Sign Up For Our E-Newsletter This link opens a window to our sign-up form. We will never share, sell, or trade your contact information to anyone else.



Ionesco's The Chairs opens July 24.
Don't miss City Garage's production of one of Ionesco's classic tragicomedies. Find all the details here.



The School for Wives is now closed.



City Garage Wins 3 LA Weekly Theater Awards; Founders Receive "Queen of the Angels" Recognition
On March 30, 2009 City Garage took home LA Weekly Theater Awards for:
COSTUME DESIGN: Josephine Poinsot, Les Bourgeois Gentilhomme
SOUND DESIGN: Paul Rubenstein, The Mission (Accomplished)
MASK DESIGN: Charles Duncombe, Les Bourgeois Gentilhomme

The inscription on the Weekly's annual special recognition QUEEN OF THE ANGELS award read: "2008 LA Weekly Queen of the Angels award presented to Frederique Michel and Charles Duncombe. For decades of directing and producing scintillating, politically charged theater that challenges audiences to reconsider their assumptions about the nature of politics, and the nature of theater itself. Given with gratitude and respect by the critics of the LA Weekly. March 30, 2009."

You can see a gallery of City Garage winners on our site or check out the LA Weekly's site for a complete list of winners.



City Garage Nominated for 6 LA Weekly Theater Awards, Including Jeff Atik for Best Male Comedy Performance in The Bourgeois Gentilhomme!
City Garage has been nominated in six categories at the upcoming LA Weekly Theater Awards:
ENSEMBLE: The Mission (Accomplished)
MALE COMEDY PERFORMANCE: Jeff Atik, Les Bourgeois Gentilhomme
COSTUME DESIGN: Josephine Poinsot, Les Bourgeois Gentilhomme
ADAPTATION: Charles Duncombe, The Mission (Accomplished)
SOUND DESIGN: Paul Rubenstein, The Mission (Accomplished)
MASK DESIGN: Charles Duncombe, Les Bourgeois Gentilhomme

In addition, City Garage founders Frederique Michel and Charles Duncombe will be honored with the Weekly's annual special recognition QUEEN OF THE ANGELS award.

Check out the LA Weekly's site for a complete list of nominees.



The Bourgeois Gentilhomme is Critic's Choice in the LA Times and a "Go" in the LA Weekly and a "Critic's Pick" in Backstage!
The LA Weekly calls the show a GO! and says "I haven’t seen a comic tour de force the likes of Atik’s Monseiur Jordain since Alan Bomenfeld’s King Ubu at A Noise Within" while the Los Angeles Times raves "With a generous soupçon of witty anarchy, The Bourgeois Gentilhomme tumbles into Santa Monica. This sleek City Garage take on Molière's deathless satire of nouveau riche pretensions and aristocratic machinations is nominally avant-garde, mainly an unguarded hoot." Get all the details about this exciting new show.



Molière's The Bourgeois Gentilhomme Now Open
City Garage presents the world premiere of a new adaptation of Moliere’s classic comedy le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Wealthy and foolish Monsieur Jourdain is in love with the Countess Dorimène and aches to be what he is not—a member of the aristocracy. Determined to overcome his low birth with an “education” in high style, he unwittingly surrounds himself with charlatans and swindlers who gleefully take his money and prey on his innocence. Ingenious servants, pedantic masters, devious nobles, and earnest young lovers all propel this delightful satire of nouveau riche social climbers. And, in the end, is the “nobility” to which Jourdain so ardently aspires all that admirable?

Originally written by Moliere as a “comedy ballet” for Louis XIV, this new translation re-imagines the play for contemporary audiences, transporting us into an extravagant fantasy world of song, dance, and upper class nonsense with a French accent.

Learn more about this exciting production.



City Garage Featured in Los Angeles Times Article
A Los Angeles Times Arts and Books story about theater venues in L.A. remarks that City Garage's "recycled interior suggests a palimpsest of the building's multilayered past. Before a word of dialogue is uttered or dreamy gesture extended, your unconscious has been stealthily primed by the cryptically coded surroundings."



