart began her career on the stage. As she prepares to perform the role of Nora in A Doll House for LA Theatre Works, she recalls some of her adventures while treading the boards. READ MORE