Scholes initially kept his son’s diagnosis secret during his playing career and revealed he was dropped by United manager Sir Alex Ferguson while attempting to handle the situation privately.
“I never got a break from it, even when playing – it was very hard in those days,” Scholes, one of United’s key players in the 1999 Treble season, added.
“I don’t think they diagnosed it until he was two-and-a-half years old. But you knew early something was wrong, but then you get the diagnosis, and I’d never heard of it.
“I remember the first time after it, we were playing Derby away and I just didn’t want to be there.
“I remember the manager dropped me the week after, and I hadn’t told anyone. I ended up telling them a few weeks later, as it was quite hard.
“Even now, I don’t want sympathy or anything. I just thought, even if I did speak to someone about it, it’s not going to help Aiden.
“The big concern now is, because you’re getting a bit older, what happens when you’re not here? That’s the thing that’s now on my mind all the time.”
Autism spectrum disorder – its medical name – is the name for a range of conditions that affect how a person communicates and interacts with the world around them, as well as their interests and behaviour.
It is not a disease or an illness, but a condition that somebody is born with, and it is estimated that one in every 100 people in the UK is autistic.
Holly’s famous friends have rallied around her family following her sister Darci’s deathCredit: Getty ImagesHeartbroken Holly shared the tragic news last weekCredit: InstagramFriends including Sophie and Charlotte have donated to help Holly and her familyCredit: Instagram
Now her famous friends have rallied around the family during the incredibly difficult time, The Sun can reveal.
An insider said: “Holly Hagan’s famous pals have donated thousands of pounds to help pay for her tragic sister’s funeral and memorial, and allow them some breathing space from work.
“Charlotte Crosby and her partner Jake Ankers have donated £2,000, Sophie Kasaei has given £1,000, Adam Frisby £1,000 and Gaz Beadle and Nathan Henry gave £500 each.”
“The last four days have been something I hope no family ever has to go through.
“We are traumatised in every sense of the word.
“One day we will share Darci’s story. But for now I please ask that you do respect our privacy and allow us to process what has happened.
“To the incredible ambulance crew, and everyone at Manchester Royal Infirmary A&E and ICU, thank you so much for giving my sister the absolute best chance.
“Because of you all we have had the opportunity to hold her hand, stroke her hair and feel her heart beating for the last time.
“We will forever be grateful for the way you have looked after her and us throughout this unimaginable process.”
Holly added: “Right now my job is to support my family in any way that I can to ensure they don’t have to worry about work/finances.
“Any posts you see this month are pre-recorded and scheduled ahead of time. I will be continuing to work, so they do not have to.”
The TV star then reflected on her late sister and recalled some of the fondest memories they shared together.
Holly continued: “Darci is so beautiful and she genuinely didn’t even realise it.
“I always told her she’d look better without the huge spider lashes but we all know what a hypocrite I was being since I wore nine pairs at her age!
“She lived in Darci world, forgetting to turn lights off, didn’t know how to lock doors after coming in from a night out, leaving the freezer open so my mam came down to a puddle of defrosted food.
“She was the best aunty, Alpha-Jax adored her. She spent his whole birthday on the bouncy castle with AJ and Alba, and that’s a memory I’ll cherish forever.”
Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks fans are convinced they know who shot Tony Hutchinson after he was left fighting for his life on his wedding day
Angie Quinn Screen Time Reporter
10:15, 26 Oct 2025
Tony fell to the floor after being shot in Hollyoaks(Image: Channel 4)
In a shocking turn of events on Hollyoaks, Tony Hutchinson was shot on Wednesday (October 22) episode, leaving viewers in suspense about his fate.
The drama unfolded during a crossover episode with Brookside on Channel 4, where a plane piloted by serial killer Jez (Jeremy Sheffield) crashed into the village, causing a massive explosion.
However, the chaos didn’t stop there. On what was supposed to be his wedding day to Diane (Alex Fletcher), Tony (Nick Pickard) found himself confronted by Darren Osborne (Ashley Taylor Dawson) for having an affair with his wife Nancy (Jessica Fox).
Darren was livid upon discovering that Tony is the biological father of his daughter, Morgan, following a past fling with Nancy. Their heated argument was briefly interrupted by the plane disaster, but quickly resumed, much to the dismay of Tony’s son, Ant Hutchinson (Brook Debio).
Adding to the confusion, Tony believed he had got Marie Fielding (Rita Simons) pregnant, only to find out she was wearing a fake baby bump. Meanwhile, Mercedes McQueen (Jennifer Metcalfe) was also expecting his child, reports the Manchester Evening News.
Tragedy struck when Mercedes lost her baby in the aftermath of the plane crash. Tony had left her trapped under debris as he rushed to save Marie, a decision that will haunt him.
Diane (Alexandra Fletcher) stepped up to rescue Mercedes, mirroring how Mercedes had previously saved her. Now, both Mercedes and Diane are furious with Tony – Mercedes for her heartbreaking loss, and Diane for her groom’s reckless behaviour.
In a later scene, Darren was seen in tears as he pointed a gun at Tony, who pleaded for his life. Suddenly, a gunshot echoed from behind Tony, and he collapsed to the ground after being shot.
Now, Tony’s fate hangs in the balance.
Hollyoaks viewers are now speculating about who could have shot Tony, with some suggesting that his own son Ant might be the culprit following their earlier disagreement.
One fan took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to ask: “So…Who shot Tony? My guess is Ant! #Hollyoaks.”
Another declared: “I’m calling it ant was the one who shot Tony! He was pretty mad at his dad #hollyoaks.”
A third joined in, saying: “My early theory for who shot Tony in #Hollyoaks: It was Ant!”.
“I feel like Ant was probably the 1 that shot Tony #hollyoaks”, another viewer added.
Hollyoaks airs Monday to Wednesday on E4 at 7pm and first look episodes can be streamed Channel 4 from 7am
Lío Mehiel has been working for a moment like “After the Hunt” for a long time.
Directed by Luca Guadagnino, this thorny morality play of a film set at Yale University pits well-liked professor Alma (played by Julia Roberts) against both her protegé, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), as well as her longtime friend and colleague Hank (Andrew Garfield) during a scandal that risks her entire academic career.
Amid that starry A-list cast, the actor plays Maggie’s partner, Alex. The film, which had its world premiere in August at the Venice Film Festival, is Mehiel’s most high-profile project yet.
“There is so much time as an artist where you are doing the work and nobody cares and you have to find within yourself the motivation and the commitment and the drive to keep going,” Mehiel tells The Times. “Because you know that when you are going to be able to reach people, it will be worth it.”
Such a step has been years in the making. Mehiel, who lived in Puerto Rico until they were 5 years old, began their creative endeavors almost as soon as they arrived in New York City, first as a salsa dancer and later as an actor. By the time they were in fifth grade they were attending Broadway auditions, eventually booking a role in the 2003 revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” starring Ashley Judd and Jason Patric.
(L to R) Lio Mehiel as Alex and Ayo Edebiri as Maggie in AFTER THE HUNT, from Amazon MGM Studios.
But as they began finding their own sense of self and body, they also found the kind of opportunities that led them to “After the Hunt.” That began in earnest back in 2023, when they starred in Vuk Lungulov-Klotz’s film “Mutt” as Feña, a role they booked after cold-emailing the director and telling them they’d do anything to win that part. The film chronicled a particularly hectic day in the life of a young trans man in New York City, as he struggles to rekindle old relationships he’d severed since he’d transitioned. Mehiel’s soulful performance won them a Special Jury Award for Acting at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, putting them on the map as a trans Latine performer to watch.
“Moving forward from ‘Mutt,’ I was really interested in building on that momentum to what’s next,” they say. Not just in terms of their career but in the broader cultural conversation around contemporary queer and trans representation. The following year, they returned to Sundance with Alessandra Lacorazza’s “In the Summers,” which walked away from the festival with the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury prize — the first for a film directed by a Latina director. Like “Mutt,” that sun-dappled film found Mehiel breathing life into a trans character navigating a thorny relationship with their father (played by renowned Puerto Rican rapper Residente).
Mehiel has long been building a body of work that centers on the very work of having a body. Just this past summer, they visited the Salton Sea for a performance installation titled “angels of a drowning myth.” In photos from that day, Mehiel is seen naked and half-submerged into that so-called sea, posing alongside a bust of their own chest made six months after they’d received top surgery. A portrait of a body twice represented, Mehiel’s piece stressed the solidity and malleability of their own body, and the beauty they find within and around it. Their work moves past familiar ideas of the body in transition, gleefully embracing the messiness of the queer experience and refusing the easy siren call of visibility.
“‘After the Hunt,’ is such a beautiful example of that because Alex is a queer and trans character, but we just see them getting home from a run, taking their shirt off, being with their partner, dealing with stuff that has nothing to do with their queerness,” Mehiel says.
That moment Alex first appears on screen is quintessential Mehiel. Not just because of the honeyed intimacy their sweaty, bare chest exudes. But because their appearance immediately reframes everything audiences have heard about this seemingly militant, radical social justice warrior. Alex at first appears as a figure of “woke” culture there to defy the older generation Roberts’ Alma comes to stand for. But there’s more to them than that.
“Alex doesn’t represent all queer people who have a political orientation in the world, all queer people who might attend a protest,” they explain. “I think what Luca did and what Nora did in the script was to give us all an opportunity to move away from identity politics. Instead, they gave each of the characters enough meat on their bones that they get to be complex, messy characters.”
“After the Hunt” may focus on complicated ethical questions surrounding sexual assault allegations at a university, but within that plot, Mehiel sees also a chance for viewers to catch a glimpse of characters like Maggie and Alex who may not otherwise be centered in such stories.
“I’m just excited that there is more exposure that people are having to queer and trans people and to queer relationships, and how that can fit in the context of a ‘normative’ world,” they add. “This is a movie with Julia Roberts, one of our biggest stars and crown jewels of Hollywood and of American cinema. There’s going to be a lot of folks that are going to see it because Julia is in it. And then they’re also going to get to experience a queer and trans person on screen who is likable in some moments and unlikable in others, just as much as every other character.”
That’s been Mehiel’s purpose for years now: to expand what queer and trans characters can look like on stage, on screen and, in turn, in real life. At a time when these communities are vilified by those who wish to harm them, Mehiel insists on the importance of such normalized visibility.
Lio Mehiel seen at the Los Angeles Premiere of Amazon MGM Studios’ “After The Hunt” at Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on October 04, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
(Photo by Stewart Cook / Amazon MGM Studios via Getty Images)
“Honestly, exposure to these experiences creates connection more than anything and allows people to feel comfortable,” they add. “Because the political climate right now — for the Latine community and for the trans community — is really hard and heartbreaking and challenging. And I think so much of it has to do with people feeling like they don’t know who these people are.”
A central kernel of the premise of “After the Hunt” is that you never know what someone is going through. And, more to the point, that making assumptions about other people’s experience can be extremely dangerous.
“This movie really serves as a mirror to the people that are watching it,” Mehiel insists. The film confronts audiences with their own biases and refuses any tidy conclusions.
But for Mehiel, the film will forever be remembered as a highlight of a career that is only bound to get bigger and more exciting. Just this year, they spent the summer at the Williamstown Theatre Festival starring in Jeremy O. Harris’ new play as well as serving as head of production for “Mother, Daughter, Holy Spirit,” a grassroots fundraiser for the Trans Justice Funding Project, all while continuing to pursue their various interests as artist, writer, and filmmaker. In that context, “After the Hunt” stands now less as a calling card than as a reminder of how far they’ve come and yet how much further they want to go. That film, now playing in theaters and coming soon to Prime Video, will widen the scope and reach of their artistry.
“Watching it, I was like, ‘I fit right into the fabric of the movie,’” they say. “On a personal journey level, I feel confident that I have the skill, the talent and the experience at this point to work with the masters that I dream of working with (if the sexy French filmmaker, Julia Ducournau, ever reads this interview, she should know that I want to work with her).”
Or, in much simpler terms that echo an ethos they’ve brought to bear on and off screen: “I just feel ready and able to actualize the things that I have been dreaming about for a long time.”
The ongoing government shutdown continues to disrupt flights at times and put pressure on air traffic controllers, who are working without pay.
On Friday evening, airports in Phoenix, Houston and San Diego were reporting delays because of staffing issues, and the Federal Aviation Administration warned that staffing problems were also possible at airports in the New York area, Dallas and Philadelphia.
A day earlier, flights were delayed at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, New Jersey’s Newark airport and Washington’s Reagan National Airport because of air traffic controller shortages. The number of flight delays for any reason nationwide surged to 6,158 Thursday after hovering around 4,000 a day earlier in the week, according to FlightAware.com.
Many FAA facilities are so critically short on controllers that just a few absences can cause disruptions, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said that more air traffic controllers have been calling in sick since the shutdown began. Early on in the shutdown, there were a number of disruptions at airports across the country, but for the last couple of weeks there haven’t been as many problems.
Duffy said the disruptions and delays will only get worse next week after Tuesday’s payday arrives and “their paycheck is going to be a big fat zero.” He said controllers are telling him they are worried about how to pay their bills and frustrated with the shutdown.
“The stress level that our controllers are under right now, I think is unacceptable,” he said at a news conference Friday at Philadelphia International Airport.
The shutdown is having real consequences, as some students at the controller academy have decided to abandon the profession because they don’t want to work in a job they won’t be paid for, Duffy said.
That will only make it harder for the FAA to hire enough controllers to eliminate the shortage, since training takes years. He said that the government is only a week or two away from running out of money to pay students at the academy.
“We’re getting word back right now from our academy in Oklahoma City that some of our young controllers in the academy and some who have been given spots in the next class of the academy are bailing. They’re walking away,” Duffy said. “They’re asking themselves, ‘Why do I want to go into a profession where I could work hard and have the potential of not being paid for my services?’ ”
The head of the air traffic controllers union, Nick Daniels, joined Duffy. He said that some controllers have taken on second jobs delivering for DoorDash or driving for Uber to help them pay their bills.
“As this shutdown continues, and air traffic controllers are not paid for the vital work that they do day in and day out, that leads to an unnecessary distraction,” Daniels said. “They cannot be 100% focused on their jobs, which makes this system less safe. Every day that this shutdown continues, tomorrow we’ll be less safe than today.”
Airlines and airports across the country have started buying controllers meals and helping them connect with food banks and other services to get through the shutdown.
The greatest concern is for new controllers who might make less than $50,000, but even experienced controllers who make well over six figures while working six days a week may be living paycheck to paycheck without much cushion in their budgets. Daniels said it’s not fair that controllers are facing impossible choices about whether to pay for rent or child care or groceries.
Duffy has said that air traffic controllers who abuse their sick time during the shutdown could be fired.
Republicans and Democrats have been unable to reach an agreement to end the shutdown that began on Oct. 1. Democrats are demanding steps be taken to avoid soaring healthcare premiums for many Americans set to take effect under the GOP spending law adopted this summer. Republicans have said they will negotiate only after ending the shutdown.
The airlines and major unions across the industry have urged Congress to make a deal to end the shutdown.
Air Line Pilots Assn. President Capt. Jason Ambrosi said in a message to his members that he’s concerned about air traffic controllers and other federal employees.
“The safety of millions of passengers and tens of thousands of tons of cargo is in the hands of these workers. Worrying about how they’ll make their mortgage payment or pay for day care is an added stress they do not need,” Ambrosi said.
Democrats have called on Republicans to negotiate an end to the shutdown. Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, put the onus on Democrats.
“Our aviation system has operated safely throughout the shutdown, but it’s putting an incredible and unnecessary strain on the system, and on our air traffic controllers, flight crews, and many other aviation professionals,” Graves said.
Funk writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Rio Yamat contributed to this report.
Ben Stiller has made a lovely, dreamlike film about his parents, the comedian-actors Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, which is also a film about himself, his sister, Amy Stiller, and his own fatherhood as reflected back by his children and his wife, the actor Christine Taylor. Premiering Friday on Apple TV, “Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost” is a show business story, in large part, but will be emotionally familiar to anyone who has had the occasion to wonder about their parents’ lives, in their parents’ absence.
Though both had set out to be actors — “I carried Eleanora Duse’s life under one arm,” says Anne, “and ‘An Actor Prepares,’ Stanislavski, under the other” — Jerry had been thinking of getting into comedy when he met Anne. They married in 1954, but it wasn’t until 1963 that the conjoined career of Stiller and Maera took off, with an appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” They might play the last two people on Earth meeting for the first time, or an Irish girl and a Jewish boy matched by computer dating. He was a fretful perfectionist who would endlessly rehearse; Anne was naturally funny; she flowed.
As documentary subjects go, the Stillers were not remarkably dysfunctional — no violence, no skeletons — past the not uncommon situation of parents whose work, or fixation on work, often took them away from their kids, physically or mentally, with the added fillip of that work having made them famous. (There are references to Anne’s drinking, which bothered Jerry, but this is not a hole the film runs down, and there’s nothing here to suggest it diminished her life or work.) As different people with different goals — “My mom wanted to be happy independent of performing,” says Ben, “and I think for my dad performing was so important to him it was part of his happiness” — there was tension, but they loved each other, and they loved their kids, and stayed married for 62 years, until Anne’s death in 2015.
Stiller frames the film with his and Amy’s return to the Upper West Side apartment where they were raised in order to clear it out to be sold, providing the opportunity to see what their parents had left behind. (Jerry died in 2020.) And it was a lot — nothing is lost if nothing is thrown away. There are love letters, diaries, scripts, manuscripts. (Anne: “I think Jerry has a need to keep his name going and for some reason he thinks that when we check out and pass over that the Smithsonian institute is going to want his memorabilia.”) Jerry had a habit, amounting to a compulsion, of documenting their life on film and tape; some of their conversations, and arguments, would turn into routines. (“Where does the act end and the marriage begin?” Anne wonders.) Raised voices in another room might be rehearsing or fighting. One routine consisted of escalating declarations of hate: “I hated you before I met you.” “I hated you before you were born.”
They quit playing nightclubs in 1970 (they drove her “meshuggah”), but remained in public view — in guest appearances, game shows and talk shows, where, unlike the highly managed appearances of today, they seemed ready to dish the dirt on themselves, providing Ben Stiller with material for this film. And they went to work as actors, each amassing a long list of screen and stage appearances. Jerry, of course, is now best known from “Seinfeld,” where he played George’s father, Frank Costanza, and “The King of Queens,” acting in nearly 200 episodes.
Much of it has to do with Ben and Amy as children of famous people, of family vacations that became working vacations, and growing up on display. In one clip from “The Mike Douglas Show,” the siblings perform “Chopsticks” as a screechy violin duet. Young Ben, already interested in film and asked by an interviewer if his parents will feature in his movies, says that they won’t: “I’ll be making adventure or a murder or something like that, but never a comedy. I don’t like comedy.”
We get glimpses of Stiller’s own prolific career — in comedy, mostly, as it turned out — as well as confessions of his own failings as a family man. (His children, Quin and Ella, get to have their good-humored but penetrating say, as does Taylor, from whom he separated in 2017, and with whom he reunited during the pandemic.) But there’s no evident resentment on the part of Ben and Amy, just curiosity and self-examination as adults whose own lives have taught them something about being adults, amid the knowledge that their parents had parents, too, and some of their imperfections became imperfections of their own.
Both Anne and Jerry had come from dark places. “Their lives were always reaching for the light,” says the playwright John Guare, whose black comedy “The House of Blue Leaves” Anne performed in off-Broadway. “Why don’t you become a stagehand?” Jerry’s father told him when Jerry first told him of his ambition. “Where do you get off trying to be Eddie Cantor?” Anne’s mother died by suicide. “Your father was kind of a saint, you know,” Christopher Walken tells Ben.
Stiller’s approach is musical; his assembly of clips and photos is musical — poetic, not prosaic. He ends his film with a conversation between Jerry and his aged father, Willie, cut to a montage of the family through time.
“Isn’t this better than anything, just being alive?” says Jerry. “When we go, we’ll go together, you and me”
Willie: “Yeah, OK, hold hands and everything else.”
“You’ll take me to shows again when we get up there?”
“Yeah, when I go I’ll take you any place. … What is this?”
“It’s a tape recorder. … Whatever you say is on that tape. They’ll hear you forever. You’ll never be lost.”
And we see young Ben, filming a camera that’s filming him, as his father steps in behind him.
Do you wish that discovering shows playing at live theaters around Los Angeles was as easy as finding movies in local cinemas? Now it is. A new nonprofit called Theatre Commons L.A. — founded by some of the city’s most prominent theater leaders — launched earlier this week with easy-to-navigate local theater listings for more than 100 houses big and small.
The listings can be filtered by date, neighborhood and genre, and users can simply click on links to buy tickets. I’ve tried it and am happy to report that it takes all the guesswork and Googling out of finding a show that fits your schedule and suits your interests. It also introduced me to a whole host of new shows that I didn’t even realize were playing.
“Theatre Commons LA is about making it easier to make theatre in Los Angeles — and easier for people to find and enjoy it,” wrote Pasadena Playhouse producing artistic director Danny Feldman in an email. “By connecting artists, companies, and audiences, we’re working to build a more connected ecosystem for LA’s bold, local, living theatre.”
That connection is key. Because Los Angeles is a tough city to get a handle on. I’m old enough to remember getting hopelessly lost when I first moved here — crying in my old Toyota Corolla on freeway offramp, clutching a Thomas Guide that I could not make heads or tails of. Ironically, given the subject of this newsletter, I was trying to get to a theater downtown.
Visitors to L.A., and even plenty of seasoned Angelenos, often find the city sprawling and fragmented. The vast landscape is carved up by thriving neighborhoods, each with singular identities molded by unique cultural, business and arts offerings. TCLA aims to bring these diverse theaters together under a common umbrella to pool resources, and promotional and engagement opportunities, as well as to expand a sense of community in a difficult moment for the art form.
“It is no secret that the last few years have been particularly hard for theater in LA from the pandemic to the recent wildfires and curfews,” Center Theatre Group’s artistic director Snehal Desai wrote in an email. “What has become clear during this period is that the Los Angeles theater community is rich in artists, talent and leadership but our resources are scattered and there is not a consolidated place for information and outreach,” he continued. “Theatre Commons LA is a way to bridge those gaps — to share knowledge, opportunities, and support so that everyone, from small ensembles to major institutions, can thrive together. It creates the space our community has been asking for — where artists, institutions, and audiences can come together to imagine what Los Angeles theatre can be next.”
A volunteer steering committee, including Desai and Feldman, launched TCLA and its listings website with the financial support of the Nonprofit Sustainability Initiative. Last month, the Perenchio Foundation made a substantial investment meant to sustain the organization’s future growth, including the hiring of an executive director. (Please see the photo caption above for a list of the other steering committee members.)
Earlier this week also marked The Times’ launch of “The 52 best places to see plays and musicals in Southern California,” curated and written by Times theater critic Charles McNulty, assistant entertainment editor Kevin Crust (who also edits this newsletter) and me. The list contains short summations of each theater’s defining traits and connects to a map that plots each theater in its own pocket of the city. It was a real labor of love and I urge you to use it in conjunction with the new TCLA website to plan your next night out.
I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, mulling over more than a dozen entertainment options for the weekend. All of them good. Here’s this week’s arts and culture news.
On our radar
Complexions Contemporary Ballet comes to the Music Center on Friday and Saturday.
(Rachel Neville)
Complexions Contemporary Ballet The New York-based company celebrates its 30th anniversary with “Retro Suite,” a collection of works from 1994 to the present, created by co-founding artistic director and principal choreographer Dwight Rhoden. Complexions is known for its high-energy mashup of traditional ballet with hip-hop and street dance, as well as for the multicultural makeup of its troupe and its novel approach to incorporating visual art and theater into its choreography. — Jessica Gelt 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. musiccenter.org
Children make art at the 2024 Grand Ave Arts: All Access event.
(John McCoy)
Grand Ave Arts: All Access A day of free art, music and culture along downtown Los Angeles’ cultural corridor. Participating institutions include the Broad, Center Theatre Group, Classical California KUSC, Colburn School, Dataland, Gloria Molina Grand Park, L.A. Opera, the L.A. Phil, Los Angeles Central Library, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Metro Art, MOCA, the Music Center and Redcat. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday. Grand Ave. from Temple to 6th Street, downtown L.A. grandavearts.org
Cyndi Lauper wrote the music and lyrics for the new musical “Working Girl,” based on the 1988 movie.
(Larsen & Talbert / For The Times)
Working Girl This musical adaption of the 1988 film — directed by Mike Nichols, written by Kevin Wade and starring Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver and Melanie Griffith — has assembled an all-star team of its own. The music and lyrics are by Cyndi Lauper, Theresa Rebeck has written the book and Christopher Ashley directs. The Wall Street Cinderella story centers on a Staten Island secretary who, tired of being misused, underestimated and passed over, cunningly takes her corporate future into her own hands in a revenge tale that has everyone rooting for the underdog. Yet another La Jolla Playhouse world premiere that has “Broadway hit” written all over it. — Charles McNulty Tuesday through Nov. 30. La Jolla Playhouse, Mandell Weiss Theatre, 2910 La Jolla Village Drive. lajollaplayhouse.org
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The week ahead: A curated calendar
FRIDAY Tiago Rodrigues In “By Heart,” the Portuguese playwright and actor invites 10 audience members onto the stage to learn a poem as he shares stories of his grandmother and explains the connections created by the words. 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. UCLA Nimoy Theater, 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu
SATURDAY John Giorno “No Nostalgia,” an exhibition devoted to the late poet, artist and activist (1936-2019) who turned words into performance, sound installation and painting. The show includes a select group of Giorno’s work ranging from early prints to his black-and-white text and rainbow paintings, a selection of materials from Giorno’s archive showing how he pieced together his poems and his 1969 work Dial-A-Poem. 11 a.m.-6 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, through April 25, 2026. Marciano Art Foundation, 4357 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. marcianoartfoundation.org
The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra performs Saturday at Zipper Hall in downtown L.A. and Sunday at the Wallis in Beverly Hills.
(Brian Feinzimer for LACO)
Romantic Resonance When a talented 19th century French pianist named Louise Farrenc became tired of giving concerts accompanying her flutist husband, she founded Éditions Farrenc in Paris, which became one of the country’s leading music publishing houses. She also gained a smallish reputation as a composer of mainly salon pieces for piano. But she had far greater ambitions nearly impossible for a woman at that time to realize. Farrenc composed three large-scale symphonies that are only now, more than a century after her death in 1875, being noticed. Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s music director, Jaime Martín, is one of her champions, and he is pairing Farrenc’s impressive Schumann-esque “Second Symphony,” written in 1845, with Brahms’ “First Piano Concerto,” featuring the dauntingly virtuoso pianist Marc-André Hamelin. — Mark Swed 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Zipper Hall, 200 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A.; 4 p.m. Sunday. The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. laco.org
Night of Ritual and Revelry LACMA hosts this after-hours party with a focus on plants. The evening includes open galleries, plant-themed activities, a costume contest, food and drink, plus an outdoor screening of the 1986 cult classic “Little Shop of Horrors” hosted by Meatball. Guests must be 18 or older to attend. 7 p.m. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Smid Welcome Plaza, 5905 Wilshire Blvd. lacma.org
Ragamala Dance Company performs Saturday at Broad Stage.
