Stoop Stories is written and performed by Pulitzer Prize finalist Orlandersmith (Yellowman), with Jo Bonney as the consulting director. It plays six performances July 7-11.

Bones, which was commissioned by Center Theatre Group, is directed by Gordon Edelstein. It will be presented for nine performances July 30-Aug. 8.

In Stoop Stories, Orlandersmith "transforms herself into characters from the New York neighborhoods of her youth, capturing the diverse voices and rhythms of urban street life," according to CTG. The world is populated by a rocker-turned-junkie, an impressionable young poetess and an elderly Jewish immigrant "who recalls the night many years before when he was sitting at a favorite neighborhood bar and a down-on-her-luck Billie Holiday sat down next to him."

Bones features three actors and two onstage jazz musicians. It focuses on a family — "a mother and her grown son and daughter, who are all unable to move forward from a damaged past," according to CTG. "The daughter…decides that it is time to confront the family's history and summons the three of them to a meeting. They converge on the neutral ground of a shabby airport hotel."

Orlandersmith won an Obie Award for Beauty's Daughter, which she wrote and starred in at American Place Theatre in 1995. Her play, Monster, premiered at New York Theatre Workshop in November 1996. The Gimmick premiered at the McCarter Theatre and went on to great acclaim at the Long Wharf Theatre and New York Theatre Workshop. Yellowman also premiered at the McCarter in a co-production with the Wilma and Long Wharf Theatres. She was a Pulitzer Prize Award finalist in 2002 for Yellowman, which played at the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles in 2005. Orlandersmith first performed Stoop Stories in 2008 at the Public Theater as part of the Under the Radar Festival. Casting for Bones will be announced.

For information, visit www.CenterTheatreGroup.org.

The Kirk Douglas Theatre is located in Culver City, CA.

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DouglasPlus was introduced in the 2008-2009 Kirk Douglas Theatre season with the goal of broadening the spectrum of what CTG can develop, produce and present at the Douglas. It provides an eclectic mix of theatre choices that utilize both traditional and non-traditional performance spaces. Each presentation has a very limited number of performances to be sold at a modest price.