Bad Penny a Hit with the Press!
Backstage says that "director Frederíque Michel gives it an able cast and an elegantly impeccable production" while the Los Angeles Times describes this production as "staged with an austere pitch to the intellect by Frederíque Michel" Learn more about this exciting new show.



Bad Penny by Mac Wellman Opens August 1, 2008!
Call 310-319-9939 to reserve your tickets now and click for more details about the production.



LA Weekly Calls City Garage's Production of The Mission (Accomplished) "as visually elegant and erotic as the text is intellectually rigorous"
Read the whole article on the Weekly's site. Then call the box office and make reservations to come see this exciting original work.



Now Open at City Garage: The Mission (Accomplished) Adapted for City Garage by Charles Duncombe from a text by Heiner Muller
With a war dragging on half a world away and an election season in full swing here in the U.S., City Garage once again translates the work of acclaimed German playwright Heiner Muller into something vitally relevant to the state of the union and the human condition. Learn more about this exciting production.



City Garage Nominated for 7 LA Weekly Theater Awards!
City Garage has been nominated seven times in six categories at the upcoming LA Weekly Theater Awards: Comedy Direction (Frédérique Michel, The Bald Soprano), One-Act Direction (Frédérique Michel, Quartet, City Garage), Comedy Ensemble (The Bald Soprano), One-Act Ensemble (Quartet), One-Act Performance (Troy Dunn, Quartet; Sharon Gardner, Quartet) and Production Design (Quartet). Check out the LA Weekly's site for a complete list of nominees.



L.A. Times' Guide Rates The Bald Soprano a Must-See!
"The thing we love about Eugene Ionseco's plays is that they let you have fun and make you feel like some kind of intellectual. They're also really short, for all you theater-phobes. City Garage in Santa Monica just extended its high-spirited revival through Feb. 4. Just don't ask us what all the surrealist gibberish at the end means." -- Los Angeles Times January 3, 2008.



The Press Loves Quartet!
The LA Weekly's review of Heiner Müller's Quartet at City Garage rates the show a GO! and says "Michel’s overlay of Kabuki formalization helps elevate the lusty melodrama from a poem about the meaning of sex to one about the meaning of life."

Backstage gives Quartet a Critic's Pick and says of the lead performers and the director, "Gardner is a stunningly convincing actor... Dunn is terrific... [Director] Michel is the beating theatrical heart of this piece... Her work is strong, important, and critically vital in the contemporary world. And she delivers Müller's disturbing, universal vision with beauty and grace."

The Los Angeles Times says "in [Director Frederique] Michel's take, the emphasis is pointedly feminist, as it was in MedeaText. Under his sphinx-like inscrutability, Müller evinces a surprising empathy for his objectified female characters, as does Michel in her sympathetic enigmatic staging."

Don't miss this provocative new City Garage production. Call the box office at 310-319-9939, #1 to reserve your tickets today. More details about Quartet are here.



Quartet by Heiner Müller opens August 17, 2007
In August City Garage takes on one of Heiner Müller's most enduring texts - Quartet. Based loosely on the classic 18th novel Les Liaisons dangereuses, by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Quartet's decaying aristorcrats are still playing their erotic games of cat and mouse, but now driven as much a passionate fear of oblivion as by the passionate sexuality of their youth. More information about Quartet is here.

Rhinocéros by Eugene Ionesco a Hit!
"Director Frederique Michel brings a heightened sense of whimsy to Eugene Ionesco's absurdist classic..."
--LA Times, June 8, 2007

"The comedically regimented choreography in director Frederique Michel’s staging of Eugene Ionesco’s 1958 farce (translated by Derek Prouse) handily complements the Absurdist Romanian author’s portrayal of a town’s entire population transforming into the eponymous pachyderms."
--LA Weekly, June 4, 2007



City Garage Takes Honors at 2007 LA Weekly Theatre Awards
City Garage's critically acclaimed Three By Mee Season was honored for its Production Design at the 28th Annual LA Weekly Theatre Awards on April 9, 2007 in Hollywood. Don't miss the entire list of this year's winners..