(Three Phase Multimedia)
Ragamala Dance Company Ragamala Dance Company — founded and run by the mother-daughter trio Ranee, Aparna and Ashwini Ramaswamy — brings Aparna’s most recent work, “Ananta, the Eternal,” to BroadStage with live music accompaniment. The company specializes in the South Indian dance form Bharatanatyam, and the troupe is known for its soulful embodiment of classical dance techniques and its bold and beautiful traditional costumes. — Jessica Gelt 7:30 p.m. BroadStage, Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center, 1310 11th St., Santa Monica. broadstage.org
Songs of Emerging Endangerment This sound installation by artist TJ Shinn, commissioned by the local multidisciplinary arts organization Clockshop, is set to sound hourly from dawn to dusk. The project features a 30-foot-tall sculptural air raid siren that mimics bird calls to map systems of global migration. Opening Saturday, 2-4 p.m., and through Feb. 22, 2026. Los Angeles State Historic Park. 1245 N. Spring St. clockshop.org
SUNDAY Colburn Orchestra Grammy Award-winner Carlos Miguel Prieto conducts the flagship ensemble from the Colburn School of Music in a program featuring Ravel, Dvořák and Schoenberg. 3 p.m. The Saroya, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge. thesoraya.org
The Heart Sellers Lloyd Suh, author of “The Far Country,” a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for drama, examines the deracinating effects of immigration in his work. In “The Heart Sellers,” two immigrants, one Filipino, the other Korean, strike up a friendship after a chance meeting at that quintessential American crossroads: the supermarket. Set in 1973, after the 1965 Hart-Celler Act abolished the national quota system that restricted immigration from non-European countries, they bond over what they left behind, the strange universe they’ve entered and the challenge of cooking a frozen turkey. Jennifer Chang directs this comedy about the power of friendship to redefine the idea of home. — Charles McNulty Through Nov. 16. South Coast Repertory, Julianne Argyros Stage, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. scr.org
MONDAY Bright Harvest: Powering Earth From Space This documentary follows Caltech professors Harry Atwater, Ali Hajimiri and Sergio Pellegrino on their quest to provide an endless supply of clean sustainable energy for the 2023 launch of the Space Solar Power Demonstrator. Followed by a Q&A with the three professors and filmmaker Steven Reich. Admission is free; reservations recommended. 7:30 p.m. Beckman Auditorium, Caltech, 332 S. Michigan Ave., Pasadena. caltech.edu
TUESDAY Carrie A screening of Brian De Palma’s 1976 adaptation of the Stephen King horror novel, starring Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, John Travolta, Amy Irving and William Katt, hosted by drag entertainer Jackie Beat. 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. Vidiots, Eagle Theatre, 4884 Eagle Rock Blvd. vidiotsfoundation.org
WEDNESDAY Pacific Jazz Orchestra’s Big Band With Jane Monheit Step into the elegant past for a program of timeless swing music, big band standards and seductive ballads. 7 and 9:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday. Blue Note L.A., 6372 W. Sunset Blvd. bluenotejazz.com
THURSDAY
Lon Chaney in 1925’s “The Phantom of the Opera.”
(Universal Pictures)
The Phantom of the Opera L.A. Opera’s tradition of presenting classic silent horror films for Halloween continues this year with the 1925 version of “Phantom” starring Lon Chaney. Frank Strobel conducts the L.A. Opera Orchestra performing Roy Budd’s original score live. 8 p.m. Thursday and Oct. 31. The United Theater on Broadway, 929 S. Broadway, downtown L.A. https://www.laopera.org/performances/2026/phantom-of-the-opera
Mark Ryden The new solo exhibition “Eye Am” envisions a lurid, mischievous world via twelve paintings and a selection of drawings. Opening reception 5-8 p.m. Thursday; book signing, 1-3 p.m. Oct. 31; exhibition continues through Dec. 20. Perrotin, 5036. W. Pico Blvd. perrotin.com
Nicole Scherzinger Just months removed from her Tony Award-winning triumph as Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard” on Broadway, the former Pussycat Dolls singer makes her Walt Disney Concert Hall debut. 8 p.m. Thursday. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
Culture news and the SoCal scene
The Laura Gardin Fraser “Lee-Jackson Monument” at the “Monuments” exhibit at MOCA.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Los Angeles is home to the “most significant American art museum show right now,” writes Times art critic Christopher Knight in his review of “Monuments,” which opened Thursday at the Brick and the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Contemporary. Featuring nearly a dozen, mostly Confederate, statues that have been toppled or removed from public spaces over the past decade, the show “pairs cautionary art history with thoughtful and poetic retorts from 20 artists, including a nonprofit art studio,” writes Knight.
I wrote a preview of the show, which includes a few backstories about the people featured in the decommissioned statutes. Men like “newspaper owner Josephus Daniels, who helped foment the 1898 Wilmington massacre in which a mob of more than 2,000 white supremacists killed as many as 300 people in the course of overthrowing the city’s duly elected biracial government.”
Times theater critic Charles McNulty wrote a column examining the ways that various playwrights are engaging with the idea of AI in their work. For examples, he digs into two plays, Lauren Gunderson’s “anthropology,” which is staging its North American premiere in a Rogue Machine Theatre production; and Jordan Harrison’s “Marjorie Prime,” which is having its Broadway premiere this fall. “Gunderson and Harrison are looking ahead to see how AI might be super-charging our disembodiment. To anyone paying attention, business as usual is no longer an option. The very basis of our self-understanding is on the line,” McNulty writes.
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha” at Pasadena Playhouse, created and performed by Julia Masli and directed by Kim Noble.
(Jeff Lorch)
McNulty also attended opening night of performance artist and comedian Julia Masli’s one-woman show, “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha,” at Pasadena Playhouse. He describes the 75-minute improvisational work as “less a traditional comedy show than an experiment in collective consciousness. It doesn’t take much to transform a room of jaded strangers into a representative slice of compassionate humanity.” That’s because Masli devotes her time in the spotlight to solving audience members’ problems, finding their shared empathy in the process.
Times classical music critic Mark Swed has been chronicling the departure of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s beloved musical and artistic director, Gustavo Dudamel. In a recent column, Swed writes about the hoopla on display during the “first three love-fest weeks of Dudamel’s final season.” There was lots of “Gracias Gustavo” merch, and a daylong “Gracias Gustavo” block party at Beckmen YOLA Center in Inglewood, which included a performance by rapper D Smoke. And let’s not forget Tuesday night’s “Gustavo’s Fiesta” at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Dudamel also gave “four soul-searching performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2,” Swed writes. “His Mahler is neither overly exuberant nor constrained by grief and Berliner decorum. This performance heralds a new Dudamel, conductor of prophetic grandeur.”
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A rendering of a still image from Refik Anadol’s giant LED wall, “Living Paintings Immersive Editions,” at Jeffrey Deitch.
(From Refik Anadol Studio)
Last September, I wrote a feature on immersive media artist Refik Anadol and his plans to open the world’s first museum of AI arts, called Dataland, in downtown’s Grand L.A. complex across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall. Anadol hoped to open the museum — which features five distinct galleries in a 20,000-square-foot space — this year. But this week, the artist announced that the project is now set to debut next spring. Anadol also released a first look at one of the galleries called Infinity Room. You can watch the teaser, here.
Everybody is talking about the brazen jewel heist at the Louvre. You can almost hear the key-clacking of dozens of hopeful screenwriters already drafting their spec scripts. The story is too outrageous to feel true — masked men cutting through a window in broad daylight and entering a gallery full of people before escaping without a trace on a pair of motorcycles. The value of the precious jewels they got away with is estimated to be about $102 million. If you have been living under a rock for the past week, you can read all about it, here.
— Jessica Gelt
And last but not least
Did you know that L.A. is experiencing a golden age of pizza? Neither did I. Fortunately, Times food critic Bill Addison has compiled a list featuring 21 of the city’s best slices.
WASHINGTON — The White House started tearing down part of the East Wing, the traditional base of operations for the first lady, to build President Trump’s $250-million ballroom despite lacking approval for construction from the federal agency that oversees such projects.
Dramatic photos of the demolition work that began Monday showed construction equipment tearing into the East Wing façade and windows and other building parts in tatters on the ground. Some reporters watched from a park near the Treasury Department, which is next to the East Wing.
On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that the plan now called for the demolition of the entire East Wing and that the tear-down should be completed by Sunday. Citing a source, The Times said it marks an escalation over earlier plans for the ballroom.
Trump announced the start of construction in a social media post and referenced the work while hosting 2025 college baseball champs Louisiana State University and LSU-Shreveport in the East Room. He noted the work was happening “right behind us.”
“We have a lot of construction going on, which you might hear periodically,” he said, adding, “It just started today.”
The White House has moved ahead with the massive construction project despite not yet having sign-off from the National Capital Planning Commission, which approves construction work and major renovations to government buildings in the Washington area.
Its chairman, Will Scharf, who is also the White House staff secretary and one of Trump’s top aides, said at the commission’s September meeting that the agency does not have jurisdiction over demolition or site preparation work for buildings on federal property.
“What we deal with is essentially construction, vertical build,” Scharf said last month.
It was unclear whether the White House had submitted the ballroom plans for the agency’s review and approval. The White House did not respond to a request for comment and the commission’s offices are closed because of the government shutdown.
The Republican president had said in July when the project was announced that the ballroom would not interfere with the mansion itself.
“It’ll be near it but not touching it and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of,” he said of the White House.
The East Wing houses several offices, including those of the first lady. It was built in 1902 and and has been renovated over the years, with a second story added in 1942, according to the White House.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said those East Wing offices will be temporarily relocated during construction and that wing of the building will be modernized and renovated.
“Nothing will be torn down,” Leavitt said when she announced the project in July.
Trump insists that presidents have desired such a ballroom for 150 years and that he’s adding the massive 90,000-square-foot, glass-walled space because the East Room, which is the largest room in the White House with an approximately 200-person capacity, is too small. He also has said he does not like the idea of hosting kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers in pavilions on the South Lawn.
Trump said in the social media announcement that the project would be completed “with zero cost to the American Taxpayer! The White House Ballroom is being privately funded by many generous Patriots, Great American Companies, and, yours truly.”
The ballroom will be the biggest structural change to the Executive Mansion since the addition in 1948 of the Truman Balcony overlooking the South Lawn, even dwarfing the residence itself.
At a dinner he hosted last week for some of the wealthy business executives who are donating money toward the construction cost, Trump said the project had grown in size and now will accommodate 999 people. The capacity was 650 seated people at the July announcement.
The White House has said it will disclose information on who has contributed money to build the ballroom, but has yet to do so.
Trump also said at last week’s event that the head of Carrier Global Corp., a leading manufacturer of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems, had offered to donate the air-conditioning system for the ballroom.
Carrier confirmed to the Associated Press on Monday that it had done so. A cost estimate was not immediately available.
“Carrier is honored to provide the new iconic ballroom at the White House with a world-class, energy-efficient HVAC system, bringing comfort to distinguished guests and dignitaries in this historic setting for years to come,” the company said in an emailed statement.
The clearing of trees on the south grounds and other site preparation work for the construction started in September. Plans call for the ballroom to be ready before Trump’s term ends in January 2029.
Maya Jama revealed that she was put on an IV drip after falling illCredit: Instagram / @mayajamaShe has been battling the flu this weekCredit: Instagram / @mayajama
“The flu struck,” she revealed alongside a photo of her with the IV drip in her arm.
Maya could be seen getting her makeup done while on set, with her hair in rollers.
As people flocked around the TV star and did her hair and makeup, someone else tended to her IV drip.
Maya explained how the IV drip came to “save the day”.
She later shared snaps of her dinner after heading out for a swanky meal.
It seems Maya is battling through the flu and continuing to work hard despite feeling under the weather.
Maya recently shed light on the mounting speculation over her Love Island hosting role – after we reported she hadn’t signed a contract earlier this year.
Eager to open up on her plans Maya took to social media and referred to the speculation she was about to walk away, before revealing she would be back.
“I did tell you if you were going to hear any news about it, it would come from me and me only,” she said.
“I will be hosting next year, I’ll be back for All Stars in January and then summer series in June and July. We go again, mother lovers.”
She also explained why she is not back hosting US spin-off, Love Island Games, which she presented the first series of.
She added: “Oh and I am obviously not hosting Love Island Games this year, as much as I love the show I physically could not host three Love Island series a year but Ariana [Madix] is doing a great job and I hope you are enjoying that one too.”
It comes as ITV chiefs offered Maya a deal reported to be worth nearly £2million to stay on.
It was believed Maya has been planning to walk away to explore work with streaming giant Netflix.
Maria worked cleaning schools in Florida for $13 an hour. Every two weeks, she’d get a $900 paycheck from her employer, a contractor. Not much — but enough to cover rent in the house that she and her 11-year-old son share with five families, plus electricity, a cellphone and groceries.
In August, it all ended.
When she showed up at the job one morning, her boss told her that she couldn’t work there anymore. The Trump administration had terminated the Biden administration’s humanitarian parole program, which provided legal work permits for Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans like Maria.
“I feel desperate,’’ said Maria, 48, who requested anonymity to talk about her ordeal because she fears being detained and deported. “I don’t have any money to buy anything. I have $5 in my account. I’m left with nothing.’’
President Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration is throwing foreigners like Maria out of work and shaking the American economy and job market. And it’s happening at a time when hiring is already deteriorating amid uncertainty over Trump’s tariffs and other trade policies.
Immigrants do jobs — cleaning houses, picking tomatoes, painting fences — that most native-born Americans won’t, and for less money. But they also bring the technical skills and entrepreneurial energy that have helped make the United States the world’s economic superpower.
Trump is attacking immigration at both ends of the spectrum, deporting low-wage laborers and discouraging skilled foreigners from bringing their talents to the United States.
And he is targeting an influx of foreign workers that eased labor shortages and upward pressure on wages and prices at a time when most economists thought that taming inflation would require sky-high interest rates and a recession — a fate the United States escaped in 2023 and 2024.
“Immigrants are good for the economy,’’ said Lee Branstetter, an economist at Carnegie-Mellon University. “Because we had a lot of immigration over the past five years, an inflationary surge was not as bad as many people expected.”
More workers filling more jobs and spending more money has also helped drive economic growth and create still more job openings. Economists worry that Trump’s deportations and limits on even legal immigration will do the reverse.
In a July report, researchers Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson of the centrist Brookings Institution and Stan Veuger of the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute calculated that the loss of foreign workers will mean that monthly U.S. job growth “could be near zero or negative in the next few years.’’
Hiring has already slowed significantly, averaging a meager 29,000 a month from June through August. (The September jobs report has been delayed by the ongoing shutdown of the federal government.) During the post-pandemic hiring boom of 2021-23, by contrast, employers added a stunning 400,000 jobs a month.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, citing fallout from Trump’s immigration and trade policies, downgraded its forecast for U.S. economic growth this year to 1.4% from the 1.9% it had previously expected and from 2.5% in 2024.
‘We need these people’
Goodwin Living, an Alexandria, Va., nonprofit that provides senior housing, healthcare and hospice services, had to lay off four employees from Haiti after the Trump administration terminated their work permits. The Haitians had been allowed to work under a humanitarian parole program and had earned promotions at Goodwin.
“That was a very, very difficult day for us,” Chief Executive Rob Liebreich said. “It was really unfortunate to have to say goodbye to them, and we’re still struggling to fill those roles.’’
Liebreich is worried that 60 additional immigrant workers could lose their temporary legal right to live and work in the United States. “We need all those hands,’’ he said. “We need all these people.”
Goodwin Living has 1,500 employees, 60% of them from foreign countries. It has struggled to find enough nurses, therapists and maintenance staff. Trump’s immigration crackdown, Liebreich said, is “making it harder.’’
The ICE crackdown
Trump’s immigration ambitions, intended to turn back what he calls an “invasion’’ at America’s southern border and secure jobs for U.S.-born workers, were once viewed with skepticism because of the money and economic disruption required to reach his goal of deporting 1 million people a year. But legislation that Trump signed into law July 4 — and which Republicans named the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — suddenly made his plans plausible.
The law pours $150 billion into immigration enforcement, setting aside $46.5 billion to hire 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and $45 billion to increase the capacity of immigrant detention centers.
And his empowered ICE agents have shown a willingness to move fast and break things — even when their aggression conflicts with other administration goals.
Last month, immigration authorities raided a Hyundai battery plant in Georgia, detained 300 South Korean workers and showed video of some of them shackled in chains. They’d been working to get the plant up and running, bringing expertise in battery technology and Hyundai procedures that local American workers didn’t have.
The incident enraged the South Koreans and ran counter to Trump’s push to lure foreign manufacturers to invest in America. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung warned that the country’s other companies might be reluctant about betting on America if their workers couldn’t get visas promptly and risked getting detained.
Sending Medicaid recipients to the fields
America’s farmers are among the president’s most dependable supporters.
But John Boyd Jr., who farms 1,300 acres of soybeans, wheat and corn in southern Virginia, said that the immigration raids — and the threat of them — are hurting farmers already contending with low crop prices, high costs and fallout from Trump’s trade war with China, which has stopped buying U.S. soybeans and sorghum.
“You’ve got ICE out here, herding these people up,’’ said Boyd, founder of the National Black Farmers Assn. “[Trump] says they’re murderers and thieves and drug dealers, all this stuff. But these are people who are in this country doing hard work that many Americans don’t want to do.’’
Boyd scoffed at Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ suggestion in July that U.S.-born Medicaid recipients could head to the fields to meet work requirements imposed as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. “People in the city aren’t coming back to the farm to do this kind of work,’’ he said. “It takes a certain type of person to bend over in 100-degree heat.’’
The Trump administration admits that the immigration crackdown is causing labor shortages on the farm that could translate into higher prices at the supermarket.
“The near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce results in significant disruptions to production costs and [threatens] the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S. consumers,’’ the Labor Department said in an Oct. 2 filing to the Federal Register.
‘You’re not welcome here’
Jed Kolko of the Peterson Institute for International Economics said that job growth is slowing in businesses that rely on immigrants. Construction companies, for instance, have shed 10,000 jobs since May.
“Those are the short-term effects,’’ said Kolko, a Commerce Department official in the Biden administration. “The longer-term effects are more serious because immigrants traditionally have contributed more than their share of patents, innovation, productivity.’’
Especially worrisome to many economists was Trump’s sudden announcement last month that he was raising the fee on H-1B visas, meant to lure hard-to-find skilled foreign workers to the United States, from as little as $215 to $100,000.
“A $100,000 visa fee is not just a bureaucratic cost — it’s a signal,” said Dany Bahar, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. “It tells global talent: You are not welcome here.”
Some are already packing up.
In Washington, D.C., one H-1B visa holder, a Harvard graduate from India who works for a nonprofit helping Africa’s poor, said Trump’s signal to employers is clear: Think twice about hiring H-1B visa holders.
The man, who requested anonymity, is already preparing paperwork to move to the United Kingdom.
“The damage is already done, unfortunately,’’ he said.
Associated Press writers Wiseman and Salomon reported from Washington and Miami, respectively. AP writers Fu Ting and Christopher Rugaber in Washington contributed to this report.
I can’t think of another time that I was quite as terrified as when I walked alone into an interactive horror maze called “Feast” at a chilling carnival-like event called “The Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor: Summoned by the Seas,” which takes place in the parking lot in front of the famously haunted ship, and also in the creepy bowels of its engine rooms, through Nov. 2.
“Dark Harbor,” is the scarier sister event to Griffith Park’s famous “Haunted Hayride.” Both Halloween season fright fests are produced by Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group, which specializes in seasonal terror. The highlight of the nightly carnivals — which include food and drink booths, bars and rides — are a series of interactive mazes populated by bloody monsters, drooling ghouls, murderous clowns, spectral ghosts and maniacal serial killers.
The spooks are largely played by local actors — many of whom come back year after year for a guaranteed paycheck while pursuing a profession that is anything but financially sound. It is to these hardworking artists that the events owe their success. I was struck by just how dedicated the actors were to scaring us mere mortals out of our pants.
The masks, elaborate makeup and props, including butcher knives and bats, surely help the players stay in character— but this is not easy work. The actors must contend with aggressive guests who try to get in their faces (this is against the rules), as well as shrill, shrieking patrons who jump and run as they approach (guilty!).
But the actors are specially trained to handle these reactions and more.
“Each fall, Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor and Los Angeles Haunted Hayride hire a few hundred performers, most of our cast are locals who come back year after year. We hold open calls in the summer and focus on energy, movement, and presence more than traditional acting experience,” wrote “Dark Harbor‘s” general manager, Star Romano, in an email.
After the performers are hired, Romano explained, they attend orientation, safety training and rehearsals leading into opening weekend.
“It’s a huge community effort, part performance, part team reunion, and one of my favorite things about the season,” Romano wrote.
The result of those efforts led to me sleeping with the lights on for two nights straight.
“Get away from me! I’m too scared!” I shouted at one Leatherface-type character as he approached me with a chain saw.
“That’s the whole point,” he growled under his breath before obeying my wishes and lurching off toward another fear-stricken guest.
(NOTE: For a kid-friendly immersive Halloween experience, you can head to the company’s “Magic of the Jack O’Lanterns,” which features 5,000 hand-carved pumpkins on-site at South Coast Botanic Garden.)
I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, inviting you to sink into spooky season with me. Here’s your weekly arts and culture news.
On our radar
Benjamin Millepied’s L.A. Dance Project performs “On the Other Side.”
(Laurent Philippe)
L.A. Dance Project Renowned choreographer Benjamin Millepied continues his exploration of the intersection of dance and visual art with the ballet triptych “Gems,” featuring artwork by collaborators Barbara Kruger, Liam Gillick, Mark Bradford and others. The performance is composed of three contemporary ballets inspired by precious stones: “Reflections” (2013), “Hearts & Arrows” (2014) and “On the Other Side” (2016). The show — with music by David Lang and Philip Glass — marks the first time these pieces have been staged together. — Jessica Gelt 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Oct. 25. The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. https://thewallis.org/show-details/la-dance-project-gems
New York artist Jon Henry stages photographs that reflect on reports of Black men killed by police.
(The Brick)
Monuments The most eagerly anticipated theme exhibition this fall is reflected in the emphatic title, pointedly written all in caps. “MONUMENTS” was inspired by the wave of revulsion following the violent 2017 white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. — a deadly riot opposing the proposed removal of a local statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. That statue is now gone, torn down along with some 200 other tributes across the country to American turncoats who supported chattel slavery. (The last known Confederate monument in Southern California was removed in 2020.) A selection of decommissioned Confederate statues will be shown at MOCA and alternative space the Brick, joint organizers of the exhibition; they’ll be paired with contemporary work by Bethany Collins, Stan Douglas, Leonardo Drew, Jon Henry, Martin Puryear, Hank Willis Thomas, Kara Walker and a dozen other artists, borrowed and commissioned for the occasion. — Christopher Knight Thursday through May 3, 2026. Geffen Contemporary at Museum of Contemporary Art, 152 N. Central Ave., Little Tokyo; The Brick, 518 N. Western Ave. moca.org
Vikingur Olafsson will perform with conductor Santtu-Matias and Philharmonia.
(Timothy Norris / Los Angeles Philharmonic)
Santtu-Matias Rouvali and Vikingur Ólafsson join the Philharmonia Orchestra It’s been almost a decade since Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, a former Dudamel Fellow at the L.A. Phil, last returned to Southern California as a guest conductor of the L.A. Phil. In the meantime, though, he’s been busily attracting attention in London as principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra (having succeeded Esa-Pekka Salonen in 2021). For his first local appearance with the Philharmonia, he is joined by the stellar Icelandic pianist Vikingur Ólafsson in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G. The program also includes the local premiere of a new score meant to awaken environmental awareness, popular Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz’s “Si el Oxígeno Fuera Verde” (If Oxygen Were Green), along with Shostakovich‘s Fifth Symphony. Shortly after fall, Ólafsson heads back to Disney in January as soloist with the L.A. Phil for John Adams’ latest piano concerto, “After the Fall.” — Mark Swed 8 p.m. Tuesday. Renée & Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, 615 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. philharmonicsociety.org
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The week ahead: A curated calendar
FRIDAY
Ethan Remez-Cott, left, and Matthew Goodrich in the play “Amerika or, The Man Who Disappeared.”
(Amanda Weier)
Amerika or, The Man Who Disappeared There’s Kafkaesque and then there’s the genuine article. Open Fist Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Dietrich Smith’s adaptation of the Franz Kafka novel that details the strange experiences of a 17-year-old European immigrant after he arrives in New York City aboard a steamer. 7:30 p.m. Friday; 7 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday; and 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 20; through Nov. 22. Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave. openfist.org
Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson–Apt. 2B Two free-spirited roommates embrace mystery and adventure in the L.A. premiere of Kate Hamill’s dark modern comedy, a gender-bent spin on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle directed by Amie Farrell. 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday through Nov. 2. International City Theatre, 330 E. Seaside Way, Long Beach. ictlongbeach.org
नेहा & Neel Asian American theater collective Artists at Play and Latino Theater Company collaborate for the world premiere of Ankita Raturi’s new comedy about an Indian immigrant and single mom on a cross-country college tour with her 17-year-old American-born son. Directed by East West Players artistic director Lily Tung Crystal. Through Nov. 16. Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring Street, downtown L.A. latinotheaterco.org
17th OC Japan Fair Japanese culture festival featuring food, shopping, a cosplay show, a tuna cutting show, popular Japanese entertainers, traditional instrument performances, games, kimono models meet and greet, and more. 4 p.m.-10 p.m. Friday; noon-10 p.m. Saturday; 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Sunday. OC Fair & Event Center, 88 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa. oc-japanfair.com
David Roussève will perform “Becoming Daddy AF” Friday and Saturday at the Nimoy.
(Rachel Keane)
Becoming Daddy AF Renowned dance-theater artist David Roussève presents the West Coast premiere of his experimental movement journey “Becoming Daddy AF.” The piece marks Roussève’s first full-length solo performance in more than two decades and explores themes that have touched and shaped his life, including HIV, genealogy and the loss of his husband of 26 years. (Jessica Gelt) 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. UCLA Nimoy Theater, 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu
Unravelled The story of Canadian biologist Dr. Anne Adams, who turned to painting at age 53, and her remarkable connection to French composer Maurice Ravel, with whom she shared the same rare brain disease. A play infused with music and visual art, written by Jake Broder and directed by James Bonas. 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. thewallis.org
SATURDAY
British artist Edmund de Waal will install new work in three sites at the Huntington, including the Chinese garden.
