Shakespeare at New Swan Theater, Happy Sundays, Pink Martini and the best L.A. culture
Hello and welcome to another edition of the Essential Arts Newsletter, a place where we deliver you the best arts and culture news and events every week. Closing in on the end of summer means you’ll only have a handful more chances to soak in some of the best outdoor (and A/C-filled) artwork experiences this town has to offer.
Best bets: On our radar this week
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1. Jack Rogers Hopkins
“Any artist who can’t destroy his own work, shouldn’t be an artist,” proclaimed San Diego designer Jack Rogers Hopkins (1920-2006), shown here in his 1970 masterpiece of organic modernism, “Womb Room,” a trippy art-furniture installation that he did, indeed, destroy. Hopkins perfected the technique of stacking thin strips of wood, then laminating and carving them into complex wooden curves that echoed the waves, cliffs and driftwood of the Southern California coast. “One cannot see his work in ceramics, jewelry, handmade furniture and sculpture and confuse it for any other maker from the period,” says Katie Nartonis, co-editor (with Jeffrey Head) of the 2020 book “Jack Rogers Hopkins: California Design Maverick” and the producer-director of a 2023 companion documentary. Nartonis’ dedication paid off handsomely: In 2018, fire destroyed the Hopkins family’s collection, but in preparation for the book, she had possession of his sketchbooks, photographs, slides jewelry and tools. These artifacts, along with examples of Hopkins sculpture and furniture, are on view at the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts.
Fridays and Saturdays through Sept. 28. Jacobs Education Center Gallery, 5131 Carnelian St., Alta Loma. malooffoundation.org.
— David A. Keeps
2. Glass studios tour
The nonprofit Ruskin Art Club is leading a tour of Highland Park’s 127-year-old Judson Studios, billed as the oldest family-run stained-glass maker in the nation and maker of some of L.A.’s beloved landmark glass art. The tour starts at Bulls Eye Studio in South Pasadena, where Bulls Eye has collaborated with Judson on an intricate glass dome called “Pagoda.”
2-5 p.m. Saturday. Bull’s Eye Studio, 143 Pasadena Ave., South Pasadena. ruskinartclub.org. RSVP here: greenvelope.com/card/nlrWZvR/0
3. “The Brothers Size”
To kick off his debut season as Geffen Playhouse artistic director, Tarell Alvin McCraney has programmed one of his most-produced plays for its 20th anniversary staging, performed in the round in the intimate Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater. The lyrical modern-day fable centers on two dissimilar siblings in the Deep South, and what happens when a charismatic presence tests their brotherly bond. The piece was inspired by a West African Yoruba myth, “a very small story that I came across in research for a class,” he told me earlier this year. Bijan Sheibani directs the production after previously leading two stagings at London’s Young Vic Theatre: an Olivier-nominated take in 2007 and a 2018 revival.
Through Sept. 8. Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. geffenplayhouse.org
— Ashley Lee
4. Star-Spangled Stravinsky and “Rite of Spring”
Although Igor Stravinsky was a frequent visitor to the Hollywood Bowl and conducted his own music there during the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, when he lived in West Hollywood, he’s programmed surprisingly little by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the summer. Thursday night’s all-Stravinsky program should make up for that. The 37-year-old, Berkeley-born conductor Teddy Abrams, who has made the Louisville Orchestra one of America’s liveliest, leads “The Rite of Spring” and Stravinsky’s Violin Concert with the electrifying Leila Josefowicz as soloist. The evening begins with Stravinsky’s startlingly original arrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which nearly got the composer locked up for desecrating the national anthem.
8 p.m. Thursday. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., L.A. hollywoodbowl.com
— Mark Swed
5. Mizell Brothers in Jazz Is Dead series
The essential L.A. label Jazz Is Dead has long championed the genre’s past, present and future here, with a distinctly SoCal sense of the music’s mutability and range. Most of its shows take place at Highland Park’s Lodge Room, but this summer and fall, it’s got a recurring series at the sylvan Ford Amphitheater. The series kicks off with Larry Mizell of the legendary Mizell Brothers, whose productions and arrangements helped bridge the jazz, Motown and disco eras on records by Donald Byrd and the Jackson 5. (Fun trivia: Larry Mizell was also an electrical engineer on the Apollo lunar module). Later this fall, it will bring Brazilian samba titan Marcos Valle and Ghanaian Afrobeat pioneers Ebo Taylor and Pat Thomas. Aug. 28, The Ford, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. E.
— August Brown
The week head: A curated calendar
THURSDAY
The Big Lebowski “Summer in the City: Los Angeles, Block by Block” continues with a 4K screening of the Coen brothers’ 1998 cult comedy, starring Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore and John Goodman.