Agamemnon Nominated as Production of the Year by the LA Weekly!
The LA Weekly's Theatre Award nominations are out, and City Garage has been nominated for three awards: Production of the Year (Agamemnon); Production Design (Three By Mee Season); and Sound Design (Agamemnon). Check out this year's entire list of nominees.



Critics Rave About Mee's Iphigenia at City Garage!
"It's a brilliantly revisionist denouement, and a fitting conclusion to City Garage's ambitious, rewarding season."
--LA Times, December 8, 2006

"Frederíque Michel demonstrates how she's settled into view of theater that contains both the authority of stylistic precision mingled with a tenderness that carries the ache of her characters' stresses and regrets."
--LA Weekly, December 7, 2006

"Frederíque Michel's direction is exquisitely nuanced."
--LA CityBeat, December 7, 2006

Call the box office for tickets now (310-319-9939) or get all the details on the exciting final play of City Garage's Three by Mee season.



KCRW Raves About City Garage's entire Three by Mee season
All three plays in the Three by Mee season have been reviewed on KCRW -- and all the reviews have been raves. You can read or listen to the review of Iphigenia or check out their take on The Bacchanalia or Agamemnon.



Cast of City Garage's The Battle: ABC Wins LA Weekly Theater Award for Best Ensemble!
On April 10, 2006 a cast of City Garage veterans took home the Best Ensemble award at the 27th Annual LA Weekly Theatre Awards. There were eight shows nominated (more than in any other category), but only one winner. Artistic Director Frederique Michel was also nominated for her direction of the show. See a full list of the night's winners here.



Critics Are Crazy About The Battle: ABC at City Garage!
LA Weekly Pick of the Week!
Backstage West Critic's Pick!

"This is perhaps the most tender production by City Garage to date..." "A gentle wave goodbye through a suspended window frame is about as devastating an image of loss and separation as one is likely to find."
--LA Weekly, November 17 - 23, 2005

"Michel's staging offers sharply focused tension and intensity, which is cut with a droll irony and the play seethes with an intellectual keenness that is rarely seen in LA. shows. The ensemble work is tight."
--Backstage West, November 17 - 23, 2005

Get all the details on this powerfully moving U.S. premiere.



LA Times Features City Garage in Sunday Calendar Section
"Galvanized by its directors' vision, City Garage offers a daring alternative to the mass entertainment around it."

"The set is built before rehearsals begin. The actors, cast in roles demarcated merely by numbers, arrive knowing all of their text but none of their blocking.

"The director, a leggy Frenchwoman of unsmiling intensity who has banned the words "improvisation," "motivation" and "cute," takes up her perch in the center of the 48-seat house and begins to run performers through a precise choreography of movement and gesture, sometimes at stop-motion speeds. She gives direction; she doesn't give praise..."

Get the entire story on our site.



The Press Loves Don Quixote at City Garage!
"At City Garage, Kathy Acker's scabrous post-feminist crib from Cervantes gets a searing realization."
--LA Times, June 17, 2005

"What Acker borrowed from the tones of Miles Davis and the images of William Burroughs, Michel distills into something more like an S&M tango, comparatively formal, snappy and manicured... all dressed up and then, literally, stripped bare." --LA Weekly, June 17 - 23, 2005

Click here for full details on this exciting world premiere.



Michel's Direction of "The Lesson" Wins LA Weekly Theater Award
Artistic Director Frederique Michel won the Best Direction [One-Act] award at the LA Weekly Theatre Awards at the Henry Fonda Theater in Hollywood. Other City Garage nominations that evening included Production of the Year for the company's staging of Boris Vian's "The Empire Builders," and Best Performance {One-Act] for Liz Pocock in "The Lesson". See the full list of 2004 LA Weekly Theater Award nominees here.