(Linnea Stephan)
The Eight Directions of the Wind British artist, potter and writer Edmund de Waal is obsessed with archives, which he describes as “places, streets, hillsides as much as card indexes.” For a body of new work, he once traveled to the place in China where the clay used to make porcelain was discovered — and then on to Dresden, Germany; Cornwall, U.K.; and the Appalachian Mountains, where subsequent cultures reinvented it. De Waal’s three site-specific, yearlong installations will be in the Huntington’s cultural and natural “archives” that are its art gallery and Chinese and Japanese gardens. (Christopher Knight) Through Oct. 26, 2026. The Huntington, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino. huntington.org
Lorde performs Saturday at the Kia Forum.
(Scott A Garfitt / Invision/AP)
Lorde Just as her generation has, by all accounts, sobered up and gone sexless, Lorde returned this year with a defiant album about the giddy rush of partying and the frightening ramifications of a body in search of pleasure. “Virgin” pulls her back to the experimental electro-pop many fans were hoping for after the relatively complacent “Solar Power,” and the album is brimming with startling meditations on pregnancy scares, familial inheritance and the malleability of gender. (August Brown) 7 p.m. Kia Forum, 3900 W. Manchester Blvd., Inglewood. thekiaforum.com
Orchidées Cellist Kate Ellis performs composer Nick Roth’s cello étude — which traces the 100‑million‑year evolution of orchids by translating their DNA sequences into music — accompanied by time‑lapse footage of blooming specimens from the Huntington’s orchid collection. Also available to livestream. 7 p.m. The Huntington, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino. huntington.org
Tortoise The lauded post-punk band performs “Touch,” their first new album in nine years with opening sets from local duo Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer and KCRW DJ Ale Cohen. 8 p.m. Saturday. The Broad, outdoor East West Bank Plaza, 221 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. thebroad.org
TUESDAY A Concert for Lowell A memorial tribute to Lowell Hill, one of the great patrons of new music in L.A., featuring many of the city’s top local artists, including Wild Up, MicroFest, Piano Spheres, the Industry, Partch Ensemble, Monday Evening Concerts, Long Beach Opera and People Inside Electronics. 8 p.m. Monk Space, 4414 W. 2nd Street. brightworknewmusic.com
Morgan Siobhan Green as Eurydice and Nicholas Barasch as Orpheus in the 2022 “Hadestown” North American Tour.
(T Charles Erickson)
Hadestown The Tony and Grammy Award-winning musical that reimagines the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as a New Orleans-style folk opera returns on its latest national tour. “Born out of a concept album by Anaïs Mitchell, who wrote the book, lyrics and music, the show travels to the underworld and back again with liquified grace,” wrote Times theater critic Charles McNulty in a 2022 review. “Developed by Rachel Chavkin, the resourceful director who won a Tony for her staging, ‘Hadestown’ achieves a fluidity of musical theater storytelling that makes an old tale seem startlingly new.” Through Nov. 2. Hollywood Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. broadwayinhollywood.com
Learning to Draw The exhibition traces a 300-year evolution of artistic training and the mastery of drawing in Europe from about 1550 to 1850. Bringing together the physical control of the hand and the concentration of the mind, the foundational artistic act became essential to exploring, inventing and communicating visual ideas in the modern world. Through Jan. 25, 2026. Getty Museum, 1200 Getty Center Drive. getty.edu
Dispatch: Ben Platt: Live at the Ahmanson
Actor, singer and songwriter Ben Platt stands for a portrait at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in New York on Thursday, April 20, 2023.
(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)
Breaking news sure to make L.A. musical theater fans swoon: Center Theatre Group announced Friday that Broadway superstar Ben Platt will be in residency for two weeks and 10 shows at the Ahmanson Theatre , Dec. 12–21. Two-time Tony Award-winning director Michael Arden is set to direct the the residency, appropriately titled, “Ben Platt: Live at the Ahmanson.” Platt’s appearance comes a year after he staged a wildly successful three-week residency at Broadway’s Palace Theatre, which included a cornucopia of famous special guests including Cynthia Erivo, Nicole Scherzinger, Jennifer Hudson, Kacey Musgraves, Sam Smith, Micaela Diamond and Shoshana Bean. The production is staying mum on who might appear onstage alongside Platt during his L.A. run, but it’s safe to expect more big names.
“When you think of the very best in musical theatre, it simply doesn’t get any better than Ben Platt, whose stage presence and charisma make him one of the seminal performers of his generation,” said CTG’s artistic director, Snehal Desai, in a news release that promised “the holiday event of the season.”
Bassist Tonya Sweets, from left, Marlon Alexander Vargas and drummer Dee Simone in “littleboy/littleman,” directed by Nancy Medina, at Geffen Playhouse.
(Jeff Lorch)
A tale from a land of immigrants Rudi Goblen’s “littleboy/littleman” is in the midst of its world premiere at the Geffen Playhouse. The two-person show about two Nicaragua-born brothers is much like a performance piece, writes Times theater critic Charles McNulty in his review. It’s also a deeply American story. “Lest we forget our past, America is the great democratic experiment precisely because it’s a land of immigrants. Out of many, one — as our national motto, E pluribus unum, has it. How have we lost sight of this basic tenet of high school social studies?” McNulty writes.
Les Miz at 40 I went backstage at the Pantages for the opening night of “Les Misérables,” which happened to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the legendary musical. The mood was euphoric and everyone in the cast and crew seemed to have a story about a formative connection to the show. Stage manager Ken Davis walked me through the maze-like wings and filled me in on what it takes to tour a show of this scale. Of particular note: The touring production travels with 11 tractor trailers containing over 1,000 costumes, 120 wigs and hundreds of props.
Patrick Martinez, “Fallen Empire,” 2018, mixed media
(Michael Underwood)
When the sum is less than the whole Times art critic Christopher Knight was not impressed by “Grounded,” a newly opened exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The show’s theme, rooted in recent acquisitions of contemporary art, is promising, but ultimately falls apart. Viewed as a whole, “the 39 assembled contemporary paintings, sculptures, photographs, textiles and videos by 35 artists based in the Americas and areas of the Pacific underperform,” writes Knight. “Sometimes that’s because the individual work is bland, while elsewhere its pertinence to the shambling theme is stretched to the breaking point,” Knight writes.
Remembering Bernstein Tuesday marked the 35th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s death, and reminders of the great composer’s tributes to John F. Kennedy abound, writes Times classical music critic Mark Swed. In a piece of commentary about what Bernstein’s work can teach us about memorials, Swed examines multiple L.A. productions rooted in that work, including L.A. Opera’s “West Side Story” and Martha Graham Dance Company’s “En Masse” at the Soraya. Swed also wonders whether those important pieces will reach the Trump administration’s newly configured Kennedy Center in the spring.
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Guests attend the K.A.M.P. family fundraiser at the Hammer Museum on Oct. 12, 2025, in Los Angeles.
(Stefanie Keenan / Getty Images for Hammer Museum)
Everyone went home happy UCLA’s Hammer Museum raised nearly $200,000 last weekend with its 16th annual K.A.M.P. (Kids Art Museum Project) fundraiser. More than 700 excited parents and children showed up at the gloriously messy event co-chaired by Aurele Danoff Pelaia and Talia Friedman. Kids roamed the courtyard over the course of four hours, creating art at stations set up and manned by participating artists including Daniel Gibson; Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee of the Johnston Marklee architecture firm; Annie Lapin; Ryan Preciado; Rob Reynolds; Jennifer Rochlin; Mindy Shapero; Brooklin A. Soumahoro; and Christopher Suarez. Fairy Gardens were constructed of thick clay and foraged leaves; cardboard boxes were painted with rollers; plates were spray-painted and affixed with knickknacks and jewelry; and geometric shapes were glued to canvases and painted an array of bright colors. Children went home with their art, and parents left knowing they supported a host of free Hammer Kids programs that serve thousands of children and families annually.
Fair wages on Broadway Musicians working on Broadway, represented by AFM Local 802, voted to authorize a strike earlier this week — with 98% in favor. The nearly 1,200 musicians have been working without a contract since Aug. 31. According to an open letter the musicians sent to the Broadway League on Oct. 1, their demands include: “Fair wages that reflect Broadway’s success. Stable health coverage to allow musicians and their families to enjoy the health benefits that all workers deserve. Employment and income security so that hardworking freelance musicians have some assurance of job security. This includes not eliminating current jobs on Broadway.” Bargaining talks are ongoing.
Gene Hackman co-stars in “Bonnie and Clyde,” alongside Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.
(Associated Press)
Gene Hackman, art collector The late actor Gene Hackman’s art collection will go up for auction through Bonhams in November. Highlights of the 13-piece collection — which is being offered as a single-owner sale — include works by Milton Avery, Auguste Rodin and Richard Diebenkorn. Hackman was passionate about art throughout his life, and took an extra-special interest in it after he stopped acting. During that time he dedicated himself to taking classes and art-making. He even kept a journal of everything he learned, according to Bonhams.
Historic homes tour Paging architecture fans: It’s not too late to reserve a spot in Dwell’s open-house event, back in L.A. for its second year. Tours of three historically significant Eastside homes are on offer during the day-long event, which launches from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House in Barnsdall Art Park. The three additional houses in the tour are: Richard Stampton’s Descanso House in Silver Lake; Taalman Architecture, Terremoto, and interior designer Kathryn McCullough’s Lark House in Mount Washington; and Fung + Blatt’s San Marino House in — you guessed it — San Marino.
— Jessica Gelt
And last but not least
Still feeling sad about losing Diane Keaton? Me too. Here’s a list I put together of her 10 most important films. Watch one you haven’t seen — if that’s possible.
“KPop Demon Hunters” creator Maggie Kang thinks there’s potential for more Huntr/x stories in the future, but only in animation.
In a recent interview with the BBC, the co-director of the Netflix phenomenon said there is nothing officially in the works, but she thinks “there’s definitely more we can do with these characters in this world.” Kang and her co-director Chris Appelhans also assured fans that if another “KPop Demon Hunters” were to happen, “it will be a story that deserves to be a sequel, and it will be something that we want to see.”
Produced by Sony Pictures Animation, the movie follows a popular K-pop girl group whose members use their music and dance moves (and magical powers) to fight demons and protect the world. But Huntr/x’s leader Rumi is keeping a secret from her bandmates Mira and Zoey that could lead to their downfall.
With Hollywood’s current trend of sequels and remakes, it’s easy to believe that “KPop Demon Hunters” could spawn its own franchise. But Kang and Appelhans both insist that a live-action adaptation should be off the table.
“It’s really hard to imagine these characters in a live action world,” Kang told the BBC, pointing to the tone and comedic elements in “KPop.” “It would feel too grounded. So totally it wouldn’t work for me.”
Appelhans agreed that the characters in “KPop Demon Hunters” are best suited for animation and worried a live-action version of them could feel too “stilted.”
“One of the great things about animation is that you make these composites of impossibly great attributes,” Appelhans told the BBC. “Rumi can be this goofy comedian and then singing and doing a spinning back-kick a second later and then free-falling through the sky. The joy of animation is how far you can push and elevate what’s possible.”
For now, it seems that Huntr/x will keep shining only in the medium they were born to be — in animation.
Former L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner kicked off his campaign for mayor on Monday with a video launch that hits not just Mayor Karen Bass but President Trump and his immigration crackdown.
Beutner, a philanthropist and former investment banker, uses the four-minute campaign video to describe L.A. as a city that is “under attack” — a message punctuated by footage of U.S. Border Patrol agents.
“I’ll never accept the Trump administration’s assault on our values and our neighbors,” says Beutner, a Democrat, as he stands on a tree-lined residential street. “Targeting people solely based on the color of their skin is unacceptable and un-American.”
“I’ll counter these injustices and work to keep every person safe and build a better Los Angeles,” he adds.
The White House did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The Times about Beutner’s video.
The video opens by describing a major biking accident that upended Beutner’s life about 17 years ago, leading him to enter public service and “take a different path.” Not long after, he became Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s “jobs czar,” taking on the elevated title of first deputy mayor and striking business deals on the mayor’s behalf.
The video casts Beutner, 65, as a pragmatic problem solver, focusing on his nonprofit Vision to Learn, which provides eye exams and glasses to children in low-income communities. It also highlights his work shepherding L.A. Unified through the COVID-19 pandemic and working to pass Proposition 28, the 2022 measure supporting arts education in California public schools.
Beutner, on his video, also turns his aim at City Hall, high housing costs, rising parking meter rates and a big increase in trash pickup fees for homeowners and smaller apartment buildings. Calling L.A. a city that is “adrift,” Beutner criticized the mayor’s push to reduce homelessness — one of her signature initiatives.
“The city spent billions to solve problems that have just become bigger problems,” Beutner says.
Bass campaign spokesperson Douglas Herman pushed back on the criticism, saying the city needs to “move past divisive attacks.” He said violent crime is down across the city, with homicides falling to their lowest levels in 60 years.
“When Karen Bass ran for mayor, homelessness and public safety were the top concerns of Angelenos. And she has delivered in a big way,” he said in a statement. “Today, homelessness has decreased two consecutive years for the first time in Los Angeles. Thousands of people have been moved off our streets and into housing.”
“There’s more work ahead, but this administration has proven it can deliver,” Herman added. “Mayor Bass is committed to building on this historic momentum in her second term.”
Beutner’s video posted two days after he confirmed that he’s planning to run for mayor, leveling blistering criticism at the city’s preparation for, and response to, the Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead.
Beutner’s criticism of Trump’s immigration crackdown in many ways echoes the messages delivered by Bass several months ago, when federal agents were seizing street vendors, day laborers and other workers in L.A.
In June, Bass said the Trump administration was waging an “all-out assault on Los Angeles,” with federal agents “randomly grabbing people” off the street, “chasing Angelenos through parking lots” and arresting immigrants who showed up at court for annual check-ins. Her approach to the issue helped her regain her political footing after she had faltered in the wake of the Palisades fire.
In early September, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration, agreeing that immigration agents can stop and detain individuals they suspect may be in the U.S. illegally merely for speaking Spanish or having brown skin.
The high court ruling set aside a Los Angeles judge’s temporary restraining order that barred agents from stopping people based in part on their race or apparent ethnicity.
Big Brother fans believe they have worked out that Elsa is heavily encouraging a narrative of love between her and Marcus in a desperate bid to land brand deals on exit from the show
Fans think they have worked out Big Brother’s Elsa Rae game plan(Image: ITV)
Big Brother fans are convinced that Elsa is desperate to force a love narrative between her and fellow housemate Marcus in order to secure couple brand deals. The blonde housemate revealed following this week’s eviction, that she was prepared to drop a love bombshell on Marcus if she was evicted from the show.
She told her housemates that she was prepared to tell him that she loved him, leaving her housemates in utter shock. And this has caused a stir among fans on X, who now believe that she entered the house with an agenda.
One person wrote: “Elsa was going to tell a dude she’s known for two weeks she loves him. She wants those couples brand deals BAD #BBUK.” Another person said: “I’ve had ‘relationships’ in primary school more realistic than Marcus and Elsa #bbuk.”
Meanwhile a third person added: “if i was gonna go i was gonna tell marcus i loved him” ..elsa girl please chill you bunny boiler you’ve known him less than 3 weeks #bbuk.”
And a fourth person chimed in saying: “marcus please your not going to get with elsa your just saying that to make good tv but we don’t care this is big brother not love island.”
A fifth said: “Marcus has no intentions of seeing Elsa after this. You can see it on his face #bbuk.”
In a private conversation her fellow housemate Zelah, Elsa confessed that she was in love with him, leaving the wannabe star in utter shock. A coy looking Elsa simply smiled.
However, further into the evening shown in tonight’s show Zelah and Marcus found themselves in a conversation in the garden where the pair were talking about his feelings for Elsa. And it seems he does not share the same feelings for the reality TV star.
When asked if the location between the two would be an obstacle that they would have to overcome, Marcus made it clear that his doubts were more focused on the dynamics within the house.
Marcus appeared concerned that the feelings the pair have for one another in the house may change in the outside world when the reality of their situation is put to the test.
The couple have been heavily flirting with one another since entering the iconic Big Brother house. At one point, Caroline is seen telling Marcus: “I think she’s in love.”
Marcus then quipped: “I know, I don’t blame her.” Beckoning for her to come over to him he shouted out “come here Elsa.” And Caroline then joked: “The romance is coming.”
An immigrant drama by Rudi Goblen about two brothers born in Nicaragua, “littleboy/littleman,” now receiving its world premiere at the Geffen Playhouse, is an American story at its core.
Lest we forget our past, America is the great democratic experiment precisely because it’s a land of immigrants. Out of many, one — as our national motto, E pluribus unum, has it. How have we lost sight of this basic tenet of high school social studies?
Our tendency to ghettoize drama — along racial or immigrant lines — reflects the failure to understand our collective story.
Goblen, who (like a.k. payne, author of “Furlough’s Paradise”) was a playwriting student of Geffen Playhouse artistic director Tarell Alvin McCraney at Yale, has created not a conventionally worked out two-hander, but an intuitively structured performance piece. Infused by live music and inflected with hip-hop style poetry, “littleboy/littleman” crashes through the fourth wall to make direct contact with theatergoers, who are seated on three sides of the playing area and always just a high-five away.
Marlon Alexander Vargas, the dynamic, sweet-faced performer who plays Fito Palomino, the more creative and mercurial of the two brothers, is on stage interacting with the audience before the play begins. As the musicians — music director Dee Simone on drums and Tonya Sweets on bass — warm up the crowd from their platform at the back of the playing area, Vargas, ever-in-motion, greets theatergoers and counts down to the start of the show.
Rules are spelled out at the top that make clear that this isn’t one of those docile theatergoing experiences, in which the audience is expected to keep mum as the actors do all the work. Spectators are encouraged to make some noise — to show love when they want to show love and to show it even when they don’t.
These friendly instructions are impishly delivered by Vargas, whose performance outside the play has an effect on our experience of his character inside the play. The fate of Fito is the emotional crux of the drama, and what happens to him matters all the more to us because of our theatrical connection to Vargas, our de facto host and impromptu buddy.
Goblen sets up a drama of fraternal contrasts. Bastian Monteyero (Alex Hernandez), the older and more straitlaced of the two brothers, has a tough, no-nonsense demeanor that’s all about discipline and conformity. He’s a bit of a recluse, but he plays by the rules and demands the same from Fito.
A street performer, Fito dreams of opening a vegan restaurant that will offer his community access to affordable, healthful meals. This idea seems far-fetched to Bastian, and he tells Fito that if he wants to continue living with him, he’s going to have to get a real job.
Bastian hooks Fito up with a friend who’s employed at a cleaning service. But scrubbing public toilets isn’t Fito’s idea of an alternative course. Bastian wants his brother off the streets. There are dangers afoot in Sweetwater, Fla., far worse than unpleasant paid work.
A law officer in town, a sadist who demands complete subservience, has it in for Fito, who describes this menacing figure as “a gangster with a badge.” He also calls him “brown on the outside, white on the inside,” and bemoans to his brother the Latino infighting (“the worst thing they ever did was give us all flags”) that only divides people who have political reason to be in solidarity.
Bastian, who affects a white-sounding Midwestern voice when he hustles donations in his telemarketing job, can’t help taking the latter comment personally. He’s made no secret that he wants to change his name so his resume won’t be ignored when he applies for management jobs.
The two brothers have different fathers, and Fito doesn’t have the option of passing. In any case, he’s more embracing of his identity as a person of color than Bastian. What both of them have in common is that they survived both their harrowing childhoods in Nicaragua and their unrelentingly challenging journeys in America, having been raised by a single mother, whose death still haunts them.
Bastian and Fito love each other, but don’t always like each other. Hernandez’s Bastian is a formidable presence, angry, strict and domineering — the qualities he’s needed to navigate a bureaucratic system that has little concern for the feelings of immigrant outsiders. Vargas’ Fito, by contrast, has his head in the clouds and his heart on his sleeve. Goblen never loses sight of their affection even as their conflict grows louder and more bruising.
Bassist Tonya Sweets, from left, Marlon Alexander Vargas and drummer Dee Simone in “littleboy/littleman” at Geffen Playhouse.
(Jeff Lorch)
“littleboy/littleman” is tricky in its theatrical rhythms. It’s like a piece of music that keeps switching harmonic structures, not wanting to get stuck in the same groove. Goblen’s manner of writing is closer to free jazz or freestyle hip-hop than traditional drama.
Director Nancy Medina’s staging, circumnavigating a theatrical circle, lifts the audience out of its proscenium passivity into something almost immersive and definitely interactive. Tanya Orellana’s scenic design and Scott Bolman’s moody lighting create a performance space that is well suited to a work composed as a series of riffs. The influence of McCraney’s “The Brothers Size” is palpable not only in the thematic architecture of the play, but also in how the piece moves on stage.
The staccato nature of the writing is helped enormously by the entrancing acting of both Vargas, who breezes through different theatrical realms as though he had wings, and Hernandez, who locks realistically into character. It’s a credit to the play and to the performers that, by the end of “littleboy/littleman,” the differences between the two brothers seem less important than what they have in common.
Not all the dramatic elements are smoothly integrated, but the production ultimately finds a coherence, not so much in the music (composed by Goblen himself), but in the emotional truth of the brothers’ pressure-cooker lives. Vulnerability unites not only Bastian and Fito, but all of us witnessing their story who hope against hope that compassion will somehow win the day.
‘littleboy/littleman’
Where: Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater at Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Los Angeles
Diane Keaton, who died Saturday at 79, is one of cinema’s most legendary actors. She played some of the most recognizable roles of the late 20th century, and blazed a trail for generations of women to come. Here’s a list of Keaton’s 10 most important films, presented in alphabetical order. We’ll leave the ranking to her devoted fans.
‘Annie Hall’
Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in a scene from the movie “Annie Hall” from MGM / UA Home Video.
(MGM / UA Home Video)
Keaton’s role in Woody Allen’s 1977 romantic comedy was written just for her. Her portrayal of the feisty, eccentric, charming title character would define Keaton as an actor for the rest of her career. Her signature bowler hat and ties became a fashion staple, and fans still can’t think of the song “Seems Like Old Times” without sobbing. The film about the bittersweet nature of lost love was a critical success, and Keaton won her only Academy Award for her work in it.
‘Crimes of the Heart’
Keaton plays Lenny McGrath — the oldest of three sisters — in this 1986 black comedy also starring Diane Lange and Sissy Spacek. The actresses are at the height of their powers in the film, which finds a trio of siblings reuniting at their family home in Mississippi after Babe (Spacek) shoots, and seriously injures, her abusive husband. Spacek won a Golden Globe for her work, and was nominated for an Oscar, but Keaton shines as the less ostentatious of the sisters — an unassuming, terminally single woman who believes a shrunken ovary is the reason for her failure to launch.
‘The Godfather’ parts I and II
Keaton plays Kay Adams Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s epic crime family trilogy. As Michael Corleone’s second wife, and the mother of his children, Kay is one of the few fully realized women in the films. Many fans love Keaton’s performance in the second film best because Kay is the only one to stand up to Michael. When the ruthless mafia boss confronts her about an abortion she has had, Kay lets loose and confronts him about his vicious nature and many lies, vowing to never bring another Corleone into the world.
‘Looking for Mr. Goodbar’
Richard Gere, left, and Diane Keaton in a scene from the 1977 movie, “Looking For Mr. Goodbar.”
(Paramount / Getty Images)
This 1977 crime drama written and directed by Richard Brooks is perhaps Keaton’s most tragic film. She plays a lonely schoolteacher named Theresa Dunn who engages in increasingly risky behavior with strangers in pursuit of love. The film also stars Richard Gere as a controlling, abusive, drug-addicted boyfriend in his first major role. Keaton’s sorrow and desperation in this dark, gritty movie is palpable, making this a defining and heartbreaking part of her ouvré.
‘Manhattan’
Mary Wilke (Diane Keaton) and Isaac Davis (Woody Allen) in the shadow of the Queensborough Bridge in the movie “Manhattan.”
(United Artists)
This 1979 Woody Allen film is now one of the director’s most controversial due to its subject matter. Allen stars as a 42-year-old comedy writer who dates a 17-year-old girl, but ends up falling in love with his best friend’s mistress. Keaton plays that mistress, Mary Wilkie, and her depiction of the witty, wry, journalist with a robust social calendar and strong opinions that she never hesitates to express, is among her most seminal performances.
‘Marvin’s Room’
Keaton stars alongside Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro and a young Leonardo DiCaprio in this 1996 family drama. Keaton was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of Bessie Lee, a woman who has been caring for years for her bedridden father when she is diagnosed with leukemia. She turns to her estranged sister, Lee, for help finding a bone marrow transplant match — an endeavor that finds the family once again under the same roof. The tender story of loss and redemption showed that Keaton had staying power decades into her career.
‘Radio Days’
This nostalgic, charmer of a dramedy written and directed by Woody Allen takes place in Rockaway Beach in the 1930s and ‘40s during the golden age of radio. Keaton is part of an ensemble cast in a film filled with vignettes, and she appears in what is essentially a cameo as a New Year’s Eve singer. Wearing a a long-sleeved white dress with her hair pulled back in a bow, she sings a lovely rendition of Cole Porter’s “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To,” proving that when you’re a star of her caliber, you can shine no matter how small the role.
‘Reds’
Warren Beatty co-wrote, produced and directed this historical drama about John Reed, a journalist who chronicled Russia’s 1917 October Revolution. Keaton plays Louise Bryant, a married journalist and suffragist who leaves her husband to move to Greenwich Village with Reed where she becomes part of a robust group of artists and activists, including playwright Eugene O’Neil (Jack Nicholson). The 195-minute film opened to critical acclaim and was nominated for 12 Academy Awards, including best picture. Keaton received her second nomination for best actress but ultimately did not win.
‘Sleeper’
Keaton plays Luna Schlosser, a poet from the 22nd century, in Woody Allen’s 1973 madcap science fiction comedy about a jazz musician named Miles Monroe who owns the Happy Carrot health-food store before being cryogenically frozen for 200 years. Miles wakes in 2173 after being clandestinely revived by a group of rebels and is later delivered — disguised as a robot — into Luna’s home. Hilarious bickering ensues when Luna discovers Miles’ true identity, but she ultimately comes around to his cause. Keaton’s fabulous feathery silver outfits, her ability to utter lines like, “it’s pure keen,” with a straight face, and her substantial use of the “orgasmatron” made the role an instant classic.
‘Something’s Gotta Give’
Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson in the Columbia Pictures romantic comedy movie, “Something’s Gotta Give.”
(Bob Marshak/Columbia Pictures)
Keaton again paired with Jack Nicholson in this 2003 romantic comedy about a pair of mismatched professionals who fall in love in late middle age despite their best efforts to the contrary. The stars have the undeniable chemistry of two acting legends whose work appears absolutely effortless at this stage in their careers. The film was not a critical home run, but Keaton fans think of it as one of her best later roles.