7:30 p.m. Thursday. Academy Museum, 6067 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. academymuseum.org
FRIDAY
The Natural World of Studio Ghibli Three of the Japanese studio’s beloved animated titles play on a big screen outdoors: “Princess Mononoke” on Friday, “Spirited Away” on Saturday and “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind” on Sunday. In Japanese with English subtitles.
8 p.m. The Ford, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. E., L.A. theford.com
Billy Strings The plucky Bluegrass phenom and his band headline a two-night stand.
7:40 p.m. Friday-Saturday. Kia Forum, 3900 W. Manchester Blvd., Inglewood. thekiaforum.com
Pink Martini The eclectic ensemble led by pianist Thomas Lauderdale and singer China Forbes are joined by the Andrew Bird Trio for two evenings of genre-defying music.
8 p.m. Friday-Saturday. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood. hollywoodbowl.com
SATURDAY
Corpous Nancy Baker Cahill’s towering augmented reality sculpture will rise above Wilshire Boulevard, obscuring the division between the digital world and reality, visible only through phones on the 4th Wall app (4thwallapp.org).
Through March 2, 2025. UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood. hammer.ucla.edu
Happy Sundays A free “anti-festival” featuring music, comedy, tattooing and Space Talks — presentations by local aerospace companies.
Saturday-Sunday. Various venues, Zaferia District, Long Beach. happysundaysfest.com
Los Angeles Hungry Ghost Festival A lively cultural event honoring the past and celebrating the present with free performances including a dragon and lion dance, shadow puppet (yingxi) shows, plus zodiac and monkey king skits, kung fu demonstrations, fan dancers and local musicians.
4-7 p.m. Saturday, Alpine Park, 817 Yale St., Chinatown. lahungryghostfestival.com
TUESDAY
Freedom at the Moulin Rouge Muse/ique tells in song the story of Las Vegas’ first fully integrated hotel and casino.
7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday outdoors at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino; repeats at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 4-5 indoors at the Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., L.A. muse-ique.com
Dispatch: New Swan Theater
The New Swan Theater on the UC Irvine campus might just be the most charming place to experience Shakespeare outdoors in Southern California. The enchantment begins the moment you enter the makeshift mini-Elizabethan theater that is set up each summer. Part dollhouse, part jewelry box, the venue brings actors and audience into a concentrated collective. The Shakespeare Festival this summer features two comedies of vastly different temperaments: “Twelfth Night,” directed by New Swan Shakespeare Festival artistic director and founder Eli Simon, and “Measure for Measure,” directed by Beth Lopes. If festivity scrapes out a win in “Twelfth Night,” happiness can claim only a Pyrrhic victory in “Measure for Measure,” a Shakespeare problem play that Lopes boldly takes in hand. Come for the Elizabethan ambience but stay for the magic of modern Shakespearean interpretation, vibrantly designed and intelligently and lyrically performed. In repertory through Aug. 31, UC Irvine campus, https://newswanshakespeare.com/
— Charles McNulty
Culture news and the SoCal scene
Theater critic Charles McNulty reviews Barry Edelstein’s adapted version of “Henry 6,” Shakespeare’s early history play, condensed into two parts, as San Diego’s Old Globe completes the playwright’s canon with an entertaining adaptation.
Staffer Todd Martens writes a vivd feature on “Escape From Gadot,” an escape room that is also a work of theater — or vice versa. It upends the conventions of both.
Broadway producer Adam Epstein, whose credits include “Hairspray,” “Amadeus” and “Cry-Baby,” died this week after months battling a brain tumor, staffwriter Alexandra Del Rosario reports.
Staff writer Stacy Perman writes about an exhibition that re-creates the scene of Hamas-led militants’ attack on the Nova Music Festival, killing more than 400. The goal: Ask visitors to see their shared humanity.
Writer David A. Keeps does a stunning profile on artist Magdalena Suarez Frimkess as LACMA exhibits decades of ceramics, painting and drawing, the artist reflects on the devastating sacrifices she made along the way. “I paid my price, I can tell you.”
Finally, McNulty reviews “Velour: A Drag Spectacular,” created by Sasha Velour and Moisés Kaufman, writing that it is indeed worthy of its title in world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse.
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And last but not least
Next time you hear someone talking about the dire state of our economy, remind them that this week someone in this country spent $630,000 to buy Indiana Jones’ fedora. The famous hat, which had a pre-auction estimate of $250,000 to $500,000, is from the collection of the late stunt performer Dean Ferrandini, who was a stunt double for Harrison Ford on “Temple of Doom.”
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