Pocock's Performance in "The Lesson" Listed Among Most Memorable Stage Moments of 2004
In the LA Weekly's year-end "List Issue," Liz Pocock's portrayal of the professor came in near the top:

"4. Liz Pocock's hyperactive professor in Ionesco's The Lesson, at City Garage. What is generally a symbol of male authority here became an insane, lisping, sweat-coated, contortion-filled emblem of female dominance. She was so over the top at play's start, you couldn't imagine how she could go anywhere at all. Then for over an hour, she just kept going further into a slapstick so broad, she melded into a living cartoon."

Read the full LA Weekly article here.



Critics Love "The Lesson"!
"Leave it to City Garage, Santa Monica's bastion of European avant-garde theater, to put a refreshingly unorthodox spin on Eugene Ionesco's absurdest classic "The Lesson."
--Los Angeles Times 11/12/04



"You fear, near the start, that the physical intensity of Pocock bursting-at-the-seams has nowhere to go, yet her animation keeps growing until, by play’s end, she’s a whiplashed, quivering ball of sweat, still hitting every mark and sibilant “S” on cue. Davanzo and Frank are also fine."
--LA Weekly 11/7/04

"Davanzo and Pocock play off each other hilariously in this cracklingly smart and intellectually bracing production. If you've never seen any Ionesco, this serves as a great introduction."

--Backstage West 11/18/04

Click here for full details on our current production!



Managing Director Charles Duncombe Wins International Prize for "Patriot Act" Text
Patriot Act by Charles Duncombe has been selected the winner of the Mario Fratti-Fred Newman Anti-Corruption Playwriting Contest.

The contest, launched by world-renowned playwright and critic Mario Fratti and Fred Newman, artistic director of the Castillo Theatre, at last year's Otto Rene Castillo Awards for Political Theatre, is designed to encourage the writing and production of plays that work to expose and explore political, financial and/or ethical corruption. The number and quality of the submissions far surpassed expectations.

The winning script, Patriot Act, was selected from nearly 200 entrees from six nations. First prize brings with it a $750 check and a public reading at the Castillo Theatre, 543 West 42nd Street (between 10th and 11th avenues) on Saturday, December 18th, 2004 at 5:00 pm. Admission is free.

Duncombe's winning script is politically provocative, dramatically riveting and with two characters and one simple set, easy to produce. In Patriot Act, a conservative salesman finds himself being questioned by a government agent who slowly but inexorably tangles him in the provisions of the Patriot Act, provisions that corrupt the principles of democracy that it was supposedly enacted to protect. As the tense two-man drama unfolds this "patriotic" American Everyman learns that, according to the new law, he is anything but.

Duncombe is the managing director of City Garage, an avant-garde, politically engaged theatre in Santa Monica, California. Working closely with his partner and artistic director, Frederique Michel, Duncombe has served as playwright, dramaturg and designer at City Garage for 15 years. Among his previous plays are Atrocities: Meetings with Monstrous Men (2000) about human rights atrocities in Chechnya, and Frederick of Prussia/George Ws Dream of Sleep (2001), a collaboration with German playwright Heiner Müller.

Tickets for the reading of Patriot Act are free, but seating is limited. To reserve a seat call the Castillo Box Office at 212-941-1234.



City Garage Receives National Award for Political Theatre
On June 7, 2004 City Garage was honored by the Castillo Theatre in New York City with an Otto Award for our innovative political theatre. Among the other honorees were legendary experimental theatre director Robert Wilson and the acclaimed Chicano theatre company El Teatro Campesino.
Read all about the Otto Rene Castillo Awards for Political Theatre here.



LA Weekly names City Garage "Best of LA"!
In the LA Weekly's annual "Best of LA" issue, Weekly Theatre Editor Stephen Leigh Morris recognized City Garage as the area's "Best Theatre Company." You can find the entire article here.