A former Strictly Come Dancing professional has revealed they wanted to return to the BBC One show after leaving in 2012 and being a part of the show for seven series.
A former Strictly Come Dancing professional has admitted they wanted to return(Image: BBC)
Former Strictly Come Dancing professional Vincent Simone has revealed he wanted to return to the BBC One show but “it didn’t work out”. The dancer joined the show in 2006 for the fourth series and did seven series before leaving it behind in 2012.
Now he’s opened up about his exit as he said: “The year I left Strictly Come Dancing, there were going to be big changes.
“Bruce Forsyth was leaving, and the show was moving from Shepherd’s Bush where we were there for seven years, and we were moving to Elstree Studios, which was a big change. It got to a point where I got to the final, and although I didn’t win, I was fully satisfied with how I’d done in the show.”
However, Vincent only intended on taking a short break from the show but he got to busy doing his other work that it didn’t end up materialising.
He continued to Daily Star: “Ideally, what I wanted was to take a year or two out of the show, and then to come back, but we all know that’s rare.
“If I could’ve had that chance to leave Strictly for a few years and then come back, that would’ve been ideal. I would’ve gone back, but those years after Strictly, I was fully committed to West End shows and my own shows.
“Then I went onto I’m A Celebrity, which I wouldn’t have been able to do if I was on Strictly. My career in touring and performing has made me feel very blessed.”
During his first series, Vincent was partnered with EastEnders actress Louisa Lytton and the pair made it all the way to the final four and were eliminated two weeks before the final.
The following year, the dancer was paired with actress Stephanie Beacham with the two being eliminated on week two but in 2008 he made a triumphant return when he came second with S Club 7 singer Rachel Stevens.
His next partner was EastEnders actress Natalie Cassidy, who he came fifth with, followed by his partnership with Felicity Kendal resulting in them being voted off in week seven.
In 2011, it was disappointment all around as he and Conservative party politician Edwina Currie were the first pair to be eliminated from the competition.
In Vincent’s final year, the performer and his partner, Tracy Beaker star Dani Harmer got eliminated a week before the final, ending their run in fourth place.
After quitting the show, he and dance partner Flavia Cacace continued to perform with stage shows and live tours.
In 2013, he took part on the thirteenth series of I’m A Celebrity, arriving as a late entrant to camp with actress Annabel Giles.
He finished in tenth place, being the third celebrity to leave in a double elimination with Matthew Wright.
The current series of the BBC One show is airing at the moment, with celebrities including Vicky Pattison, Alex Kingston, Amber Davies and Chris Robshaw attempting to lift the glitterball trophy.
The Apprentice star Thomas Skinner and his partner Amy Dowden became the first pair to leave the competition after landing in the bottom two with Chris and Nadiya Bychkova.
In his exit interview with Tess Daly, he said: “Thank you, Amy – sorry that we haven’t done too good, ’cause you’re a different class.
“I’ve never danced before and my stay was short, but Amy’s amazing. It’s been great fun and I’ve enjoyed it. I can’t really dance that well but I’ve had fun!”
Strictly Come Dancing continues tonight at 6:05pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
Big Brother’s AJ and Will announced the biggest game changing twist yet, as they revealed two new arrivals will be entering the house in a game changing twist
22:23, 10 Oct 2025Updated 22:55, 10 Oct 2025
Tonight, the Big Brother house saw it’s second live eviction as Cameron B was evicted. However, it wasn’t the only huge event tonight, as AJ Odudu and Will Best announced at the start of the live show that Big Brother would see yet another huge twist.
The 25th anniversary show started off with a bang, as the evil eyes continue to cause chaos around the house. The first shock twist came during launch night when Emily was the first housemate to be evicted in a short but sweet stay.
Now, AJ and Will have made the shock announcement that the show will gain two new arrivals next Friday – but they’re not any old arrivals.
In fact, Will and AJ announced that the two new arrivals were people that had left the Big Brother house too soon – but who will they be?
They won’t be alone, as one current housemate will be with them. On Big Brother’s Late and Live tonight, Will and AJ announced housemates would be nominating on Monday. Housemates will believe viewers are voting to evict – but the evicted housemate won’t leave.
Instead they’ll be whisked away to a secret room with the two former housemates. But who will they be?
Tonight, Will gave away a huge clue, revealing that the housemates are one’s that “left too soon.”
While many think Emily from this series are returning, others are convinced Farida Khalifa from ITV’s first series in 2023, will be returning. Farida was the first housemate to be evicted, with many fuming with her early departure.
But could it be her time to return? Fans think so. Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, one penned: “I’m glad to see i’m not the only one who INSTANTLY thought of farida when they said gone too soon housemates were returning”.
Another agreed: “Omg the fact that godly Farida may be reentering the Big Brother house!!” while a third said: “Farida’s last TikTok was September 24th… get her back in!”
Despite being the third to be evicted, Cameron was the first to leave through the front door. Last week, Gani was forced to have a back door eviction due to Storm Amy, and Emily left through the back door on the first night.
Tuesday, Oct. 14, would have been the 32nd birthday of Charlie Kirk, the right-wing political influencer murdered last summer. It is a birthday shared by George Floyd, Jr., asphyxiated by arresting police in 2020 and who would have been 52. The horror of these tragedies has roiled a divisive society, but must they now demand a political battleground of opposing memorials?/
The concept of a civic memorial has long and often been, in Western culture, the privilege of classical music. Music may be permitted to speak not of specifics but the essence of grief, a collective cherishing of existence.
There happens to be another anniversary, Tuesday, to acknowledge. Leonard Bernstein, a great gatherer of differences in his music, died Oct. 14, 1990, at 72. And all around us, as we approach the 35th anniversary of his death, are reminders of Bernstein as the megastar memorializer of the 35th president of the United States, and what those tributes to John F. Kennedy might mean for us today.
The must-see Los Angeles Opera production of “West Side Story,” which closes Sunday, is by Francesca Zambello, who heads Washington National Opera at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and where she is slated to mount her production of Bernstein’s classic musical in May. Saturday night at the Soraya in Northridge, Martha Graham Dance Company gave the world premiere of “En Masse,” which is based on Bernstein’s “MASS,” written to open the Kennedy Center, where “En Masse,” too, is headed in the spring.
Along with all that, Gustavo Dudamel caps his three fall weeks leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic this weekend with four performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Bernstein chose this epic score, known as the “Resurrection,” to memorialize Kennedy two days after his assassination in 1963. A large New York Philharmonic, vocal soloists and chorus assembled on a CBS sound stage for a live national television broadcast.
It was a Sunday and untold millions (there were no Nielsen ratings) gathered in their homes to watch a somber Bernstein begin Mahler’s symphony with gut-wrenching intensity and end it with an overwhelming sense of triumph 90 minutes later. As a legendary act of national healing, the broadcast riveted a shocked nation.
It still does. The following year, Bernstein channeled that Kennedy spirit into a famous performance of Mahler’s symphony at London’s Ely Cathedral that was televised in Britain and released on commercial video. It is that Mahler Second performance that Bradley Cooper chose as the musical centerpiece of his Bernstein 2023 biopic, “Maestro.”
Bernstein further memorialized JFK in the dedication of his Third Symphony, “Kaddish.” And then there was the Kennedy Center opening in 1971, with Bernstein doing the shocking. At the time and for the occasion, “MASS” seemed a bizarre mashup of pop, schlock, jazz, 12-tone, electronics, grand symphonic utterances, hippie currency, mysticism, traditional Catholic Mass, Jewish Sabbath service, anti-Mass climaxing with a psychotic and psychedelic breakdown of Mass’ celebrant and Vietnam War protest.
The general reaction to “MASS” was that of appall, no matter whether you worshipped Bernstein or couldn’t bear him, whatever your political or cultural orientation. President Nixon — who as vice president in the 1950s had attended a Bernstein festival of American music at the Hollywood Bowl and had accompanied Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic on a cultural tour to South America — stayed home.
In fact, “MASS,” after years of puzzled neglect, ultimately came to be heralded as a Bernstein masterpiece, a work that freed contemporary music of genre-fication. It gives permission not for anything goes but for anything goes together if you can find the right context. A slow awareness of the score’s genius has empowered a new generation, such as the conductor and composer Christopher Rountree, who made the new arrangement of parts of “MASS” for his genre-breaking orchestra, Wild Up.
The Graham company based “En Messe” on a flimsy premise, the discovery of a page or two of sketches that Bernstein made for a proposed score he meant to write for Graham in 1988. The discovery is minor. Bernstein and Graham knew and admired each other, but she was a footnote in his career.
In the end, Rountree wrote a short series on variations on two themes he extracted from the sketches that serve as an epilogue to the “MASS” suite. The themes are hard to discern and don’t matter. Rather, Rountree makes a gripping case in his variations for a way forward from Bernsteiniana to today.
The intent of “En Messe” was meant to cap a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Graham company, the oldest dance company in America. Graham 100 began a year ago with a revival of “Appalachian Spring,” Graham’s most famous piece, which also gave us Aaron Copland’s iconic score (the popularity of which was greatly helped by Bernstein’s recording).
The company has also revived another of Graham’s most important (and severe) dances, “Night Journey,” based around the last moments of the life of Jocasta (the mother of Oedipus in the Greek tragedy). The revival with Anne Souder as an imposing Jocasta, Lloyd Knight, an enthralling Oedipus, and Ethan Palma, a haunted Tiresias (the seer), retained all the work’s stunning power. William Schuman’s mostly forgotten score received a revelatory performance by Rountree and Wild Up.
“En Messe,” itself, did not serve its purpose to cap a centennial closer to the work of a seminal choreographer. It accomplished something more important by heralding a path forward. The company can’t live forever reviving Graham’s work or doing showy new dances such as “We the People” (also on the program).
Instead, Hope Boykin’s choreography added a dark intensity to Bernstein’s brightness. The stage was dim. Each dance featured a soloist in seeming personal meditation with the music, its rhythms and its spirit, and with the company’s other dancers, who appear ghostly figures in the misty distance.
Movement didn’t match music but brought you into it, while the music seemed to demand movement. It began with the score’s hit, “A Simple Song,” Bernstein at his most tuneful, even saccharine. Jodie Landau didn’t buy into its surface simplicity but sang with a fresh, cool, contemporary edge that immediately told you we were headed into unknown territory. Every discovery that followed proved her right on.
“En Messe” will tour the country and beyond over the next year with, unfortunately, a recording of Wild Up, not live performance. If the company gets over its overamplification, which cheapens everything it presents, that need not disastrously lessen the impact.
Will “En Messe,” or “West Side Story,” actually reach the Kennedy Center, which the federal government is attempting to turn it into who-knows-what, this spring? Both Bernstein works are exactly what the new overseers say they want — more populist art, inspirational attempts to make American art great. But they are also works that make us look inside ourselves, discover what matters beyond self-interest. That’s become a hard sell.
Thirty paintings by the late artist — and PBS staple — Bob Ross are heading for auction beginning Nov. 11. American Public Television, which syndicates programming to public stations across the country, is staging the auction in Los Angeles through Bonhams. APT has pledged to donate 100% of the profits to beleaguered public television stations nationwide.
“Bonhams holds the world record for Bob Ross, and with his market continuing to climb, proceeds benefiting American Public Television, and many of the paintings created live on air — a major draw for collectors — we expect spirited bidding and results that could surpass previous records,” said Robin Starr, general manager, Bonhams Skinner, in a statement.
The auction house established its record in August when it sold two of Ross’ mountain-and-lake scenes from the early 1990s for $114,800 and $95,750, respectively. Bonhams said it could not yet provide an estimate on the worth of the 30 works coming up for auction.
The first three paintings will go on the block at Bonhams in Los Angeles as part of its California & Western Art auction. The remaining 27 will be sold throughout 2026 at Bonhams salesrooms in New York, Boston and L.A.
The news comes as public broadcasting faces unprecedented challenges to its survival. In July, Congress voted to cut $1.1 billion in federal funding for the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, which was founded in 1968 and helps fund PBS, NPR, as well as 1,500 local radio and television stations. The cuts were encouraged by President Trump, who derided the organization for spreading “woke” propaganda.
The private, nonprofit corporation soon after announced that it would close. The majority of its staff was dismissed at the end of last month, and a bare-bones transition team remains through January to wrap up unfinished work.
Without CPB, educational programming like “The Joy of Painting” with Bob Ross will have an uphill battle finding the support it needs.
Known for his cloudlike halo of curly brown hair, soothing voice and infectious love of the art form as shown on his signature show, the artist became a mainstay in American households across 400-plus episodes and more than a decade on the air.
With its wholesome content and relaxed pace, his was the kind of show that defined PBS. Hopefully, his work can help keep the lights on at the stations that helped gain him a cultlike following.
I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, and I’m the proud owner of a Bob Ross Chia Pet head. Here’s your arts and culture news for the week.
On our radar
Kai A. Ealy stars in “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” at A Noise Within
(Daniel Reichert)
Joe Turner’s Come And Gone Gregg T. Daniel continues his reinvestigation of August Wilson’s American Century Cycle with a production of what is arguably the finest work in the playwright’s 10-play series. Set in a Pittsburgh boardinghouse in 1911 during the Great Migration, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” focuses on the spiritual crossroads of Black Americans who are being reminded at every turn that their freedom comes with a prohibitive cost. The sixth Wilson production at A Noise Within in this seasons-long retrospective should be a standout: It’s one of the great American plays of the 20th century. — Charles McNulty Previews, 2 p.m. Sunday; 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Oct. 17; opening night, 7:30 p.m. Oct. 18; through Nov. 9. A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena. anoisewithin.org
Tavares Strachan, “Six Thousand Years,” and “The Encyclopedia of Invisibility,” 2018, mixed media
Tavares Strachan: The Day Tomorrow Began Bahamian-born New York artist, whose immersive solo exhibition “Magnificent Darkness” filled the Hollywood branch of Marian Goodman Gallery last year, makes multidisciplinary art that seeks to amplify notable events and people — especially related to exploration, from deep-sea diving to outer space — that are often sidelined in standard cultural histories. Strachan, a 2022 MacArthur Foundation fellow, once shipped a 4.5-ton block of ice from the Arctic to the Bahamas via FedEx. We’ll see what might arrive at Wilshire Boulevard. — Christopher Knight 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday; 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday; closed Wednesday; through March 29, 2026. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, BCAM Level 2, 5905 Wilshire Blvd. lacma.org
Alexander Shelley conducts the Pacific Symphony Friday-Sunday in Costa Mesa.
(Curtis Perry)
Alexander Shelley conducts the Pacific Symphony At 45, the British conductor has a seemingly full and far-fledged plate: music director of the National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa; principal associate conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London; and artistic and music director of Artis-Naples and the Naples Philharmonic in Florida. Next year, the plate becomes fuller and further-fledged when he becomes music director of the Pacific Symphony. This fall, however, Shelley makes his debut as music director designate by showcasing works bursting with color — Mongomery’s “Starburst”; Arturo Márquez’s “Concert for Guitar Mystical and Profane” with Pablo Sáinz-Villegas as soloist; and Rimsky Korsakov’s “Scheherazade.” Shelley returns in November with Ravel’s glorious ballet score “Daphnis and Chloe,” the perfect enchanting complement to San Diego Symphony’s “L’Enfant,” for wrapping up the Ravel year, the 150th anniversary of the French composer’s birth having been in March. — Mark Swed 8 p.m. Thursday-Oct. 18. Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. pacificsymphony.org
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The week ahead: A curated calendar
FRIDAY
The American Contemporary Ballet dances to Shubert’s score for “Death & the Maiden.”
(Victor Demarchelier)
Death and the Maiden American Contemporary Ballet, under the direction of Lincoln Jones, dances to a live performance of Schubert’s score, complete with opera singers; plus “Burlesque: Variation IX.” 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; Thursday performances Oct. 23 and 30; through Nov. 1. ACB, Bank of America Plaza, 330 S. Hope St. #150, downtown L.A. acbdances.com
Nightsong Times video intern Quincy Bowie Jr. recently visited artist Derek Fordjour’s sensorial experience at Mid-City’s David Kordansky Gallery. “In a time where many feel silenced, and afraid to speak up, Fordjour creates a space of darkness where truth can be revealed, heard and felt,” wrote Bowie. “‘Nightsong’ creates a unique space where the Black voice and its many songs are centered.” The free exhibit closes tonight. 6-10 p.m. David Kordansky Gallery, 5130 W. Edgewood Place. davidkordanskygallery.com
Mexican singer Lucía performs Friday at the Nimoy.
(Shervin Lainez)
Lucía The enchanting Mexican singer mixes traditional American jazz and Latin folk in her eponymous debut album, released earlier this year. 8 p.m. UCLA Nimoy Theater, 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu
Mascogos Jose Luis Valenzuela directs the world premiere of playwright Miranda González’s drama revealing the untold stories of Mexico’s Underground Railroad. Final preview, 8 p.m. Friday; opening night, 8 p.m. Saturday; 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday; 4 p.m. Sunday, through Nov. 9. Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., downtown L.A. latinotheaterco.org
People in the Dark: An Immersive Ghost Story A Lost Legends Ghost Tour goes frighteningly awry, placing the audience face-to-face with Hollywood’s haunted past in this enveloping theatrical experience from Drowned Out Productions. 7-11:40 p.m., with start times every 20 mins. Friday; 6-10:40 p.m., with start times every 20 mins. Saturday and Sunday (also Thursday, Oct. 16), through Oct. 31. 1035 S. Olive St., downtown L.A. tickettailor.com
Grand Kyiv Ballet performs “Swan Lake” Friday at the Ebell Wilshire.
Grand Kyiv Ballet This touring company of Ukrainian dancers is temporarily based out of the International Ballet Academy in Bellevue, Wash., while Russia continues its war with Ukraine. The troupe brings Tchaikovsky’s timeless ballet “Swan Lake” to Mid-City in a graceful performance sure to soothe even the most restless soul. (Jessica Gelt) 7 p.m. Wilshire Ebell Theatre, 4401 W 8th St, Los Angeles. ebellofla.org
SATURDAY Corey Helford Gallery A trio of strikingly distinct shows with a global sweep opens Friday. In the main gallery, “The Weight of Us,” a duo exhibition featuring solo works from Nigerian artists Arinze Stanley and Oscar Ukonu explores interconnectedness, and the complex interplay of individual and collective narratives. “Where Petals Dance,” features the work of Japanese artist aica in Gallery 2. The major exhibition featuring Latvian-born contemporary surrealist painter Jana Brike, “When I Was a River,” debuts in Gallery 3. Noon-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, through Nov. 15. Corey Helford Gallery, 571 S. Anderson St. #1, Los Angeles. https://coreyhelfordgallery.com/
Vicky Chow CAP UCLA and Piano Spheres present new music pianist Vicky Chow performing the West Coast premiere of Tristan Perich’s “Surface Image.” 8 p.m. UCLA Nimoy Theater, 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu
Gracias Gustavo Community Block Party Hosted by Aundrae Russell of KJLH, this outdoor celebration features performances by DJ Aye Jaye, live art by Hannah Edmonds and Israel “Seaweed” Batiz, Mariachi Tierra Mia, poet Aletha Metcalf-Evans, Versa-Style Street Dance Company, YOLA at Inglewood Jazz Ensemble, Sherie, muralist ShowzArt — “The Art Jedi,” D Smoke and the Inglewood High School Marching Band, plus activities, food trucks and more. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Judith and Thomas L. Beckmen YOLA Center, 101 S. La Brea Ave., Inglewood. laphil.com
Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles An open house kicks off four new exhibitions: Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, “The Awake Volcanoes”; Samar Al Summary, “Excavating the Sky”; Liz Hernández, “Donde piso, crecen cosas (Where I step, things grow)”; and AoA x IAO, “I Smell LA.”
4-8 p.m. Friday. Noon-6 p.m. Wednesday; Noon-7 p.m. Thursday; Noon-6 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday; closed Mondays, Tuesdays and public holidays. Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1717 E. 7th St., Arts District, downtown L.A. theicala.org
Sleep Token performs at the Reading Music Festival, England, in 2023.
(Scott Garfitt / Invision / Associated Press)
Sleep Token Sleep Token is by some measures the biggest heavy-rock band in the world right now. Its 2025 LP, “Even in Arcadia,” demolished streaming records for a metal act, reaching well beyond the genre’s cantankerous core fan base, which has mixed feelings about Sleep Token’s pop chart success, to say the least. (No one is more skeptical about the band’s new fame than its cryptically anonymous front person Vessel: “Right foot in the roses, left foot on a landmine,” he sings in “Caramel,” “They can sing the words while I cry into the bass line.”) The band’s high-drama live shows are where Sleep Token really shines, though, as in this return to L.A. for a set that finally provides the scale its runic masks, robes and necrotic body paint have always called for. (August Brown) 8 p.m. Crypto.com Arena, 1111 S. Figueroa St., downtown L.A. cryptoarena.com
SUNDAY Paul Jacobs The Grammy-winning organist performs Bach’s “The Art of Fugue.” 7:30 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer and the Von Trapp family in a scene from the 1965 film “The Sound of Music.”
(20th Century Fox)
The Sound of Music A 70mm screening of the 1965 Robert Wise-directed movie musical starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer that won five Oscars, including best picture. 3 p.m. Sunday. Academy Museum, David Geffen Theater, 6067 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. academymuseum.org
TUESDAY L.A. Phil Gala: Gustavo’s Fiesta Gustavo Dudamel conducts the orchestra in a few of his favorite things: De Falla’s “Three-Cornered Hat,” selections from Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony (featuring musicians from YOLA, Youth Orchestra Los Angeles), Beethoven’s Seventh, “Fairy Garden” from Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite and Revueltas’ “Night of Enchantment.” 7 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
THURSDAY Draw Them In, Paint Them Out Trenton Doyle Hancock confronts the work of painter Philip Guston in this dual exhibition that examines the role the artist plays in the pursuit of social justice. Noon-5 p.m. Tuesday–Friday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday–Sunday. Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. skirball.org
Yunchan Lim For his Disney Hall debut, the youngest-ever winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition performs Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” alongside “…Round and velvety-smooth blend…,” a new piece, written especially for the pianist, by Korean composer Hanurij Lee. 8 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
San Cha, photographed in 2020, performs Thursday-Saturday at REDCAT.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
San Cha The L.A.-based composer, musician and performance artist presents “Inebria Me,” a new experimental opera that reimagines the melodrama of telenovelas through a queer, genre-bending lens as adapted from her 2019 album, “La Luz de la Esperanza.” In Spanish with English supertitles. Postshow Q&A with San Cha on Oct 17. 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct.18. REDCAT, 631 W. 2nd St., downtown L.A. redcat.org
Culture news and the SoCal scene
Bisserat Tseggai, Claudia Logan, Victoire Charles and Jordan Rice, clockwise from top left, of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Jaja’s African Hair Braiding Currently staging its L.A. premiere at Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum, “Jaja’s” is an uproarious workplace comedy that packs a serious political punch. I had the pleasure of interviewing four of the lead actors during a roundtable at a downtown rehearsal room a few days before the run started. The women talked about their love of the show and of the playwright, Jocelyn Bioh. They also discussed the country’s fraught political climate and how it’s laying waste to the idea of the American Dream — the one that has attracted immigrants seeking a better life for their families for hundreds of years. Their thoughts have a direct throughline to the show, which takes place on a single hot day at a West African salon in Harlem.
Times theater critic Charles McNulty caught the opening Sunday night and wrote a glowing review of the touring production, which he noted was “bursting with gossip, petty fights, audacious fashion, dazzling hair styles, full-body dancing and uncensored truth about the vulnerable lives of immigrant workers.”
Hammer biennial Made in L.A. 2025 has officially opened at UCLA’s Hammer Museum and I recently toured the highly anticipated seventh edition of the biennial exhibition in the company of curators Essence Harden and Paulina Pobocha. The pair told me interesting backstories about the 28 participating artists, including that the four large sculptures of doors made by Amanda Ross-Ho represent a door at the nursing home where her father lived.
Artist Alake Shilling stands in front of a 25-foot inflatable psychedelic bear driving a convertible titled “Buggy Bear Crashes Made in L.A,” at the Hammer Museum in Westwood.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
I also ate lunch with the charming and kind artist Alake Shilling, whose adorable sculptures of cuddly animals featuring melancholy faces are part of the show. I trailed Shilling as she watched a test inflation of a 25-foot sculpture titled “Buggy Bear Crashes Made in L.A.,” which will be on display on an outdoor pedestal on Wilshire Boulevard through March. I made this fun video with the help of video editor Mark Potts.
LACMA Gifts Big news keeps coming out of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which announced Wednesday that it had been gifted more than 100 works of Austrian Expressionism worth “well over” $60 million by the family of Otto Kallir, a renowned art dealer who immigrated to America in 1938 after the German Reich annexed Austria. The art will be transferred to the museum over the next several years and includes the museum’s first paintings by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Richard Gerstl. The exciting news comes two months after LACMA was gifted its first paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Édouard Manet by the Pearlman Foundation.
Best Friends Forever Finally, I got an update from the “satirical activist” artists with the Secret Handshake. They told me they had once again received a permit to reinstall their controversial Trump-Epstein statue (dubbed “Best Friends Forever”) on the National Mall. “Just like a toppled Confederate general forced back onto a public square, the Donald Trump Jeffrey Epstein statue has risen from the rubble to stand gloriously on the National Mall once again,” a rep for the Secret Handshake wrote in an email.
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“Arabesque over the Right Leg,Left Arm in Front,” by Edgar Degas
(Norton Simon Museum)
Norton Simon acquires sculpture The Pasadena museum announced the acquisition of a bronze sculpture by Edgar Degas titled “Arabesque over the Right Leg, Left Arm in Front.” The museum already holds more than 100 pieces by Degas in its collection, which is known as one of the largest public collection’s of the artist’s work in the world. “This significant acquisition, long sought after, completes a critical gap in the Museum’s renowned Degas collection,” a rep for the museum wrote in an email. The sculpture went on view in the museum’s 19th century wing late last week.
Mushroom Boat Ever heard of a boat made out of mushrooms? Neither had I until someone told me about an exhibition at Fulcrum Arts in Pasadena called, “Sam Shoemaker: Mushroom Boat.” As the title implies, the artist built a kayak out of mushroom mycelium. He then proceeded to use the unusual vessel to cross the Catalina Channel — a total of 26 nautical miles. He chronicled his journey the whole way, and the results of that work are on display alongside the boat. It includes large-scale projections, time-lapse videos, and soundscapes from his sometimes wild and turbulent journey.
Los Angeles Ballet dancers in pointe shoes stretch before beginning rehearsals in 2015.
(Los Angeles Times)
An anniversary for Los Angeles Ballet Los Angeles Ballet announced its 2025-26 season, which also happens to mark the company’s 20th anniversary, and its Music Center debut — “Giselle” at the Ahmanson Theatre in the spring. The season launches in December with LAB’s acclaimed annual presentation of “The Nutcracker” at Royce Hall and the Dolby Theatre. This season the company continues its residency at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, and is set to stage a triple-bill anniversary production, “20 Years of Los Angeles Ballet,” featuring George Balanchine’s “Rubies,” Hans van Manen’s “Frank Bridge Variations,” and a third new work by Artistic Director Melissa Barak, who assumed her position in 2022.
K.A.M.P. fundraiser The Hammer Museum is back this Sunday with its annual fundraiser — Kids Art Museum Project, better known as K.A.M.P. Tickets support the Hammer’s free year-round family programming. Each year, the museum shuts down on a Sunday and presents an art-filled wonderland for children and families, with interactive art stations created and helmed by participating L.A. artists, as well as a special reading room featuring well-known actors. This year’s readers will be actor Justine Lupe and baseball star Chris Taylor. Artists include Daniel Gibson, Sharon Johnston & Mark Lee, Annie Lapin, Ryan Preciado, Rob Reynolds, Jennifer Rochlin, Mindy Shapero, Brooklin A. Soumahoro and Christopher Suarez.
— Jessica Gelt
And last but not least
Everybody, it seems, loves Cyndi Lauper. Readers have been going absolutely bananas for Times pop music critic Mikael Wood’s engaging profile on the iconic, red-haired pop star in advance of her induction in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Man United: Paul Scholes stopped commentary work to care for son
Scholes initially kept his son’s diagnosis secret during his playing career and revealed he was dropped by United manager Sir Alex Ferguson while attempting to handle the situation privately.
“I never got a break from it, even when playing – it was very hard in those days,” Scholes, one of United’s key players in the 1999 Treble season, added.
“I don’t think they diagnosed it until he was two-and-a-half years old. But you knew early something was wrong, but then you get the diagnosis, and I’d never heard of it.
“I remember the first time after it, we were playing Derby away and I just didn’t want to be there.
“I remember the manager dropped me the week after, and I hadn’t told anyone. I ended up telling them a few weeks later, as it was quite hard.
“Even now, I don’t want sympathy or anything. I just thought, even if I did speak to someone about it, it’s not going to help Aiden.
“The big concern now is, because you’re getting a bit older, what happens when you’re not here? That’s the thing that’s now on my mind all the time.”
Autism spectrum disorder – its medical name – is the name for a range of conditions that affect how a person communicates and interacts with the world around them, as well as their interests and behaviour.
It is not a disease or an illness, but a condition that somebody is born with, and it is estimated that one in every 100 people in the UK is autistic.
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Geordie Shore stars donate thousands to Holly Hagan’s late sister’s memorial so family can take time off work to grieve
HOLLY Hagan’s Geordie Shore pals have donated thousands to her late sister Darci’s memorial so her family can take time off work to grieve.
Heartbroken Holly, 33, revealed last week that Darci had passed away aged 19.
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Now her famous friends have rallied around the family during the incredibly difficult time, The Sun can reveal.
An insider said: “Holly Hagan’s famous pals have donated thousands of pounds to help pay for her tragic sister’s funeral and memorial, and allow them some breathing space from work.
“Charlotte Crosby and her partner Jake Ankers have donated £2,000, Sophie Kasaei has given £1,000, Adam Frisby £1,000 and Gaz Beadle and Nathan Henry gave £500 each.”
In an emotional statement sharing the tragic news, Holly wrote: “It is with immeasurable grief and sadness that our baby girl, my baby sister Darci Rose passed away peacefully holding my hand surrounded by family and her best friends.
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“She was never in any pain.
“The last four days have been something I hope no family ever has to go through.
“We are traumatised in every sense of the word.
“One day we will share Darci’s story. But for now I please ask that you do respect our privacy and allow us to process what has happened.
“To the incredible ambulance crew, and everyone at Manchester Royal Infirmary A&E and ICU, thank you so much for giving my sister the absolute best chance.
“Because of you all we have had the opportunity to hold her hand, stroke her hair and feel her heart beating for the last time.
“We will forever be grateful for the way you have looked after her and us throughout this unimaginable process.”
Holly added: “Right now my job is to support my family in any way that I can to ensure they don’t have to worry about work/finances.
“Any posts you see this month are pre-recorded and scheduled ahead of time. I will be continuing to work, so they do not have to.”
The TV star then reflected on her late sister and recalled some of the fondest memories they shared together.
Holly continued: “Darci is so beautiful and she genuinely didn’t even realise it.
“I always told her she’d look better without the huge spider lashes but we all know what a hypocrite I was being since I wore nine pairs at her age!
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“She lived in Darci world, forgetting to turn lights off, didn’t know how to lock doors after coming in from a night out, leaving the freezer open so my mam came down to a puddle of defrosted food.
“She was the best aunty, Alpha-Jax adored her. She spent his whole birthday on the bouncy castle with AJ and Alba, and that’s a memory I’ll cherish forever.”
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Hollyoaks fans ‘work out’ who shot Tony Hutchinson and it’s not Darren Osborne
Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks fans are convinced they know who shot Tony Hutchinson after he was left fighting for his life on his wedding day
Angie Quinn Screen Time Reporter
10:15, 26 Oct 2025
In a shocking turn of events on Hollyoaks, Tony Hutchinson was shot on Wednesday (October 22) episode, leaving viewers in suspense about his fate.
The drama unfolded during a crossover episode with Brookside on Channel 4, where a plane piloted by serial killer Jez (Jeremy Sheffield) crashed into the village, causing a massive explosion.
However, the chaos didn’t stop there. On what was supposed to be his wedding day to Diane (Alex Fletcher), Tony (Nick Pickard) found himself confronted by Darren Osborne (Ashley Taylor Dawson) for having an affair with his wife Nancy (Jessica Fox).
Darren was livid upon discovering that Tony is the biological father of his daughter, Morgan, following a past fling with Nancy. Their heated argument was briefly interrupted by the plane disaster, but quickly resumed, much to the dismay of Tony’s son, Ant Hutchinson (Brook Debio).
Adding to the confusion, Tony believed he had got Marie Fielding (Rita Simons) pregnant, only to find out she was wearing a fake baby bump. Meanwhile, Mercedes McQueen (Jennifer Metcalfe) was also expecting his child, reports the Manchester Evening News.
Tragedy struck when Mercedes lost her baby in the aftermath of the plane crash. Tony had left her trapped under debris as he rushed to save Marie, a decision that will haunt him.
Diane (Alexandra Fletcher) stepped up to rescue Mercedes, mirroring how Mercedes had previously saved her. Now, both Mercedes and Diane are furious with Tony – Mercedes for her heartbreaking loss, and Diane for her groom’s reckless behaviour.
In a later scene, Darren was seen in tears as he pointed a gun at Tony, who pleaded for his life. Suddenly, a gunshot echoed from behind Tony, and he collapsed to the ground after being shot.
Now, Tony’s fate hangs in the balance.
Hollyoaks viewers are now speculating about who could have shot Tony, with some suggesting that his own son Ant might be the culprit following their earlier disagreement.
One fan took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to ask: “So…Who shot Tony? My guess is Ant! #Hollyoaks.”
Another declared: “I’m calling it ant was the one who shot Tony! He was pretty mad at his dad #hollyoaks.”
A third joined in, saying: “My early theory for who shot Tony in #Hollyoaks: It was Ant!”.
“I feel like Ant was probably the 1 that shot Tony #hollyoaks”, another viewer added.
Hollyoaks airs Monday to Wednesday on E4 at 7pm and first look episodes can be streamed Channel 4 from 7am
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Lío Mehiel’s ‘After the Hunt’ role marks a milestone for trans visibility
Lío Mehiel has been working for a moment like “After the Hunt” for a long time.
Directed by Luca Guadagnino, this thorny morality play of a film set at Yale University pits well-liked professor Alma (played by Julia Roberts) against both her protegé, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), as well as her longtime friend and colleague Hank (Andrew Garfield) during a scandal that risks her entire academic career.
Amid that starry A-list cast, the actor plays Maggie’s partner, Alex. The film, which had its world premiere in August at the Venice Film Festival, is Mehiel’s most high-profile project yet.
“There is so much time as an artist where you are doing the work and nobody cares and you have to find within yourself the motivation and the commitment and the drive to keep going,” Mehiel tells The Times. “Because you know that when you are going to be able to reach people, it will be worth it.”
Such a step has been years in the making. Mehiel, who lived in Puerto Rico until they were 5 years old, began their creative endeavors almost as soon as they arrived in New York City, first as a salsa dancer and later as an actor. By the time they were in fifth grade they were attending Broadway auditions, eventually booking a role in the 2003 revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” starring Ashley Judd and Jason Patric.
(L to R) Lio Mehiel as Alex and Ayo Edebiri as Maggie in AFTER THE HUNT, from Amazon MGM Studios.
(Yannis Drakoulidis / Yannis Drakoulidis © 2025 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved)
But as they began finding their own sense of self and body, they also found the kind of opportunities that led them to “After the Hunt.” That began in earnest back in 2023, when they starred in Vuk Lungulov-Klotz’s film “Mutt” as Feña, a role they booked after cold-emailing the director and telling them they’d do anything to win that part. The film chronicled a particularly hectic day in the life of a young trans man in New York City, as he struggles to rekindle old relationships he’d severed since he’d transitioned. Mehiel’s soulful performance won them a Special Jury Award for Acting at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, putting them on the map as a trans Latine performer to watch.
“Moving forward from ‘Mutt,’ I was really interested in building on that momentum to what’s next,” they say. Not just in terms of their career but in the broader cultural conversation around contemporary queer and trans representation. The following year, they returned to Sundance with Alessandra Lacorazza’s “In the Summers,” which walked away from the festival with the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury prize — the first for a film directed by a Latina director. Like “Mutt,” that sun-dappled film found Mehiel breathing life into a trans character navigating a thorny relationship with their father (played by renowned Puerto Rican rapper Residente).
Mehiel has long been building a body of work that centers on the very work of having a body. Just this past summer, they visited the Salton Sea for a performance installation titled “angels of a drowning myth.” In photos from that day, Mehiel is seen naked and half-submerged into that so-called sea, posing alongside a bust of their own chest made six months after they’d received top surgery. A portrait of a body twice represented, Mehiel’s piece stressed the solidity and malleability of their own body, and the beauty they find within and around it. Their work moves past familiar ideas of the body in transition, gleefully embracing the messiness of the queer experience and refusing the easy siren call of visibility.
“‘After the Hunt,’ is such a beautiful example of that because Alex is a queer and trans character, but we just see them getting home from a run, taking their shirt off, being with their partner, dealing with stuff that has nothing to do with their queerness,” Mehiel says.
That moment Alex first appears on screen is quintessential Mehiel. Not just because of the honeyed intimacy their sweaty, bare chest exudes. But because their appearance immediately reframes everything audiences have heard about this seemingly militant, radical social justice warrior. Alex at first appears as a figure of “woke” culture there to defy the older generation Roberts’ Alma comes to stand for. But there’s more to them than that.
“Alex doesn’t represent all queer people who have a political orientation in the world, all queer people who might attend a protest,” they explain. “I think what Luca did and what Nora did in the script was to give us all an opportunity to move away from identity politics. Instead, they gave each of the characters enough meat on their bones that they get to be complex, messy characters.”
“After the Hunt” may focus on complicated ethical questions surrounding sexual assault allegations at a university, but within that plot, Mehiel sees also a chance for viewers to catch a glimpse of characters like Maggie and Alex who may not otherwise be centered in such stories.
“I’m just excited that there is more exposure that people are having to queer and trans people and to queer relationships, and how that can fit in the context of a ‘normative’ world,” they add. “This is a movie with Julia Roberts, one of our biggest stars and crown jewels of Hollywood and of American cinema. There’s going to be a lot of folks that are going to see it because Julia is in it. And then they’re also going to get to experience a queer and trans person on screen who is likable in some moments and unlikable in others, just as much as every other character.”
That’s been Mehiel’s purpose for years now: to expand what queer and trans characters can look like on stage, on screen and, in turn, in real life. At a time when these communities are vilified by those who wish to harm them, Mehiel insists on the importance of such normalized visibility.
Lio Mehiel seen at the Los Angeles Premiere of Amazon MGM Studios’ “After The Hunt” at Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on October 04, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
(Photo by Stewart Cook / Amazon MGM Studios via Getty Images)
“Honestly, exposure to these experiences creates connection more than anything and allows people to feel comfortable,” they add. “Because the political climate right now — for the Latine community and for the trans community — is really hard and heartbreaking and challenging. And I think so much of it has to do with people feeling like they don’t know who these people are.”
A central kernel of the premise of “After the Hunt” is that you never know what someone is going through. And, more to the point, that making assumptions about other people’s experience can be extremely dangerous.
“This movie really serves as a mirror to the people that are watching it,” Mehiel insists. The film confronts audiences with their own biases and refuses any tidy conclusions.
But for Mehiel, the film will forever be remembered as a highlight of a career that is only bound to get bigger and more exciting. Just this year, they spent the summer at the Williamstown Theatre Festival starring in Jeremy O. Harris’ new play as well as serving as head of production for “Mother, Daughter, Holy Spirit,” a grassroots fundraiser for the Trans Justice Funding Project, all while continuing to pursue their various interests as artist, writer, and filmmaker. In that context, “After the Hunt” stands now less as a calling card than as a reminder of how far they’ve come and yet how much further they want to go. That film, now playing in theaters and coming soon to Prime Video, will widen the scope and reach of their artistry.
“Watching it, I was like, ‘I fit right into the fabric of the movie,’” they say. “On a personal journey level, I feel confident that I have the skill, the talent and the experience at this point to work with the masters that I dream of working with (if the sexy French filmmaker, Julia Ducournau, ever reads this interview, she should know that I want to work with her).”
Or, in much simpler terms that echo an ethos they’ve brought to bear on and off screen: “I just feel ready and able to actualize the things that I have been dreaming about for a long time.”
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Government shutdown continues to disrupt flights as air traffic controllers work without pay
The ongoing government shutdown continues to disrupt flights at times and put pressure on air traffic controllers, who are working without pay.
On Friday evening, airports in Phoenix, Houston and San Diego were reporting delays because of staffing issues, and the Federal Aviation Administration warned that staffing problems were also possible at airports in the New York area, Dallas and Philadelphia.
A day earlier, flights were delayed at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, New Jersey’s Newark airport and Washington’s Reagan National Airport because of air traffic controller shortages. The number of flight delays for any reason nationwide surged to 6,158 Thursday after hovering around 4,000 a day earlier in the week, according to FlightAware.com.
Many FAA facilities are so critically short on controllers that just a few absences can cause disruptions, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said that more air traffic controllers have been calling in sick since the shutdown began. Early on in the shutdown, there were a number of disruptions at airports across the country, but for the last couple of weeks there haven’t been as many problems.
Duffy said the disruptions and delays will only get worse next week after Tuesday’s payday arrives and “their paycheck is going to be a big fat zero.” He said controllers are telling him they are worried about how to pay their bills and frustrated with the shutdown.
“The stress level that our controllers are under right now, I think is unacceptable,” he said at a news conference Friday at Philadelphia International Airport.
The shutdown is having real consequences, as some students at the controller academy have decided to abandon the profession because they don’t want to work in a job they won’t be paid for, Duffy said.
That will only make it harder for the FAA to hire enough controllers to eliminate the shortage, since training takes years. He said that the government is only a week or two away from running out of money to pay students at the academy.
“We’re getting word back right now from our academy in Oklahoma City that some of our young controllers in the academy and some who have been given spots in the next class of the academy are bailing. They’re walking away,” Duffy said. “They’re asking themselves, ‘Why do I want to go into a profession where I could work hard and have the potential of not being paid for my services?’ ”
The head of the air traffic controllers union, Nick Daniels, joined Duffy. He said that some controllers have taken on second jobs delivering for DoorDash or driving for Uber to help them pay their bills.
“As this shutdown continues, and air traffic controllers are not paid for the vital work that they do day in and day out, that leads to an unnecessary distraction,” Daniels said. “They cannot be 100% focused on their jobs, which makes this system less safe. Every day that this shutdown continues, tomorrow we’ll be less safe than today.”
Airlines and airports across the country have started buying controllers meals and helping them connect with food banks and other services to get through the shutdown.
The greatest concern is for new controllers who might make less than $50,000, but even experienced controllers who make well over six figures while working six days a week may be living paycheck to paycheck without much cushion in their budgets. Daniels said it’s not fair that controllers are facing impossible choices about whether to pay for rent or child care or groceries.
Duffy has said that air traffic controllers who abuse their sick time during the shutdown could be fired.
Republicans and Democrats have been unable to reach an agreement to end the shutdown that began on Oct. 1. Democrats are demanding steps be taken to avoid soaring healthcare premiums for many Americans set to take effect under the GOP spending law adopted this summer. Republicans have said they will negotiate only after ending the shutdown.
The airlines and major unions across the industry have urged Congress to make a deal to end the shutdown.
Air Line Pilots Assn. President Capt. Jason Ambrosi said in a message to his members that he’s concerned about air traffic controllers and other federal employees.
“The safety of millions of passengers and tens of thousands of tons of cargo is in the hands of these workers. Worrying about how they’ll make their mortgage payment or pay for day care is an added stress they do not need,” Ambrosi said.
Democrats have called on Republicans to negotiate an end to the shutdown. Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, put the onus on Democrats.
“Our aviation system has operated safely throughout the shutdown, but it’s putting an incredible and unnecessary strain on the system, and on our air traffic controllers, flight crews, and many other aviation professionals,” Graves said.
Funk writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Rio Yamat contributed to this report.
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‘Stiller & Meara’ Review: How we remember our parents and ourselves
Ben Stiller has made a lovely, dreamlike film about his parents, the comedian-actors Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, which is also a film about himself, his sister, Amy Stiller, and his own fatherhood as reflected back by his children and his wife, the actor Christine Taylor. Premiering Friday on Apple TV, “Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost” is a show business story, in large part, but will be emotionally familiar to anyone who has had the occasion to wonder about their parents’ lives, in their parents’ absence.
Though both had set out to be actors — “I carried Eleanora Duse’s life under one arm,” says Anne, “and ‘An Actor Prepares,’ Stanislavski, under the other” — Jerry had been thinking of getting into comedy when he met Anne. They married in 1954, but it wasn’t until 1963 that the conjoined career of Stiller and Maera took off, with an appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” They might play the last two people on Earth meeting for the first time, or an Irish girl and a Jewish boy matched by computer dating. He was a fretful perfectionist who would endlessly rehearse; Anne was naturally funny; she flowed.
As documentary subjects go, the Stillers were not remarkably dysfunctional — no violence, no skeletons — past the not uncommon situation of parents whose work, or fixation on work, often took them away from their kids, physically or mentally, with the added fillip of that work having made them famous. (There are references to Anne’s drinking, which bothered Jerry, but this is not a hole the film runs down, and there’s nothing here to suggest it diminished her life or work.) As different people with different goals — “My mom wanted to be happy independent of performing,” says Ben, “and I think for my dad performing was so important to him it was part of his happiness” — there was tension, but they loved each other, and they loved their kids, and stayed married for 62 years, until Anne’s death in 2015.
Stiller frames the film with his and Amy’s return to the Upper West Side apartment where they were raised in order to clear it out to be sold, providing the opportunity to see what their parents had left behind. (Jerry died in 2020.) And it was a lot — nothing is lost if nothing is thrown away. There are love letters, diaries, scripts, manuscripts. (Anne: “I think Jerry has a need to keep his name going and for some reason he thinks that when we check out and pass over that the Smithsonian institute is going to want his memorabilia.”) Jerry had a habit, amounting to a compulsion, of documenting their life on film and tape; some of their conversations, and arguments, would turn into routines. (“Where does the act end and the marriage begin?” Anne wonders.) Raised voices in another room might be rehearsing or fighting. One routine consisted of escalating declarations of hate: “I hated you before I met you.” “I hated you before you were born.”
They quit playing nightclubs in 1970 (they drove her “meshuggah”), but remained in public view — in guest appearances, game shows and talk shows, where, unlike the highly managed appearances of today, they seemed ready to dish the dirt on themselves, providing Ben Stiller with material for this film. And they went to work as actors, each amassing a long list of screen and stage appearances. Jerry, of course, is now best known from “Seinfeld,” where he played George’s father, Frank Costanza, and “The King of Queens,” acting in nearly 200 episodes.
Much of it has to do with Ben and Amy as children of famous people, of family vacations that became working vacations, and growing up on display. In one clip from “The Mike Douglas Show,” the siblings perform “Chopsticks” as a screechy violin duet. Young Ben, already interested in film and asked by an interviewer if his parents will feature in his movies, says that they won’t: “I’ll be making adventure or a murder or something like that, but never a comedy. I don’t like comedy.”
We get glimpses of Stiller’s own prolific career — in comedy, mostly, as it turned out — as well as confessions of his own failings as a family man. (His children, Quin and Ella, get to have their good-humored but penetrating say, as does Taylor, from whom he separated in 2017, and with whom he reunited during the pandemic.) But there’s no evident resentment on the part of Ben and Amy, just curiosity and self-examination as adults whose own lives have taught them something about being adults, amid the knowledge that their parents had parents, too, and some of their imperfections became imperfections of their own.
Both Anne and Jerry had come from dark places. “Their lives were always reaching for the light,” says the playwright John Guare, whose black comedy “The House of Blue Leaves” Anne performed in off-Broadway. “Why don’t you become a stagehand?” Jerry’s father told him when Jerry first told him of his ambition. “Where do you get off trying to be Eddie Cantor?” Anne’s mother died by suicide. “Your father was kind of a saint, you know,” Christopher Walken tells Ben.
Stiller’s approach is musical; his assembly of clips and photos is musical — poetic, not prosaic. He ends his film with a conversation between Jerry and his aged father, Willie, cut to a montage of the family through time.
“Isn’t this better than anything, just being alive?” says Jerry. “When we go, we’ll go together, you and me”
Willie: “Yeah, OK, hold hands and everything else.”
“You’ll take me to shows again when we get up there?”
“Yeah, when I go I’ll take you any place. … What is this?”
“It’s a tape recorder. … Whatever you say is on that tape. They’ll hear you forever. You’ll never be lost.”
And we see young Ben, filming a camera that’s filming him, as his father steps in behind him.
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Wanna see a theater show in L.A.? There’s now a website for that
Do you wish that discovering shows playing at live theaters around Los Angeles was as easy as finding movies in local cinemas? Now it is. A new nonprofit called Theatre Commons L.A. — founded by some of the city’s most prominent theater leaders — launched earlier this week with easy-to-navigate local theater listings for more than 100 houses big and small.
The listings can be filtered by date, neighborhood and genre, and users can simply click on links to buy tickets. I’ve tried it and am happy to report that it takes all the guesswork and Googling out of finding a show that fits your schedule and suits your interests. It also introduced me to a whole host of new shows that I didn’t even realize were playing.
“Theatre Commons LA is about making it easier to make theatre in Los Angeles — and easier for people to find and enjoy it,” wrote Pasadena Playhouse producing artistic director Danny Feldman in an email. “By connecting artists, companies, and audiences, we’re working to build a more connected ecosystem for LA’s bold, local, living theatre.”
That connection is key. Because Los Angeles is a tough city to get a handle on. I’m old enough to remember getting hopelessly lost when I first moved here — crying in my old Toyota Corolla on freeway offramp, clutching a Thomas Guide that I could not make heads or tails of. Ironically, given the subject of this newsletter, I was trying to get to a theater downtown.
Visitors to L.A., and even plenty of seasoned Angelenos, often find the city sprawling and fragmented. The vast landscape is carved up by thriving neighborhoods, each with singular identities molded by unique cultural, business and arts offerings. TCLA aims to bring these diverse theaters together under a common umbrella to pool resources, and promotional and engagement opportunities, as well as to expand a sense of community in a difficult moment for the art form.
“It is no secret that the last few years have been particularly hard for theater in LA from the pandemic to the recent wildfires and curfews,” Center Theatre Group’s artistic director Snehal Desai wrote in an email. “What has become clear during this period is that the Los Angeles theater community is rich in artists, talent and leadership but our resources are scattered and there is not a consolidated place for information and outreach,” he continued. “Theatre Commons LA is a way to bridge those gaps — to share knowledge, opportunities, and support so that everyone, from small ensembles to major institutions, can thrive together. It creates the space our community has been asking for — where artists, institutions, and audiences can come together to imagine what Los Angeles theatre can be next.”
A volunteer steering committee, including Desai and Feldman, launched TCLA and its listings website with the financial support of the Nonprofit Sustainability Initiative. Last month, the Perenchio Foundation made a substantial investment meant to sustain the organization’s future growth, including the hiring of an executive director. (Please see the photo caption above for a list of the other steering committee members.)
Earlier this week also marked The Times’ launch of “The 52 best places to see plays and musicals in Southern California,” curated and written by Times theater critic Charles McNulty, assistant entertainment editor Kevin Crust (who also edits this newsletter) and me. The list contains short summations of each theater’s defining traits and connects to a map that plots each theater in its own pocket of the city. It was a real labor of love and I urge you to use it in conjunction with the new TCLA website to plan your next night out.
I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, mulling over more than a dozen entertainment options for the weekend. All of them good. Here’s this week’s arts and culture news.
On our radar
Complexions Contemporary Ballet comes to the Music Center on Friday and Saturday.
(Rachel Neville)
Complexions Contemporary Ballet
The New York-based company celebrates its 30th anniversary with “Retro Suite,” a collection of works from 1994 to the present, created by co-founding artistic director and principal choreographer Dwight Rhoden. Complexions is known for its high-energy mashup of traditional ballet with hip-hop and street dance, as well as for the multicultural makeup of its troupe and its novel approach to incorporating visual art and theater into its choreography.
— Jessica Gelt
7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. musiccenter.org
Children make art at the 2024 Grand Ave Arts: All Access event.
(John McCoy)
Grand Ave Arts: All Access
A day of free art, music and culture along downtown Los Angeles’ cultural corridor. Participating institutions include the Broad, Center Theatre Group, Classical California KUSC, Colburn School, Dataland, Gloria Molina Grand Park, L.A. Opera, the L.A. Phil, Los Angeles Central Library, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Metro Art, MOCA, the Music Center and Redcat.
11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday. Grand Ave. from Temple to 6th Street, downtown L.A. grandavearts.org
Cyndi Lauper wrote the music and lyrics for the new musical “Working Girl,” based on the 1988 movie.
(Larsen & Talbert / For The Times)
Working Girl
This musical adaption of the 1988 film — directed by Mike Nichols, written by Kevin Wade and starring Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver and Melanie Griffith — has assembled an all-star team of its own. The music and lyrics are by Cyndi Lauper, Theresa Rebeck has written the book and Christopher Ashley directs. The Wall Street Cinderella story centers on a Staten Island secretary who, tired of being misused, underestimated and passed over, cunningly takes her corporate future into her own hands in a revenge tale that has everyone rooting for the underdog. Yet another La Jolla Playhouse world premiere that has “Broadway hit” written all over it.
— Charles McNulty
Tuesday through Nov. 30. La Jolla Playhouse, Mandell Weiss Theatre, 2910 La Jolla Village Drive. lajollaplayhouse.org
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The week ahead: A curated calendar
FRIDAY
Tiago Rodrigues
In “By Heart,” the Portuguese playwright and actor invites 10 audience members onto the stage to learn a poem as he shares stories of his grandmother and explains the connections created by the words.
8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. UCLA Nimoy Theater, 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu
SATURDAY
John Giorno
“No Nostalgia,” an exhibition devoted to the late poet, artist and activist (1936-2019) who turned words into performance, sound installation and painting. The show includes a select group of Giorno’s work ranging from early prints to his black-and-white text and rainbow paintings, a selection of materials from Giorno’s archive showing how he pieced together his poems and his 1969 work Dial-A-Poem.
11 a.m.-6 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, through April 25, 2026. Marciano Art Foundation, 4357 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. marcianoartfoundation.org
The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra performs Saturday at Zipper Hall in downtown L.A. and Sunday at the Wallis in Beverly Hills.
(Brian Feinzimer for LACO)
Romantic Resonance
When a talented 19th century French pianist named Louise Farrenc became tired of giving concerts accompanying her flutist husband, she founded Éditions Farrenc in Paris, which became one of the country’s leading music publishing houses. She also gained a smallish reputation as a composer of mainly salon pieces for piano. But she had far greater ambitions nearly impossible for a woman at that time to realize. Farrenc composed three large-scale symphonies that are only now, more than a century after her death in 1875, being noticed. Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s music director, Jaime Martín, is one of her champions, and he is pairing Farrenc’s impressive Schumann-esque “Second Symphony,” written in 1845, with Brahms’ “First Piano Concerto,” featuring the dauntingly virtuoso pianist Marc-André Hamelin.
— Mark Swed
7:30 p.m. Saturday. Zipper Hall, 200 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A.; 4 p.m. Sunday. The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. laco.org
Night of Ritual and Revelry
LACMA hosts this after-hours party with a focus on plants. The evening includes open galleries, plant-themed activities, a costume contest, food and drink, plus an outdoor screening of the 1986 cult classic “Little Shop of Horrors” hosted by Meatball. Guests must be 18 or older to attend.
7 p.m. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Smid Welcome Plaza, 5905 Wilshire Blvd. lacma.org
Ragamala Dance Company performs Saturday at Broad Stage.
(Three Phase Multimedia)
Ragamala Dance Company
Ragamala Dance Company — founded and run by the mother-daughter trio Ranee, Aparna and Ashwini Ramaswamy — brings Aparna’s most recent work, “Ananta, the Eternal,” to BroadStage with live music accompaniment. The company specializes in the South Indian dance form Bharatanatyam, and the troupe is known for its soulful embodiment of classical dance techniques and its bold and beautiful traditional costumes.
— Jessica Gelt
7:30 p.m. BroadStage, Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center, 1310 11th St., Santa Monica. broadstage.org
Songs of Emerging Endangerment
This sound installation by artist TJ Shinn, commissioned by the local multidisciplinary arts organization Clockshop, is set to sound hourly from dawn to dusk. The project features a 30-foot-tall sculptural air raid siren that mimics bird calls to map systems of global migration.
Opening Saturday, 2-4 p.m., and through Feb. 22, 2026. Los Angeles State Historic Park. 1245 N. Spring St. clockshop.org
SUNDAY
Colburn Orchestra
Grammy Award-winner Carlos Miguel Prieto conducts the flagship ensemble from the Colburn School of Music in a program featuring Ravel, Dvořák and Schoenberg.
3 p.m. The Saroya, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge. thesoraya.org
The Heart Sellers
Lloyd Suh, author of “The Far Country,” a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for drama, examines the deracinating effects of immigration in his work. In “The Heart Sellers,” two immigrants, one Filipino, the other Korean, strike up a friendship after a chance meeting at that quintessential American crossroads: the supermarket. Set in 1973, after the 1965 Hart-Celler Act abolished the national quota system that restricted immigration from non-European countries, they bond over what they left behind, the strange universe they’ve entered and the challenge of cooking a frozen turkey. Jennifer Chang directs this comedy about the power of friendship to redefine the idea of home.
— Charles McNulty
Through Nov. 16. South Coast Repertory, Julianne Argyros Stage, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. scr.org
MONDAY
Bright Harvest: Powering Earth From Space
This documentary follows Caltech professors Harry Atwater, Ali Hajimiri and Sergio Pellegrino on their quest to provide an endless supply of clean sustainable energy for the 2023 launch of the Space Solar Power Demonstrator. Followed by a Q&A with the three professors and filmmaker Steven Reich. Admission is free; reservations recommended.
7:30 p.m. Beckman Auditorium, Caltech, 332 S. Michigan Ave., Pasadena. caltech.edu
TUESDAY
Carrie
A screening of Brian De Palma’s 1976 adaptation of the Stephen King horror novel, starring Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, John Travolta, Amy Irving and William Katt, hosted by drag entertainer Jackie Beat.
7:30 p.m. Tuesday. Vidiots, Eagle Theatre, 4884 Eagle Rock Blvd. vidiotsfoundation.org
WEDNESDAY
Pacific Jazz Orchestra’s Big Band With Jane Monheit
Step into the elegant past for a program of timeless swing music, big band standards and seductive ballads.
7 and 9:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday. Blue Note L.A., 6372 W. Sunset Blvd. bluenotejazz.com
THURSDAY
Lon Chaney in 1925’s “The Phantom of the Opera.”
(Universal Pictures)
The Phantom of the Opera
L.A. Opera’s tradition of presenting classic silent horror films for Halloween continues this year with the 1925 version of “Phantom” starring Lon Chaney. Frank Strobel conducts the L.A. Opera Orchestra performing Roy Budd’s original score live.
8 p.m. Thursday and Oct. 31. The United Theater on Broadway, 929 S. Broadway, downtown L.A. https://www.laopera.org/performances/2026/phantom-of-the-opera
Mark Ryden
The new solo exhibition “Eye Am” envisions a lurid, mischievous world via twelve paintings and a selection of drawings.
Opening reception 5-8 p.m. Thursday; book signing, 1-3 p.m. Oct. 31; exhibition continues through Dec. 20. Perrotin, 5036. W. Pico Blvd. perrotin.com
Nicole Scherzinger
Just months removed from her Tony Award-winning triumph as Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard” on Broadway, the former Pussycat Dolls singer makes her Walt Disney Concert Hall debut.
8 p.m. Thursday. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
Culture news and the SoCal scene
The Laura Gardin Fraser “Lee-Jackson Monument” at the “Monuments” exhibit at MOCA.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Los Angeles is home to the “most significant American art museum show right now,” writes Times art critic Christopher Knight in his review of “Monuments,” which opened Thursday at the Brick and the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Contemporary. Featuring nearly a dozen, mostly Confederate, statues that have been toppled or removed from public spaces over the past decade, the show “pairs cautionary art history with thoughtful and poetic retorts from 20 artists, including a nonprofit art studio,” writes Knight.
I wrote a preview of the show, which includes a few backstories about the people featured in the decommissioned statutes. Men like “newspaper owner Josephus Daniels, who helped foment the 1898 Wilmington massacre in which a mob of more than 2,000 white supremacists killed as many as 300 people in the course of overthrowing the city’s duly elected biracial government.”
Times theater critic Charles McNulty wrote a column examining the ways that various playwrights are engaging with the idea of AI in their work. For examples, he digs into two plays, Lauren Gunderson’s “anthropology,” which is staging its North American premiere in a Rogue Machine Theatre production; and Jordan Harrison’s “Marjorie Prime,” which is having its Broadway premiere this fall. “Gunderson and Harrison are looking ahead to see how AI might be super-charging our disembodiment. To anyone paying attention, business as usual is no longer an option. The very basis of our self-understanding is on the line,” McNulty writes.
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha” at Pasadena Playhouse, created and performed by Julia Masli and directed by Kim Noble.
(Jeff Lorch)
McNulty also attended opening night of performance artist and comedian Julia Masli’s one-woman show, “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha,” at Pasadena Playhouse. He describes the 75-minute improvisational work as “less a traditional comedy show than an experiment in collective consciousness. It doesn’t take much to transform a room of jaded strangers into a representative slice of compassionate humanity.” That’s because Masli devotes her time in the spotlight to solving audience members’ problems, finding their shared empathy in the process.
Times classical music critic Mark Swed has been chronicling the departure of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s beloved musical and artistic director, Gustavo Dudamel. In a recent column, Swed writes about the hoopla on display during the “first three love-fest weeks of Dudamel’s final season.” There was lots of “Gracias Gustavo” merch, and a daylong “Gracias Gustavo” block party at Beckmen YOLA Center in Inglewood, which included a performance by rapper D Smoke. And let’s not forget Tuesday night’s “Gustavo’s Fiesta” at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Dudamel also gave “four soul-searching performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2,” Swed writes. “His Mahler is neither overly exuberant nor constrained by grief and Berliner decorum. This performance heralds a new Dudamel, conductor of prophetic grandeur.”
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A rendering of a still image from Refik Anadol’s giant LED wall, “Living Paintings Immersive Editions,” at Jeffrey Deitch.
(From Refik Anadol Studio)
Last September, I wrote a feature on immersive media artist Refik Anadol and his plans to open the world’s first museum of AI arts, called Dataland, in downtown’s Grand L.A. complex across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall. Anadol hoped to open the museum — which features five distinct galleries in a 20,000-square-foot space — this year. But this week, the artist announced that the project is now set to debut next spring. Anadol also released a first look at one of the galleries called Infinity Room. You can watch the teaser, here.
Everybody is talking about the brazen jewel heist at the Louvre. You can almost hear the key-clacking of dozens of hopeful screenwriters already drafting their spec scripts. The story is too outrageous to feel true — masked men cutting through a window in broad daylight and entering a gallery full of people before escaping without a trace on a pair of motorcycles. The value of the precious jewels they got away with is estimated to be about $102 million. If you have been living under a rock for the past week, you can read all about it, here.
— Jessica Gelt
And last but not least
Did you know that L.A. is experiencing a golden age of pizza? Neither did I. Fortunately, Times food critic Bill Addison has compiled a list featuring 21 of the city’s best slices.
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The White House starts demolishing part of the East Wing to build Trump’s ballroom
WASHINGTON — The White House started tearing down part of the East Wing, the traditional base of operations for the first lady, to build President Trump’s $250-million ballroom despite lacking approval for construction from the federal agency that oversees such projects.
Dramatic photos of the demolition work that began Monday showed construction equipment tearing into the East Wing façade and windows and other building parts in tatters on the ground. Some reporters watched from a park near the Treasury Department, which is next to the East Wing.
On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that the plan now called for the demolition of the entire East Wing and that the tear-down should be completed by Sunday. Citing a source, The Times said it marks an escalation over earlier plans for the ballroom.
Trump announced the start of construction in a social media post and referenced the work while hosting 2025 college baseball champs Louisiana State University and LSU-Shreveport in the East Room. He noted the work was happening “right behind us.”
“We have a lot of construction going on, which you might hear periodically,” he said, adding, “It just started today.”
The White House has moved ahead with the massive construction project despite not yet having sign-off from the National Capital Planning Commission, which approves construction work and major renovations to government buildings in the Washington area.
Its chairman, Will Scharf, who is also the White House staff secretary and one of Trump’s top aides, said at the commission’s September meeting that the agency does not have jurisdiction over demolition or site preparation work for buildings on federal property.
“What we deal with is essentially construction, vertical build,” Scharf said last month.
It was unclear whether the White House had submitted the ballroom plans for the agency’s review and approval. The White House did not respond to a request for comment and the commission’s offices are closed because of the government shutdown.
The Republican president had said in July when the project was announced that the ballroom would not interfere with the mansion itself.
“It’ll be near it but not touching it and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of,” he said of the White House.
The East Wing houses several offices, including those of the first lady. It was built in 1902 and and has been renovated over the years, with a second story added in 1942, according to the White House.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said those East Wing offices will be temporarily relocated during construction and that wing of the building will be modernized and renovated.
“Nothing will be torn down,” Leavitt said when she announced the project in July.
Trump insists that presidents have desired such a ballroom for 150 years and that he’s adding the massive 90,000-square-foot, glass-walled space because the East Room, which is the largest room in the White House with an approximately 200-person capacity, is too small. He also has said he does not like the idea of hosting kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers in pavilions on the South Lawn.
Trump said in the social media announcement that the project would be completed “with zero cost to the American Taxpayer! The White House Ballroom is being privately funded by many generous Patriots, Great American Companies, and, yours truly.”
The ballroom will be the biggest structural change to the Executive Mansion since the addition in 1948 of the Truman Balcony overlooking the South Lawn, even dwarfing the residence itself.
At a dinner he hosted last week for some of the wealthy business executives who are donating money toward the construction cost, Trump said the project had grown in size and now will accommodate 999 people. The capacity was 650 seated people at the July announcement.
The White House has said it will disclose information on who has contributed money to build the ballroom, but has yet to do so.
Trump also said at last week’s event that the head of Carrier Global Corp., a leading manufacturer of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems, had offered to donate the air-conditioning system for the ballroom.
Carrier confirmed to the Associated Press on Monday that it had done so. A cost estimate was not immediately available.
“Carrier is honored to provide the new iconic ballroom at the White House with a world-class, energy-efficient HVAC system, bringing comfort to distinguished guests and dignitaries in this historic setting for years to come,” the company said in an emailed statement.
The clearing of trees on the south grounds and other site preparation work for the construction started in September. Plans call for the ballroom to be ready before Trump’s term ends in January 2029.
Superville writes for the Associated Press.
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Maya Jama reveals she’s on an IV drip after falling ill as she battles through work on set
LOVE Island host Maya Jama has revealed that she was put on an IV drip after falling ill.
Taking to her Instagram stories in Tuesday, the stunning hostess with the mostess was working while hooked up to a drip.
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“The flu struck,” she revealed alongside a photo of her with the IV drip in her arm.
Maya could be seen getting her makeup done while on set, with her hair in rollers.
As people flocked around the TV star and did her hair and makeup, someone else tended to her IV drip.
Maya explained how the IV drip came to “save the day”.
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She later shared snaps of her dinner after heading out for a swanky meal.
It seems Maya is battling through the flu and continuing to work hard despite feeling under the weather.
Maya recently shed light on the mounting speculation over her Love Island hosting role – after we reported she hadn’t signed a contract earlier this year.
Eager to open up on her plans Maya took to social media and referred to the speculation she was about to walk away, before revealing she would be back.
“I did tell you if you were going to hear any news about it, it would come from me and me only,” she said.
“I will be hosting next year, I’ll be back for All Stars in January and then summer series in June and July. We go again, mother lovers.”
She also explained why she is not back hosting US spin-off, Love Island Games, which she presented the first series of.
She added: “Oh and I am obviously not hosting Love Island Games this year, as much as I love the show I physically could not host three Love Island series a year but Ariana [Madix] is doing a great job and I hope you are enjoying that one too.”
It comes as ITV chiefs offered Maya a deal reported to be worth nearly £2million to stay on.
It was believed Maya has been planning to walk away to explore work with streaming giant Netflix.
This comes as Maya’s footballer boyfriend Reuben Dias was slammed for posting footage of a bullfight.
He was recently on a lavish Portuguese holiday with the Love Island presenter.
Manchester City’s defender Dias, 28, shared the clip showing eight men surrounding one enraged beast.
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Football fans slammed the video, saying it was cruel to the animal and said they felt let down by the £53million player.
One appalled fan wrote under Dias’ video on Instagram: “So disappointed to see the bullfighting. Unfollowing.”
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Trump’s immigration crackdown weighs on the U.S. labor market
Maria worked cleaning schools in Florida for $13 an hour. Every two weeks, she’d get a $900 paycheck from her employer, a contractor. Not much — but enough to cover rent in the house that she and her 11-year-old son share with five families, plus electricity, a cellphone and groceries.
In August, it all ended.
When she showed up at the job one morning, her boss told her that she couldn’t work there anymore. The Trump administration had terminated the Biden administration’s humanitarian parole program, which provided legal work permits for Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans like Maria.
“I feel desperate,’’ said Maria, 48, who requested anonymity to talk about her ordeal because she fears being detained and deported. “I don’t have any money to buy anything. I have $5 in my account. I’m left with nothing.’’
President Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration is throwing foreigners like Maria out of work and shaking the American economy and job market. And it’s happening at a time when hiring is already deteriorating amid uncertainty over Trump’s tariffs and other trade policies.
Immigrants do jobs — cleaning houses, picking tomatoes, painting fences — that most native-born Americans won’t, and for less money. But they also bring the technical skills and entrepreneurial energy that have helped make the United States the world’s economic superpower.
Trump is attacking immigration at both ends of the spectrum, deporting low-wage laborers and discouraging skilled foreigners from bringing their talents to the United States.
And he is targeting an influx of foreign workers that eased labor shortages and upward pressure on wages and prices at a time when most economists thought that taming inflation would require sky-high interest rates and a recession — a fate the United States escaped in 2023 and 2024.
“Immigrants are good for the economy,’’ said Lee Branstetter, an economist at Carnegie-Mellon University. “Because we had a lot of immigration over the past five years, an inflationary surge was not as bad as many people expected.”
More workers filling more jobs and spending more money has also helped drive economic growth and create still more job openings. Economists worry that Trump’s deportations and limits on even legal immigration will do the reverse.
In a July report, researchers Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson of the centrist Brookings Institution and Stan Veuger of the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute calculated that the loss of foreign workers will mean that monthly U.S. job growth “could be near zero or negative in the next few years.’’
Hiring has already slowed significantly, averaging a meager 29,000 a month from June through August. (The September jobs report has been delayed by the ongoing shutdown of the federal government.) During the post-pandemic hiring boom of 2021-23, by contrast, employers added a stunning 400,000 jobs a month.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, citing fallout from Trump’s immigration and trade policies, downgraded its forecast for U.S. economic growth this year to 1.4% from the 1.9% it had previously expected and from 2.5% in 2024.
‘We need these people’
Goodwin Living, an Alexandria, Va., nonprofit that provides senior housing, healthcare and hospice services, had to lay off four employees from Haiti after the Trump administration terminated their work permits. The Haitians had been allowed to work under a humanitarian parole program and had earned promotions at Goodwin.
“That was a very, very difficult day for us,” Chief Executive Rob Liebreich said. “It was really unfortunate to have to say goodbye to them, and we’re still struggling to fill those roles.’’
Liebreich is worried that 60 additional immigrant workers could lose their temporary legal right to live and work in the United States. “We need all those hands,’’ he said. “We need all these people.”
Goodwin Living has 1,500 employees, 60% of them from foreign countries. It has struggled to find enough nurses, therapists and maintenance staff. Trump’s immigration crackdown, Liebreich said, is “making it harder.’’
The ICE crackdown
Trump’s immigration ambitions, intended to turn back what he calls an “invasion’’ at America’s southern border and secure jobs for U.S.-born workers, were once viewed with skepticism because of the money and economic disruption required to reach his goal of deporting 1 million people a year. But legislation that Trump signed into law July 4 — and which Republicans named the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — suddenly made his plans plausible.
The law pours $150 billion into immigration enforcement, setting aside $46.5 billion to hire 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and $45 billion to increase the capacity of immigrant detention centers.
And his empowered ICE agents have shown a willingness to move fast and break things — even when their aggression conflicts with other administration goals.
Last month, immigration authorities raided a Hyundai battery plant in Georgia, detained 300 South Korean workers and showed video of some of them shackled in chains. They’d been working to get the plant up and running, bringing expertise in battery technology and Hyundai procedures that local American workers didn’t have.
The incident enraged the South Koreans and ran counter to Trump’s push to lure foreign manufacturers to invest in America. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung warned that the country’s other companies might be reluctant about betting on America if their workers couldn’t get visas promptly and risked getting detained.
Sending Medicaid recipients to the fields
America’s farmers are among the president’s most dependable supporters.
But John Boyd Jr., who farms 1,300 acres of soybeans, wheat and corn in southern Virginia, said that the immigration raids — and the threat of them — are hurting farmers already contending with low crop prices, high costs and fallout from Trump’s trade war with China, which has stopped buying U.S. soybeans and sorghum.
“You’ve got ICE out here, herding these people up,’’ said Boyd, founder of the National Black Farmers Assn. “[Trump] says they’re murderers and thieves and drug dealers, all this stuff. But these are people who are in this country doing hard work that many Americans don’t want to do.’’
Boyd scoffed at Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ suggestion in July that U.S.-born Medicaid recipients could head to the fields to meet work requirements imposed as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. “People in the city aren’t coming back to the farm to do this kind of work,’’ he said. “It takes a certain type of person to bend over in 100-degree heat.’’
The Trump administration admits that the immigration crackdown is causing labor shortages on the farm that could translate into higher prices at the supermarket.
“The near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce results in significant disruptions to production costs and [threatens] the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S. consumers,’’ the Labor Department said in an Oct. 2 filing to the Federal Register.
‘You’re not welcome here’
Jed Kolko of the Peterson Institute for International Economics said that job growth is slowing in businesses that rely on immigrants. Construction companies, for instance, have shed 10,000 jobs since May.
“Those are the short-term effects,’’ said Kolko, a Commerce Department official in the Biden administration. “The longer-term effects are more serious because immigrants traditionally have contributed more than their share of patents, innovation, productivity.’’
Especially worrisome to many economists was Trump’s sudden announcement last month that he was raising the fee on H-1B visas, meant to lure hard-to-find skilled foreign workers to the United States, from as little as $215 to $100,000.
“A $100,000 visa fee is not just a bureaucratic cost — it’s a signal,” said Dany Bahar, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. “It tells global talent: You are not welcome here.”
Some are already packing up.
In Washington, D.C., one H-1B visa holder, a Harvard graduate from India who works for a nonprofit helping Africa’s poor, said Trump’s signal to employers is clear: Think twice about hiring H-1B visa holders.
The man, who requested anonymity, is already preparing paperwork to move to the United Kingdom.
“The damage is already done, unfortunately,’’ he said.
Associated Press writers Wiseman and Salomon reported from Washington and Miami, respectively. AP writers Fu Ting and Christopher Rugaber in Washington contributed to this report.
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Local actors scare up screams: L.A. arts and culture this weekend
I can’t think of another time that I was quite as terrified as when I walked alone into an interactive horror maze called “Feast” at a chilling carnival-like event called “The Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor: Summoned by the Seas,” which takes place in the parking lot in front of the famously haunted ship, and also in the creepy bowels of its engine rooms, through Nov. 2.
“Dark Harbor,” is the scarier sister event to Griffith Park’s famous “Haunted Hayride.” Both Halloween season fright fests are produced by Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group, which specializes in seasonal terror. The highlight of the nightly carnivals — which include food and drink booths, bars and rides — are a series of interactive mazes populated by bloody monsters, drooling ghouls, murderous clowns, spectral ghosts and maniacal serial killers.
The spooks are largely played by local actors — many of whom come back year after year for a guaranteed paycheck while pursuing a profession that is anything but financially sound. It is to these hardworking artists that the events owe their success. I was struck by just how dedicated the actors were to scaring us mere mortals out of our pants.
The masks, elaborate makeup and props, including butcher knives and bats, surely help the players stay in character— but this is not easy work. The actors must contend with aggressive guests who try to get in their faces (this is against the rules), as well as shrill, shrieking patrons who jump and run as they approach (guilty!).
But the actors are specially trained to handle these reactions and more.
“Each fall, Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor and Los Angeles Haunted Hayride hire a few hundred performers, most of our cast are locals who come back year after year. We hold open calls in the summer and focus on energy, movement, and presence more than traditional acting experience,” wrote “Dark Harbor‘s” general manager, Star Romano, in an email.
After the performers are hired, Romano explained, they attend orientation, safety training and rehearsals leading into opening weekend.
“It’s a huge community effort, part performance, part team reunion, and one of my favorite things about the season,” Romano wrote.
The result of those efforts led to me sleeping with the lights on for two nights straight.
“Get away from me! I’m too scared!” I shouted at one Leatherface-type character as he approached me with a chain saw.
“That’s the whole point,” he growled under his breath before obeying my wishes and lurching off toward another fear-stricken guest.
(NOTE: For a kid-friendly immersive Halloween experience, you can head to the company’s “Magic of the Jack O’Lanterns,” which features 5,000 hand-carved pumpkins on-site at South Coast Botanic Garden.)
I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, inviting you to sink into spooky season with me. Here’s your weekly arts and culture news.
On our radar
Benjamin Millepied’s L.A. Dance Project performs “On the Other Side.”
(Laurent Philippe)
L.A. Dance Project
Renowned choreographer Benjamin Millepied continues his exploration of the intersection of dance and visual art with the ballet triptych “Gems,” featuring artwork by collaborators Barbara Kruger, Liam Gillick, Mark Bradford and others. The performance is composed of three contemporary ballets inspired by precious stones: “Reflections” (2013), “Hearts & Arrows” (2014) and “On the Other Side” (2016). The show — with music by David Lang and Philip Glass — marks the first time these pieces have been staged together.
— Jessica Gelt
7:30 p.m. Thursday through Oct. 25. The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. https://thewallis.org/show-details/la-dance-project-gems
New York artist Jon Henry stages photographs that reflect on reports of Black men killed by police.
(The Brick)
Monuments
The most eagerly anticipated theme exhibition this fall is reflected in the emphatic title, pointedly written all in caps. “MONUMENTS” was inspired by the wave of revulsion following the violent 2017 white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. — a deadly riot opposing the proposed removal of a local statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. That statue is now gone, torn down along with some 200 other tributes across the country to American turncoats who supported chattel slavery. (The last known Confederate monument in Southern California was removed in 2020.)
A selection of decommissioned Confederate statues will be shown at MOCA and alternative space the Brick, joint organizers of the exhibition; they’ll be paired with contemporary work by Bethany Collins, Stan Douglas, Leonardo Drew, Jon Henry, Martin Puryear, Hank Willis Thomas, Kara Walker and a dozen other artists, borrowed and commissioned for the occasion.
— Christopher Knight
Thursday through May 3, 2026. Geffen Contemporary at Museum of Contemporary Art, 152 N. Central Ave., Little Tokyo; The Brick, 518 N. Western Ave. moca.org
Vikingur Olafsson will perform with conductor Santtu-Matias and Philharmonia.
(Timothy Norris / Los Angeles Philharmonic)
Santtu-Matias Rouvali and Vikingur Ólafsson join the Philharmonia Orchestra
It’s been almost a decade since Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, a former Dudamel Fellow at the L.A. Phil, last returned to Southern California as a guest conductor of the L.A. Phil. In the meantime, though, he’s been busily attracting attention in London as principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra (having succeeded Esa-Pekka Salonen in 2021). For his first local appearance with the Philharmonia, he is joined by the stellar Icelandic pianist Vikingur Ólafsson in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G. The program also includes the local premiere of a new score meant to awaken environmental awareness, popular Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz’s “Si el Oxígeno Fuera Verde” (If Oxygen Were Green), along with Shostakovich‘s Fifth Symphony. Shortly after fall, Ólafsson heads back to Disney in January as soloist with the L.A. Phil for John Adams’ latest piano concerto, “After the Fall.”
— Mark Swed
8 p.m. Tuesday. Renée & Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, 615 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. philharmonicsociety.org
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The week ahead: A curated calendar
FRIDAY
Ethan Remez-Cott, left, and Matthew Goodrich in the play “Amerika or, The Man Who Disappeared.”
(Amanda Weier)
Amerika or, The Man Who Disappeared
There’s Kafkaesque and then there’s the genuine article. Open Fist Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Dietrich Smith’s adaptation of the Franz Kafka novel that details the strange experiences of a 17-year-old European immigrant after he arrives in New York City aboard a steamer.
7:30 p.m. Friday; 7 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday; and 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 20; through Nov. 22. Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave. openfist.org
Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson–Apt. 2B
Two free-spirited roommates embrace mystery and adventure in the L.A. premiere of Kate Hamill’s dark modern comedy, a gender-bent spin on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle directed by Amie Farrell.
7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday through Nov. 2. International City Theatre, 330 E. Seaside Way, Long Beach. ictlongbeach.org
नेहा & Neel
Asian American theater collective Artists at Play and Latino Theater Company collaborate for the world premiere of Ankita Raturi’s new comedy about an Indian immigrant and single mom on a cross-country college tour with her 17-year-old American-born son. Directed by East West Players artistic director Lily Tung Crystal.
Through Nov. 16. Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring Street, downtown L.A. latinotheaterco.org
17th OC Japan Fair
Japanese culture festival featuring food, shopping, a cosplay show, a tuna cutting show, popular Japanese entertainers, traditional instrument performances, games, kimono models meet and greet, and more.
4 p.m.-10 p.m. Friday; noon-10 p.m. Saturday; 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Sunday. OC Fair & Event Center, 88 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa. oc-japanfair.com
David Roussève will perform “Becoming Daddy AF” Friday and Saturday at the Nimoy.
(Rachel Keane)
Becoming Daddy AF
Renowned dance-theater artist David Roussève presents the West Coast premiere of his experimental movement journey “Becoming Daddy AF.” The piece marks Roussève’s first full-length solo performance in more than two decades and explores themes that have touched and shaped his life, including HIV, genealogy and the loss of his husband of 26 years. (Jessica Gelt)
8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. UCLA Nimoy Theater, 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu
Unravelled
The story of Canadian biologist Dr. Anne Adams, who turned to painting at age 53, and her remarkable connection to French composer Maurice Ravel, with whom she shared the same rare brain disease. A play infused with music and visual art, written by Jake Broder and directed by James Bonas.
7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. thewallis.org
SATURDAY
British artist Edmund de Waal will install new work in three sites at the Huntington, including the Chinese garden.
(Linnea Stephan)
The Eight Directions of the Wind
British artist, potter and writer Edmund de Waal is obsessed with archives, which he describes as “places, streets, hillsides as much as card indexes.” For a body of new work, he once traveled to the place in China where the clay used to make porcelain was discovered — and then on to Dresden, Germany; Cornwall, U.K.; and the Appalachian Mountains, where subsequent cultures reinvented it. De Waal’s three site-specific, yearlong installations will be in the Huntington’s cultural and natural “archives” that are its art gallery and Chinese and Japanese gardens. (Christopher Knight)
Through Oct. 26, 2026. The Huntington, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino. huntington.org
Lorde performs Saturday at the Kia Forum.
(Scott A Garfitt / Invision/AP)
Lorde
Just as her generation has, by all accounts, sobered up and gone sexless, Lorde returned this year with a defiant album about the giddy rush of partying and the frightening ramifications of a body in search of pleasure. “Virgin” pulls her back to the experimental electro-pop many fans were hoping for after the relatively complacent “Solar Power,” and the album is brimming with startling meditations on pregnancy scares, familial inheritance and the malleability of gender. (August Brown)
7 p.m. Kia Forum, 3900 W. Manchester Blvd., Inglewood. thekiaforum.com
Orchidées
Cellist Kate Ellis performs composer Nick Roth’s cello étude — which traces the 100‑million‑year evolution of orchids by translating their DNA sequences into music — accompanied by time‑lapse footage of blooming specimens from the Huntington’s orchid collection. Also available to livestream.
7 p.m. The Huntington, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino. huntington.org
Tortoise
The lauded post-punk band performs “Touch,” their first new album in nine years with opening sets from local duo Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer and KCRW DJ Ale Cohen.
8 p.m. Saturday. The Broad, outdoor East West Bank Plaza, 221 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. thebroad.org
TUESDAY
A Concert for Lowell
A memorial tribute to Lowell Hill, one of the great patrons of new music in L.A., featuring many of the city’s top local artists, including Wild Up, MicroFest, Piano Spheres, the Industry, Partch Ensemble, Monday Evening Concerts, Long Beach Opera and People Inside Electronics.
8 p.m. Monk Space, 4414 W. 2nd Street. brightworknewmusic.com
Morgan Siobhan Green as Eurydice and Nicholas Barasch as Orpheus in the 2022 “Hadestown” North American Tour.
(T Charles Erickson)
Hadestown
The Tony and Grammy Award-winning musical that reimagines the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as a New Orleans-style folk opera returns on its latest national tour. “Born out of a concept album by Anaïs Mitchell, who wrote the book, lyrics and music, the show travels to the underworld and back again with liquified grace,” wrote Times theater critic Charles McNulty in a 2022 review. “Developed by Rachel Chavkin, the resourceful director who won a Tony for her staging, ‘Hadestown’ achieves a fluidity of musical theater storytelling that makes an old tale seem startlingly new.”
Through Nov. 2. Hollywood Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. broadwayinhollywood.com
Learning to Draw
The exhibition traces a 300-year evolution of artistic training and the mastery of drawing in Europe from about 1550 to 1850. Bringing together the physical control of the hand and the concentration of the mind, the foundational artistic act became essential to exploring, inventing and communicating visual ideas in the modern world.
Through Jan. 25, 2026. Getty Museum, 1200 Getty Center Drive. getty.edu
Dispatch: Ben Platt: Live at the Ahmanson
Actor, singer and songwriter Ben Platt stands for a portrait at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in New York on Thursday, April 20, 2023.
(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)
Breaking news sure to make L.A. musical theater fans swoon: Center Theatre Group announced Friday that Broadway superstar Ben Platt will be in residency for two weeks and 10 shows at the Ahmanson Theatre , Dec. 12–21. Two-time Tony Award-winning director Michael Arden is set to direct the the residency, appropriately titled, “Ben Platt: Live at the Ahmanson.” Platt’s appearance comes a year after he staged a wildly successful three-week residency at Broadway’s Palace Theatre, which included a cornucopia of famous special guests including Cynthia Erivo, Nicole Scherzinger, Jennifer Hudson, Kacey Musgraves, Sam Smith, Micaela Diamond and Shoshana Bean. The production is staying mum on who might appear onstage alongside Platt during his L.A. run, but it’s safe to expect more big names.
“When you think of the very best in musical theatre, it simply doesn’t get any better than Ben Platt, whose stage presence and charisma make him one of the seminal performers of his generation,” said CTG’s artistic director, Snehal Desai, in a news release that promised “the holiday event of the season.”
Tickets and information can be found at centertheatregroup.org.
Culture news and the SoCal scene
Bassist Tonya Sweets, from left, Marlon Alexander Vargas and drummer Dee Simone in “littleboy/littleman,” directed by Nancy Medina, at Geffen Playhouse.
(Jeff Lorch)
A tale from a land of immigrants
Rudi Goblen’s “littleboy/littleman” is in the midst of its world premiere at the Geffen Playhouse. The two-person show about two Nicaragua-born brothers is much like a performance piece, writes Times theater critic Charles McNulty in his review. It’s also a deeply American story. “Lest we forget our past, America is the great democratic experiment precisely because it’s a land of immigrants. Out of many, one — as our national motto, E pluribus unum, has it. How have we lost sight of this basic tenet of high school social studies?” McNulty writes.
Les Miz at 40
I went backstage at the Pantages for the opening night of “Les Misérables,” which happened to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the legendary musical. The mood was euphoric and everyone in the cast and crew seemed to have a story about a formative connection to the show. Stage manager Ken Davis walked me through the maze-like wings and filled me in on what it takes to tour a show of this scale. Of particular note: The touring production travels with 11 tractor trailers containing over 1,000 costumes, 120 wigs and hundreds of props.
Patrick Martinez, “Fallen Empire,” 2018, mixed media
(Michael Underwood)
When the sum is less than the whole
Times art critic Christopher Knight was not impressed by “Grounded,” a newly opened exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The show’s theme, rooted in recent acquisitions of contemporary art, is promising, but ultimately falls apart. Viewed as a whole, “the 39 assembled contemporary paintings, sculptures, photographs, textiles and videos by 35 artists based in the Americas and areas of the Pacific underperform,” writes Knight. “Sometimes that’s because the individual work is bland, while elsewhere its pertinence to the shambling theme is stretched to the breaking point,” Knight writes.
Remembering Bernstein
Tuesday marked the 35th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s death, and reminders of the great composer’s tributes to John F. Kennedy abound, writes Times classical music critic Mark Swed. In a piece of commentary about what Bernstein’s work can teach us about memorials, Swed examines multiple L.A. productions rooted in that work, including L.A. Opera’s “West Side Story” and Martha Graham Dance Company’s “En Masse” at the Soraya. Swed also wonders whether those important pieces will reach the Trump administration’s newly configured Kennedy Center in the spring.
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Guests attend the K.A.M.P. family fundraiser at the Hammer Museum on Oct. 12, 2025, in Los Angeles.
(Stefanie Keenan / Getty Images for Hammer Museum)
Everyone went home happy
UCLA’s Hammer Museum raised nearly $200,000 last weekend with its 16th annual K.A.M.P. (Kids Art Museum Project) fundraiser. More than 700 excited parents and children showed up at the gloriously messy event co-chaired by Aurele Danoff Pelaia and Talia Friedman. Kids roamed the courtyard over the course of four hours, creating art at stations set up and manned by participating artists including Daniel Gibson; Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee of the Johnston Marklee architecture firm; Annie Lapin; Ryan Preciado; Rob Reynolds; Jennifer Rochlin; Mindy Shapero; Brooklin A. Soumahoro; and Christopher Suarez. Fairy Gardens were constructed of thick clay and foraged leaves; cardboard boxes were painted with rollers; plates were spray-painted and affixed with knickknacks and jewelry; and geometric shapes were glued to canvases and painted an array of bright colors. Children went home with their art, and parents left knowing they supported a host of free Hammer Kids programs that serve thousands of children and families annually.
Fair wages on Broadway
Musicians working on Broadway, represented by AFM Local 802, voted to authorize a strike earlier this week — with 98% in favor. The nearly 1,200 musicians have been working without a contract since Aug. 31. According to an open letter the musicians sent to the Broadway League on Oct. 1, their demands include: “Fair wages that reflect Broadway’s success. Stable health coverage to allow musicians and their families to enjoy the health benefits that all workers deserve. Employment and income security so that hardworking freelance musicians have some assurance of job security. This includes not eliminating current jobs on Broadway.” Bargaining talks are ongoing.
Gene Hackman co-stars in “Bonnie and Clyde,” alongside Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.
(Associated Press)
Gene Hackman, art collector
The late actor Gene Hackman’s art collection will go up for auction through Bonhams in November. Highlights of the 13-piece collection — which is being offered as a single-owner sale — include works by Milton Avery, Auguste Rodin and Richard Diebenkorn. Hackman was passionate about art throughout his life, and took an extra-special interest in it after he stopped acting. During that time he dedicated himself to taking classes and art-making. He even kept a journal of everything he learned, according to Bonhams.
Historic homes tour
Paging architecture fans: It’s not too late to reserve a spot in Dwell’s open-house event, back in L.A. for its second year. Tours of three historically significant Eastside homes are on offer during the day-long event, which launches from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House in Barnsdall Art Park. The three additional houses in the tour are: Richard Stampton’s Descanso House in Silver Lake; Taalman Architecture, Terremoto, and interior designer Kathryn McCullough’s Lark House in Mount Washington; and Fung + Blatt’s San Marino House in — you guessed it — San Marino.
— Jessica Gelt
And last but not least
Still feeling sad about losing Diane Keaton? Me too. Here’s a list I put together of her 10 most important films. Watch one you haven’t seen — if that’s possible.
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‘KPop Demon Hunters’ creator: Live-action remake wouldn’t work
“KPop Demon Hunters” creator Maggie Kang thinks there’s potential for more Huntr/x stories in the future, but only in animation.
In a recent interview with the BBC, the co-director of the Netflix phenomenon said there is nothing officially in the works, but she thinks “there’s definitely more we can do with these characters in this world.” Kang and her co-director Chris Appelhans also assured fans that if another “KPop Demon Hunters” were to happen, “it will be a story that deserves to be a sequel, and it will be something that we want to see.”
Produced by Sony Pictures Animation, the movie follows a popular K-pop girl group whose members use their music and dance moves (and magical powers) to fight demons and protect the world. But Huntr/x’s leader Rumi is keeping a secret from her bandmates Mira and Zoey that could lead to their downfall.
Since its June debut, “KPop Demon Hunters” and its catchy soundtrack have smashed numerous records on Netflix as well as the Billboard charts. The movie’s massive popularity led to a limited theatrical run for sing-along screenings as well as live performances of its songs.
With Hollywood’s current trend of sequels and remakes, it’s easy to believe that “KPop Demon Hunters” could spawn its own franchise. But Kang and Appelhans both insist that a live-action adaptation should be off the table.
“It’s really hard to imagine these characters in a live action world,” Kang told the BBC, pointing to the tone and comedic elements in “KPop.” “It would feel too grounded. So totally it wouldn’t work for me.”
Appelhans agreed that the characters in “KPop Demon Hunters” are best suited for animation and worried a live-action version of them could feel too “stilted.”
“One of the great things about animation is that you make these composites of impossibly great attributes,” Appelhans told the BBC. “Rumi can be this goofy comedian and then singing and doing a spinning back-kick a second later and then free-falling through the sky. The joy of animation is how far you can push and elevate what’s possible.”
For now, it seems that Huntr/x will keep shining only in the medium they were born to be — in animation.
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Beutner announces run for mayor, vows to fight ‘injustices’ under Trump
Former L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner kicked off his campaign for mayor on Monday with a video launch that hits not just Mayor Karen Bass but President Trump and his immigration crackdown.
Beutner, a philanthropist and former investment banker, uses the four-minute campaign video to describe L.A. as a city that is “under attack” — a message punctuated by footage of U.S. Border Patrol agents.
“I’ll never accept the Trump administration’s assault on our values and our neighbors,” says Beutner, a Democrat, as he stands on a tree-lined residential street. “Targeting people solely based on the color of their skin is unacceptable and un-American.”
“I’ll counter these injustices and work to keep every person safe and build a better Los Angeles,” he adds.
The White House did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The Times about Beutner’s video.
The video opens by describing a major biking accident that upended Beutner’s life about 17 years ago, leading him to enter public service and “take a different path.” Not long after, he became Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s “jobs czar,” taking on the elevated title of first deputy mayor and striking business deals on the mayor’s behalf.
The video casts Beutner, 65, as a pragmatic problem solver, focusing on his nonprofit Vision to Learn, which provides eye exams and glasses to children in low-income communities. It also highlights his work shepherding L.A. Unified through the COVID-19 pandemic and working to pass Proposition 28, the 2022 measure supporting arts education in California public schools.
Beutner, on his video, also turns his aim at City Hall, high housing costs, rising parking meter rates and a big increase in trash pickup fees for homeowners and smaller apartment buildings. Calling L.A. a city that is “adrift,” Beutner criticized the mayor’s push to reduce homelessness — one of her signature initiatives.
“The city spent billions to solve problems that have just become bigger problems,” Beutner says.
Bass campaign spokesperson Douglas Herman pushed back on the criticism, saying the city needs to “move past divisive attacks.” He said violent crime is down across the city, with homicides falling to their lowest levels in 60 years.
“When Karen Bass ran for mayor, homelessness and public safety were the top concerns of Angelenos. And she has delivered in a big way,” he said in a statement. “Today, homelessness has decreased two consecutive years for the first time in Los Angeles. Thousands of people have been moved off our streets and into housing.”
“There’s more work ahead, but this administration has proven it can deliver,” Herman added. “Mayor Bass is committed to building on this historic momentum in her second term.”
Beutner’s video posted two days after he confirmed that he’s planning to run for mayor, leveling blistering criticism at the city’s preparation for, and response to, the Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead.
Beutner’s criticism of Trump’s immigration crackdown in many ways echoes the messages delivered by Bass several months ago, when federal agents were seizing street vendors, day laborers and other workers in L.A.
In June, Bass said the Trump administration was waging an “all-out assault on Los Angeles,” with federal agents “randomly grabbing people” off the street, “chasing Angelenos through parking lots” and arresting immigrants who showed up at court for annual check-ins. Her approach to the issue helped her regain her political footing after she had faltered in the wake of the Palisades fire.
In early September, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration, agreeing that immigration agents can stop and detain individuals they suspect may be in the U.S. illegally merely for speaking Spanish or having brown skin.
The high court ruling set aside a Los Angeles judge’s temporary restraining order that barred agents from stopping people based in part on their race or apparent ethnicity.
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Big Brother fans finally ‘work out’ Elsa’s game plan after love admission
Big Brother fans believe they have worked out that Elsa is heavily encouraging a narrative of love between her and Marcus in a desperate bid to land brand deals on exit from the show
Big Brother fans are convinced that Elsa is desperate to force a love narrative between her and fellow housemate Marcus in order to secure couple brand deals. The blonde housemate revealed following this week’s eviction, that she was prepared to drop a love bombshell on Marcus if she was evicted from the show.
She told her housemates that she was prepared to tell him that she loved him, leaving her housemates in utter shock. And this has caused a stir among fans on X, who now believe that she entered the house with an agenda.
One person wrote: “Elsa was going to tell a dude she’s known for two weeks she loves him. She wants those couples brand deals BAD #BBUK.” Another person said: “I’ve had ‘relationships’ in primary school more realistic than Marcus and Elsa #bbuk.”
READ MORE: Big Brother star reveals why she still doesn’t speak to Denise Welch after iconic rowREAD MORE: ITV Big Brother housemate ‘fuming’ as latest rule break sparks chaos
Meanwhile a third person added: “if i was gonna go i was gonna tell marcus i loved him” ..elsa girl please chill you bunny boiler you’ve known him less than 3 weeks #bbuk.”
And a fourth person chimed in saying: “marcus please your not going to get with elsa your just saying that to make good tv but we don’t care this is big brother not love island.”
A fifth said: “Marcus has no intentions of seeing Elsa after this. You can see it on his face #bbuk.”
In a private conversation her fellow housemate Zelah, Elsa confessed that she was in love with him, leaving the wannabe star in utter shock. A coy looking Elsa simply smiled.
However, further into the evening shown in tonight’s show Zelah and Marcus found themselves in a conversation in the garden where the pair were talking about his feelings for Elsa. And it seems he does not share the same feelings for the reality TV star.
When asked if the location between the two would be an obstacle that they would have to overcome, Marcus made it clear that his doubts were more focused on the dynamics within the house.
Marcus appeared concerned that the feelings the pair have for one another in the house may change in the outside world when the reality of their situation is put to the test.
The couple have been heavily flirting with one another since entering the iconic Big Brother house. At one point, Caroline is seen telling Marcus: “I think she’s in love.”
Marcus then quipped: “I know, I don’t blame her.” Beckoning for her to come over to him he shouted out “come here Elsa.” And Caroline then joked: “The romance is coming.”
READ MORE: ‘Warm and cosy’ electric blanket is ‘much cheaper than having the heating on’
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‘littleboy/littleman’ review: An immigrant story as freestyle jazz
An immigrant drama by Rudi Goblen about two brothers born in Nicaragua, “littleboy/littleman,” now receiving its world premiere at the Geffen Playhouse, is an American story at its core.
Lest we forget our past, America is the great democratic experiment precisely because it’s a land of immigrants. Out of many, one — as our national motto, E pluribus unum, has it. How have we lost sight of this basic tenet of high school social studies?
Our tendency to ghettoize drama — along racial or immigrant lines — reflects the failure to understand our collective story.
Goblen, who (like a.k. payne, author of “Furlough’s Paradise”) was a playwriting student of Geffen Playhouse artistic director Tarell Alvin McCraney at Yale, has created not a conventionally worked out two-hander, but an intuitively structured performance piece. Infused by live music and inflected with hip-hop style poetry, “littleboy/littleman” crashes through the fourth wall to make direct contact with theatergoers, who are seated on three sides of the playing area and always just a high-five away.
Marlon Alexander Vargas, the dynamic, sweet-faced performer who plays Fito Palomino, the more creative and mercurial of the two brothers, is on stage interacting with the audience before the play begins. As the musicians — music director Dee Simone on drums and Tonya Sweets on bass — warm up the crowd from their platform at the back of the playing area, Vargas, ever-in-motion, greets theatergoers and counts down to the start of the show.
Rules are spelled out at the top that make clear that this isn’t one of those docile theatergoing experiences, in which the audience is expected to keep mum as the actors do all the work. Spectators are encouraged to make some noise — to show love when they want to show love and to show it even when they don’t.
These friendly instructions are impishly delivered by Vargas, whose performance outside the play has an effect on our experience of his character inside the play. The fate of Fito is the emotional crux of the drama, and what happens to him matters all the more to us because of our theatrical connection to Vargas, our de facto host and impromptu buddy.
Goblen sets up a drama of fraternal contrasts. Bastian Monteyero (Alex Hernandez), the older and more straitlaced of the two brothers, has a tough, no-nonsense demeanor that’s all about discipline and conformity. He’s a bit of a recluse, but he plays by the rules and demands the same from Fito.
A street performer, Fito dreams of opening a vegan restaurant that will offer his community access to affordable, healthful meals. This idea seems far-fetched to Bastian, and he tells Fito that if he wants to continue living with him, he’s going to have to get a real job.
Bastian hooks Fito up with a friend who’s employed at a cleaning service. But scrubbing public toilets isn’t Fito’s idea of an alternative course. Bastian wants his brother off the streets. There are dangers afoot in Sweetwater, Fla., far worse than unpleasant paid work.
A law officer in town, a sadist who demands complete subservience, has it in for Fito, who describes this menacing figure as “a gangster with a badge.” He also calls him “brown on the outside, white on the inside,” and bemoans to his brother the Latino infighting (“the worst thing they ever did was give us all flags”) that only divides people who have political reason to be in solidarity.
Bastian, who affects a white-sounding Midwestern voice when he hustles donations in his telemarketing job, can’t help taking the latter comment personally. He’s made no secret that he wants to change his name so his resume won’t be ignored when he applies for management jobs.
The two brothers have different fathers, and Fito doesn’t have the option of passing. In any case, he’s more embracing of his identity as a person of color than Bastian. What both of them have in common is that they survived both their harrowing childhoods in Nicaragua and their unrelentingly challenging journeys in America, having been raised by a single mother, whose death still haunts them.
Bastian and Fito love each other, but don’t always like each other. Hernandez’s Bastian is a formidable presence, angry, strict and domineering — the qualities he’s needed to navigate a bureaucratic system that has little concern for the feelings of immigrant outsiders. Vargas’ Fito, by contrast, has his head in the clouds and his heart on his sleeve. Goblen never loses sight of their affection even as their conflict grows louder and more bruising.
Bassist Tonya Sweets, from left, Marlon Alexander Vargas and drummer Dee Simone in “littleboy/littleman” at Geffen Playhouse.
(Jeff Lorch)
“littleboy/littleman” is tricky in its theatrical rhythms. It’s like a piece of music that keeps switching harmonic structures, not wanting to get stuck in the same groove. Goblen’s manner of writing is closer to free jazz or freestyle hip-hop than traditional drama.
Director Nancy Medina’s staging, circumnavigating a theatrical circle, lifts the audience out of its proscenium passivity into something almost immersive and definitely interactive. Tanya Orellana’s scenic design and Scott Bolman’s moody lighting create a performance space that is well suited to a work composed as a series of riffs. The influence of McCraney’s “The Brothers Size” is palpable not only in the thematic architecture of the play, but also in how the piece moves on stage.
The staccato nature of the writing is helped enormously by the entrancing acting of both Vargas, who breezes through different theatrical realms as though he had wings, and Hernandez, who locks realistically into character. It’s a credit to the play and to the performers that, by the end of “littleboy/littleman,” the differences between the two brothers seem less important than what they have in common.
Not all the dramatic elements are smoothly integrated, but the production ultimately finds a coherence, not so much in the music (composed by Goblen himself), but in the emotional truth of the brothers’ pressure-cooker lives. Vulnerability unites not only Bastian and Fito, but all of us witnessing their story who hope against hope that compassion will somehow win the day.
‘littleboy/littleman’
Where: Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater at Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Los Angeles
When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends Nov. 2
Tickets: $45 – $109 (subject to change)
Contact: (310) 208-2028 or www.geffenplayhouse.org
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes (no intermission)
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Diane Keaton’s 10 most important films
Diane Keaton, who died Saturday at 79, is one of cinema’s most legendary actors. She played some of the most recognizable roles of the late 20th century, and blazed a trail for generations of women to come. Here’s a list of Keaton’s 10 most important films, presented in alphabetical order. We’ll leave the ranking to her devoted fans.
‘Annie Hall’
Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in a scene from the movie “Annie Hall” from MGM / UA Home Video.
(MGM / UA Home Video)
Keaton’s role in Woody Allen’s 1977 romantic comedy was written just for her. Her portrayal of the feisty, eccentric, charming title character would define Keaton as an actor for the rest of her career. Her signature bowler hat and ties became a fashion staple, and fans still can’t think of the song “Seems Like Old Times” without sobbing. The film about the bittersweet nature of lost love was a critical success, and Keaton won her only Academy Award for her work in it.
‘Crimes of the Heart’
Keaton plays Lenny McGrath — the oldest of three sisters — in this 1986 black comedy also starring Diane Lange and Sissy Spacek. The actresses are at the height of their powers in the film, which finds a trio of siblings reuniting at their family home in Mississippi after Babe (Spacek) shoots, and seriously injures, her abusive husband. Spacek won a Golden Globe for her work, and was nominated for an Oscar, but Keaton shines as the less ostentatious of the sisters — an unassuming, terminally single woman who believes a shrunken ovary is the reason for her failure to launch.
‘The Godfather’ parts I and II
Keaton plays Kay Adams Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s epic crime family trilogy. As Michael Corleone’s second wife, and the mother of his children, Kay is one of the few fully realized women in the films. Many fans love Keaton’s performance in the second film best because Kay is the only one to stand up to Michael. When the ruthless mafia boss confronts her about an abortion she has had, Kay lets loose and confronts him about his vicious nature and many lies, vowing to never bring another Corleone into the world.
‘Looking for Mr. Goodbar’
Richard Gere, left, and Diane Keaton in a scene from the 1977 movie, “Looking For Mr. Goodbar.”
(Paramount / Getty Images)
This 1977 crime drama written and directed by Richard Brooks is perhaps Keaton’s most tragic film. She plays a lonely schoolteacher named Theresa Dunn who engages in increasingly risky behavior with strangers in pursuit of love. The film also stars Richard Gere as a controlling, abusive, drug-addicted boyfriend in his first major role. Keaton’s sorrow and desperation in this dark, gritty movie is palpable, making this a defining and heartbreaking part of her ouvré.
‘Manhattan’
Mary Wilke (Diane Keaton) and Isaac Davis (Woody Allen) in the shadow of the Queensborough Bridge in the movie “Manhattan.”
(United Artists)
This 1979 Woody Allen film is now one of the director’s most controversial due to its subject matter. Allen stars as a 42-year-old comedy writer who dates a 17-year-old girl, but ends up falling in love with his best friend’s mistress. Keaton plays that mistress, Mary Wilkie, and her depiction of the witty, wry, journalist with a robust social calendar and strong opinions that she never hesitates to express, is among her most seminal performances.
‘Marvin’s Room’
Keaton stars alongside Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro and a young Leonardo DiCaprio in this 1996 family drama. Keaton was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of Bessie Lee, a woman who has been caring for years for her bedridden father when she is diagnosed with leukemia. She turns to her estranged sister, Lee, for help finding a bone marrow transplant match — an endeavor that finds the family once again under the same roof. The tender story of loss and redemption showed that Keaton had staying power decades into her career.
‘Radio Days’
This nostalgic, charmer of a dramedy written and directed by Woody Allen takes place in Rockaway Beach in the 1930s and ‘40s during the golden age of radio. Keaton is part of an ensemble cast in a film filled with vignettes, and she appears in what is essentially a cameo as a New Year’s Eve singer. Wearing a a long-sleeved white dress with her hair pulled back in a bow, she sings a lovely rendition of Cole Porter’s “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To,” proving that when you’re a star of her caliber, you can shine no matter how small the role.
‘Reds’
Warren Beatty co-wrote, produced and directed this historical drama about John Reed, a journalist who chronicled Russia’s 1917 October Revolution. Keaton plays Louise Bryant, a married journalist and suffragist who leaves her husband to move to Greenwich Village with Reed where she becomes part of a robust group of artists and activists, including playwright Eugene O’Neil (Jack Nicholson). The 195-minute film opened to critical acclaim and was nominated for 12 Academy Awards, including best picture. Keaton received her second nomination for best actress but ultimately did not win.
‘Sleeper’
Keaton plays Luna Schlosser, a poet from the 22nd century, in Woody Allen’s 1973 madcap science fiction comedy about a jazz musician named Miles Monroe who owns the Happy Carrot health-food store before being cryogenically frozen for 200 years. Miles wakes in 2173 after being clandestinely revived by a group of rebels and is later delivered — disguised as a robot — into Luna’s home. Hilarious bickering ensues when Luna discovers Miles’ true identity, but she ultimately comes around to his cause. Keaton’s fabulous feathery silver outfits, her ability to utter lines like, “it’s pure keen,” with a straight face, and her substantial use of the “orgasmatron” made the role an instant classic.
‘Something’s Gotta Give’
Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson in the Columbia Pictures romantic comedy movie, “Something’s Gotta Give.”
(Bob Marshak/Columbia Pictures)
Keaton again paired with Jack Nicholson in this 2003 romantic comedy about a pair of mismatched professionals who fall in love in late middle age despite their best efforts to the contrary. The stars have the undeniable chemistry of two acting legends whose work appears absolutely effortless at this stage in their careers. The film was not a critical home run, but Keaton fans think of it as one of her best later roles.
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Former Strictly Come Dancing pro admits they ‘wanted to return’ but it ‘didn’t work out’
A former Strictly Come Dancing professional has revealed they wanted to return to the BBC One show after leaving in 2012 and being a part of the show for seven series.
Former Strictly Come Dancing professional Vincent Simone has revealed he wanted to return to the BBC One show but “it didn’t work out”. The dancer joined the show in 2006 for the fourth series and did seven series before leaving it behind in 2012.
Now he’s opened up about his exit as he said: “The year I left Strictly Come Dancing, there were going to be big changes.
“Bruce Forsyth was leaving, and the show was moving from Shepherd’s Bush where we were there for seven years, and we were moving to Elstree Studios, which was a big change. It got to a point where I got to the final, and although I didn’t win, I was fully satisfied with how I’d done in the show.”
However, Vincent only intended on taking a short break from the show but he got to busy doing his other work that it didn’t end up materialising.
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He continued to Daily Star: “Ideally, what I wanted was to take a year or two out of the show, and then to come back, but we all know that’s rare.
“If I could’ve had that chance to leave Strictly for a few years and then come back, that would’ve been ideal. I would’ve gone back, but those years after Strictly, I was fully committed to West End shows and my own shows.
“Then I went onto I’m A Celebrity, which I wouldn’t have been able to do if I was on Strictly. My career in touring and performing has made me feel very blessed.”
During his first series, Vincent was partnered with EastEnders actress Louisa Lytton and the pair made it all the way to the final four and were eliminated two weeks before the final.
The following year, the dancer was paired with actress Stephanie Beacham with the two being eliminated on week two but in 2008 he made a triumphant return when he came second with S Club 7 singer Rachel Stevens.
His next partner was EastEnders actress Natalie Cassidy, who he came fifth with, followed by his partnership with Felicity Kendal resulting in them being voted off in week seven.
In 2011, it was disappointment all around as he and Conservative party politician Edwina Currie were the first pair to be eliminated from the competition.
In Vincent’s final year, the performer and his partner, Tracy Beaker star Dani Harmer got eliminated a week before the final, ending their run in fourth place.
After quitting the show, he and dance partner Flavia Cacace continued to perform with stage shows and live tours.
In 2013, he took part on the thirteenth series of I’m A Celebrity, arriving as a late entrant to camp with actress Annabel Giles.
He finished in tenth place, being the third celebrity to leave in a double elimination with Matthew Wright.
The current series of the BBC One show is airing at the moment, with celebrities including Vicky Pattison, Alex Kingston, Amber Davies and Chris Robshaw attempting to lift the glitterball trophy.
The Apprentice star Thomas Skinner and his partner Amy Dowden became the first pair to leave the competition after landing in the bottom two with Chris and Nadiya Bychkova.
In his exit interview with Tess Daly, he said: “Thank you, Amy – sorry that we haven’t done too good, ’cause you’re a different class.
“I’ve never danced before and my stay was short, but Amy’s amazing. It’s been great fun and I’ve enjoyed it. I can’t really dance that well but I’ve had fun!”
Strictly Come Dancing continues tonight at 6:05pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
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Big Brother fans ‘work out’ which iconic housemate is returning in game-changing twist
Big Brother’s AJ and Will announced the biggest game changing twist yet, as they revealed two new arrivals will be entering the house in a game changing twist
22:23, 10 Oct 2025Updated 22:55, 10 Oct 2025
Tonight, the Big Brother house saw it’s second live eviction as Cameron B was evicted. However, it wasn’t the only huge event tonight, as AJ Odudu and Will Best announced at the start of the live show that Big Brother would see yet another huge twist.
The 25th anniversary show started off with a bang, as the evil eyes continue to cause chaos around the house. The first shock twist came during launch night when Emily was the first housemate to be evicted in a short but sweet stay.
Now, AJ and Will have made the shock announcement that the show will gain two new arrivals next Friday – but they’re not any old arrivals.
READ MORE: Big Brother announces major vote shake-up as George removed for ‘unacceptable behaviour’READ MORE: Four Big Brother housemates face eviction as brutal ‘face-to-face’ nominations turn sour
In fact, Will and AJ announced that the two new arrivals were people that had left the Big Brother house too soon – but who will they be?
They won’t be alone, as one current housemate will be with them. On Big Brother’s Late and Live tonight, Will and AJ announced housemates would be nominating on Monday. Housemates will believe viewers are voting to evict – but the evicted housemate won’t leave.
Instead they’ll be whisked away to a secret room with the two former housemates. But who will they be?
Tonight, Will gave away a huge clue, revealing that the housemates are one’s that “left too soon.”
While many think Emily from this series are returning, others are convinced Farida Khalifa from ITV’s first series in 2023, will be returning. Farida was the first housemate to be evicted, with many fuming with her early departure.
But could it be her time to return? Fans think so. Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, one penned: “I’m glad to see i’m not the only one who INSTANTLY thought of farida when they said gone too soon housemates were returning”.
Another agreed: “Omg the fact that godly Farida may be reentering the Big Brother house!!” while a third said: “Farida’s last TikTok was September 24th… get her back in!”
The announcement came after Cameron B was the third housemate to be evicted from the 2025 series – and the fourth to leave.
Despite being the third to be evicted, Cameron was the first to leave through the front door. Last week, Gani was forced to have a back door eviction due to Storm Amy, and Emily left through the back door on the first night.
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How Leonard Bernstein’s honoring JFK teaches us about about memorials
Tuesday, Oct. 14, would have been the 32nd birthday of Charlie Kirk, the right-wing political influencer murdered last summer. It is a birthday shared by George Floyd, Jr., asphyxiated by arresting police in 2020 and who would have been 52. The horror of these tragedies has roiled a divisive society, but must they now demand a political battleground of opposing memorials?/
The concept of a civic memorial has long and often been, in Western culture, the privilege of classical music. Music may be permitted to speak not of specifics but the essence of grief, a collective cherishing of existence.
There happens to be another anniversary, Tuesday, to acknowledge. Leonard Bernstein, a great gatherer of differences in his music, died Oct. 14, 1990, at 72. And all around us, as we approach the 35th anniversary of his death, are reminders of Bernstein as the megastar memorializer of the 35th president of the United States, and what those tributes to John F. Kennedy might mean for us today.
The must-see Los Angeles Opera production of “West Side Story,” which closes Sunday, is by Francesca Zambello, who heads Washington National Opera at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and where she is slated to mount her production of Bernstein’s classic musical in May. Saturday night at the Soraya in Northridge, Martha Graham Dance Company gave the world premiere of “En Masse,” which is based on Bernstein’s “MASS,” written to open the Kennedy Center, where “En Masse,” too, is headed in the spring.
Along with all that, Gustavo Dudamel caps his three fall weeks leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic this weekend with four performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Bernstein chose this epic score, known as the “Resurrection,” to memorialize Kennedy two days after his assassination in 1963. A large New York Philharmonic, vocal soloists and chorus assembled on a CBS sound stage for a live national television broadcast.
It was a Sunday and untold millions (there were no Nielsen ratings) gathered in their homes to watch a somber Bernstein begin Mahler’s symphony with gut-wrenching intensity and end it with an overwhelming sense of triumph 90 minutes later. As a legendary act of national healing, the broadcast riveted a shocked nation.
It still does. The following year, Bernstein channeled that Kennedy spirit into a famous performance of Mahler’s symphony at London’s Ely Cathedral that was televised in Britain and released on commercial video. It is that Mahler Second performance that Bradley Cooper chose as the musical centerpiece of his Bernstein 2023 biopic, “Maestro.”
Bernstein further memorialized JFK in the dedication of his Third Symphony, “Kaddish.” And then there was the Kennedy Center opening in 1971, with Bernstein doing the shocking. At the time and for the occasion, “MASS” seemed a bizarre mashup of pop, schlock, jazz, 12-tone, electronics, grand symphonic utterances, hippie currency, mysticism, traditional Catholic Mass, Jewish Sabbath service, anti-Mass climaxing with a psychotic and psychedelic breakdown of Mass’ celebrant and Vietnam War protest.
The general reaction to “MASS” was that of appall, no matter whether you worshipped Bernstein or couldn’t bear him, whatever your political or cultural orientation. President Nixon — who as vice president in the 1950s had attended a Bernstein festival of American music at the Hollywood Bowl and had accompanied Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic on a cultural tour to South America — stayed home.
In fact, “MASS,” after years of puzzled neglect, ultimately came to be heralded as a Bernstein masterpiece, a work that freed contemporary music of genre-fication. It gives permission not for anything goes but for anything goes together if you can find the right context. A slow awareness of the score’s genius has empowered a new generation, such as the conductor and composer Christopher Rountree, who made the new arrangement of parts of “MASS” for his genre-breaking orchestra, Wild Up.
The Graham company based “En Messe” on a flimsy premise, the discovery of a page or two of sketches that Bernstein made for a proposed score he meant to write for Graham in 1988. The discovery is minor. Bernstein and Graham knew and admired each other, but she was a footnote in his career.
In the end, Rountree wrote a short series on variations on two themes he extracted from the sketches that serve as an epilogue to the “MASS” suite. The themes are hard to discern and don’t matter. Rather, Rountree makes a gripping case in his variations for a way forward from Bernsteiniana to today.
The intent of “En Messe” was meant to cap a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Graham company, the oldest dance company in America. Graham 100 began a year ago with a revival of “Appalachian Spring,” Graham’s most famous piece, which also gave us Aaron Copland’s iconic score (the popularity of which was greatly helped by Bernstein’s recording).
The company has also revived another of Graham’s most important (and severe) dances, “Night Journey,” based around the last moments of the life of Jocasta (the mother of Oedipus in the Greek tragedy). The revival with Anne Souder as an imposing Jocasta, Lloyd Knight, an enthralling Oedipus, and Ethan Palma, a haunted Tiresias (the seer), retained all the work’s stunning power. William Schuman’s mostly forgotten score received a revelatory performance by Rountree and Wild Up.
“En Messe,” itself, did not serve its purpose to cap a centennial closer to the work of a seminal choreographer. It accomplished something more important by heralding a path forward. The company can’t live forever reviving Graham’s work or doing showy new dances such as “We the People” (also on the program).
Instead, Hope Boykin’s choreography added a dark intensity to Bernstein’s brightness. The stage was dim. Each dance featured a soloist in seeming personal meditation with the music, its rhythms and its spirit, and with the company’s other dancers, who appear ghostly figures in the misty distance.
Movement didn’t match music but brought you into it, while the music seemed to demand movement. It began with the score’s hit, “A Simple Song,” Bernstein at his most tuneful, even saccharine. Jodie Landau didn’t buy into its surface simplicity but sang with a fresh, cool, contemporary edge that immediately told you we were headed into unknown territory. Every discovery that followed proved her right on.
“En Messe” will tour the country and beyond over the next year with, unfortunately, a recording of Wild Up, not live performance. If the company gets over its overamplification, which cheapens everything it presents, that need not disastrously lessen the impact.
Will “En Messe,” or “West Side Story,” actually reach the Kennedy Center, which the federal government is attempting to turn it into who-knows-what, this spring? Both Bernstein works are exactly what the new overseers say they want — more populist art, inspirational attempts to make American art great. But they are also works that make us look inside ourselves, discover what matters beyond self-interest. That’s become a hard sell.
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Bob Ross to the rescue: L.A. arts and culture this weekend
Thirty paintings by the late artist — and PBS staple — Bob Ross are heading for auction beginning Nov. 11. American Public Television, which syndicates programming to public stations across the country, is staging the auction in Los Angeles through Bonhams. APT has pledged to donate 100% of the profits to beleaguered public television stations nationwide.
“Bonhams holds the world record for Bob Ross, and with his market continuing to climb, proceeds benefiting American Public Television, and many of the paintings created live on air — a major draw for collectors — we expect spirited bidding and results that could surpass previous records,” said Robin Starr, general manager, Bonhams Skinner, in a statement.
The auction house established its record in August when it sold two of Ross’ mountain-and-lake scenes from the early 1990s for $114,800 and $95,750, respectively. Bonhams said it could not yet provide an estimate on the worth of the 30 works coming up for auction.
The first three paintings will go on the block at Bonhams in Los Angeles as part of its California & Western Art auction. The remaining 27 will be sold throughout 2026 at Bonhams salesrooms in New York, Boston and L.A.
The news comes as public broadcasting faces unprecedented challenges to its survival. In July, Congress voted to cut $1.1 billion in federal funding for the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, which was founded in 1968 and helps fund PBS, NPR, as well as 1,500 local radio and television stations. The cuts were encouraged by President Trump, who derided the organization for spreading “woke” propaganda.
The private, nonprofit corporation soon after announced that it would close. The majority of its staff was dismissed at the end of last month, and a bare-bones transition team remains through January to wrap up unfinished work.
Without CPB, educational programming like “The Joy of Painting” with Bob Ross will have an uphill battle finding the support it needs.
Known for his cloudlike halo of curly brown hair, soothing voice and infectious love of the art form as shown on his signature show, the artist became a mainstay in American households across 400-plus episodes and more than a decade on the air.
With its wholesome content and relaxed pace, his was the kind of show that defined PBS. Hopefully, his work can help keep the lights on at the stations that helped gain him a cultlike following.
I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, and I’m the proud owner of a Bob Ross Chia Pet head. Here’s your arts and culture news for the week.
On our radar
Kai A. Ealy stars in “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” at A Noise Within
(Daniel Reichert)
Joe Turner’s Come And Gone
Gregg T. Daniel continues his reinvestigation of August Wilson’s American Century Cycle with a production of what is arguably the finest work in the playwright’s 10-play series. Set in a Pittsburgh boardinghouse in 1911 during the Great Migration, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” focuses on the spiritual crossroads of Black Americans who are being reminded at every turn that their freedom comes with a prohibitive cost. The sixth Wilson production at A Noise Within in this seasons-long retrospective should be a standout: It’s one of the great American plays of the 20th century. — Charles McNulty
Previews, 2 p.m. Sunday; 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Oct. 17; opening night, 7:30 p.m. Oct. 18; through Nov. 9. A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena. anoisewithin.org
Tavares Strachan, “Six Thousand Years,” and “The Encyclopedia of Invisibility,” 2018, mixed media
(Johnna Arnold / © Tavares Strachan)
Tavares Strachan: The Day Tomorrow Began
Bahamian-born New York artist, whose immersive solo exhibition “Magnificent Darkness” filled the Hollywood branch of Marian Goodman Gallery last year, makes multidisciplinary art that seeks to amplify notable events and people — especially related to exploration, from deep-sea diving to outer space — that are often sidelined in standard cultural histories. Strachan, a 2022 MacArthur Foundation fellow, once shipped a 4.5-ton block of ice from the Arctic to the Bahamas via FedEx. We’ll see what might arrive at Wilshire Boulevard. — Christopher Knight
11 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday; 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday; closed Wednesday; through March 29, 2026. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, BCAM Level 2, 5905 Wilshire Blvd. lacma.org
Alexander Shelley conducts the Pacific Symphony Friday-Sunday in Costa Mesa.
(Curtis Perry)
Alexander Shelley conducts the Pacific Symphony
At 45, the British conductor has a seemingly full and far-fledged plate: music director of the National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa; principal associate conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London; and artistic and music director of Artis-Naples and the Naples Philharmonic in Florida. Next year, the plate becomes fuller and further-fledged when he becomes music director of the Pacific Symphony. This fall, however, Shelley makes his debut as music director designate by showcasing works bursting with color — Mongomery’s “Starburst”; Arturo Márquez’s “Concert for Guitar Mystical and Profane” with Pablo Sáinz-Villegas as soloist; and Rimsky Korsakov’s “Scheherazade.” Shelley returns in November with Ravel’s glorious ballet score “Daphnis and Chloe,” the perfect enchanting complement to San Diego Symphony’s “L’Enfant,” for wrapping up the Ravel year, the 150th anniversary of the French composer’s birth having been in March. — Mark Swed
8 p.m. Thursday-Oct. 18. Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. pacificsymphony.org
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The week ahead: A curated calendar
FRIDAY
The American Contemporary Ballet dances to Shubert’s score for “Death & the Maiden.”
(Victor Demarchelier)
Death and the Maiden
American Contemporary Ballet, under the direction of Lincoln Jones, dances to a live performance of Schubert’s score, complete with opera singers; plus “Burlesque: Variation IX.”
8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; Thursday performances Oct. 23 and 30; through Nov. 1. ACB, Bank of America Plaza, 330 S. Hope St. #150, downtown L.A. acbdances.com
Installation view, Derek Fordjour: “Nightsong,” Sept. 13-Oct. 11, 2025.
(Jeff McLane / David Kordansky Gallery)
Nightsong
Times video intern Quincy Bowie Jr. recently visited artist Derek Fordjour’s sensorial experience at Mid-City’s David Kordansky Gallery. “In a time where many feel silenced, and afraid to speak up, Fordjour creates a space of darkness where truth can be revealed, heard and felt,” wrote Bowie. “‘Nightsong’ creates a unique space where the Black voice and its many songs are centered.” The free exhibit closes tonight.
6-10 p.m. David Kordansky Gallery, 5130 W. Edgewood Place. davidkordanskygallery.com
Mexican singer Lucía performs Friday at the Nimoy.
(Shervin Lainez)
Lucía
The enchanting Mexican singer mixes traditional American jazz and Latin folk in her eponymous debut album, released earlier this year.
8 p.m. UCLA Nimoy Theater, 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu
Mascogos
Jose Luis Valenzuela directs the world premiere of playwright Miranda González’s drama revealing the untold stories of Mexico’s Underground Railroad.
Final preview, 8 p.m. Friday; opening night, 8 p.m. Saturday; 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday; 4 p.m. Sunday, through Nov. 9. Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., downtown L.A. latinotheaterco.org
People in the Dark: An Immersive Ghost Story
A Lost Legends Ghost Tour goes frighteningly awry, placing the audience face-to-face with Hollywood’s haunted past in this enveloping theatrical experience from Drowned Out Productions.
7-11:40 p.m., with start times every 20 mins. Friday; 6-10:40 p.m., with start times every 20 mins. Saturday and Sunday (also Thursday, Oct. 16), through Oct. 31. 1035 S. Olive St., downtown L.A. tickettailor.com
Grand Kyiv Ballet performs “Swan Lake” Friday at the Ebell Wilshire.
Grand Kyiv Ballet
This touring company of Ukrainian dancers is temporarily based out of the International Ballet Academy in Bellevue, Wash., while Russia continues its war with Ukraine. The troupe brings Tchaikovsky’s timeless ballet “Swan Lake” to Mid-City in a graceful performance sure to soothe even the most restless soul. (Jessica Gelt)
7 p.m. Wilshire Ebell Theatre, 4401 W 8th St, Los Angeles. ebellofla.org
SATURDAY
Corey Helford Gallery
A trio of strikingly distinct shows with a global sweep opens Friday. In the main gallery, “The Weight of Us,” a duo exhibition featuring solo works from Nigerian artists Arinze Stanley and Oscar Ukonu explores interconnectedness, and the complex interplay of individual and collective narratives. “Where Petals Dance,” features the work of Japanese artist aica in Gallery 2. The major exhibition featuring Latvian-born contemporary surrealist painter Jana Brike, “When I Was a River,” debuts in Gallery 3.
Noon-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, through Nov. 15. Corey Helford Gallery, 571 S. Anderson St. #1, Los Angeles. https://coreyhelfordgallery.com/
Vicky Chow
CAP UCLA and Piano Spheres present new music pianist Vicky Chow performing the West Coast premiere of Tristan Perich’s “Surface Image.”
8 p.m. UCLA Nimoy Theater, 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu
Gracias Gustavo Community Block Party
Hosted by Aundrae Russell of KJLH, this outdoor celebration features performances by DJ Aye Jaye, live art by Hannah Edmonds and Israel “Seaweed” Batiz, Mariachi Tierra Mia, poet Aletha Metcalf-Evans, Versa-Style Street Dance Company, YOLA at Inglewood Jazz Ensemble, Sherie, muralist ShowzArt — “The Art Jedi,” D Smoke and the Inglewood High School Marching Band, plus activities, food trucks and more.
10 a.m.-4 p.m. Judith and Thomas L. Beckmen YOLA Center, 101 S. La Brea Ave., Inglewood. laphil.com
Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
An open house kicks off four new exhibitions: Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, “The Awake Volcanoes”; Samar Al Summary, “Excavating the Sky”; Liz Hernández, “Donde piso, crecen cosas (Where I step, things grow)”; and AoA x IAO, “I Smell LA.”
4-8 p.m. Friday. Noon-6 p.m. Wednesday; Noon-7 p.m. Thursday; Noon-6 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday; closed Mondays, Tuesdays and public holidays. Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1717 E. 7th St., Arts District, downtown L.A. theicala.org
Sleep Token performs at the Reading Music Festival, England, in 2023.
(Scott Garfitt / Invision / Associated Press)
Sleep Token
Sleep Token is by some measures the biggest heavy-rock band in the world right now. Its 2025 LP, “Even in Arcadia,” demolished streaming records for a metal act, reaching well beyond the genre’s cantankerous core fan base, which has mixed feelings about Sleep Token’s pop chart success, to say the least. (No one is more skeptical about the band’s new fame than its cryptically anonymous front person Vessel: “Right foot in the roses, left foot on a landmine,” he sings in “Caramel,” “They can sing the words while I cry into the bass line.”) The band’s high-drama live shows are where Sleep Token really shines, though, as in this return to L.A. for a set that finally provides the scale its runic masks, robes and necrotic body paint have always called for. (August Brown)
8 p.m. Crypto.com Arena, 1111 S. Figueroa St., downtown L.A. cryptoarena.com
SUNDAY
Paul Jacobs
The Grammy-winning organist performs Bach’s “The Art of Fugue.”
7:30 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer and the Von Trapp family in a scene from the 1965 film “The Sound of Music.”
(20th Century Fox)
The Sound of Music
A 70mm screening of the 1965 Robert Wise-directed movie musical starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer that won five Oscars, including best picture.
3 p.m. Sunday. Academy Museum, David Geffen Theater, 6067 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. academymuseum.org
TUESDAY
L.A. Phil Gala: Gustavo’s Fiesta
Gustavo Dudamel conducts the orchestra in a few of his favorite things: De Falla’s “Three-Cornered Hat,” selections from Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony (featuring musicians from YOLA, Youth Orchestra Los Angeles), Beethoven’s Seventh, “Fairy Garden” from Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite and Revueltas’ “Night of Enchantment.”
7 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
THURSDAY
Draw Them In, Paint Them Out
Trenton Doyle Hancock confronts the work of painter Philip Guston in this dual exhibition that examines the role the artist plays in the pursuit of social justice.
Noon-5 p.m. Tuesday–Friday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday–Sunday. Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. skirball.org
Yunchan Lim
For his Disney Hall debut, the youngest-ever winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition performs Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” alongside “…Round and velvety-smooth blend…,” a new piece, written especially for the pianist, by Korean composer Hanurij Lee.
8 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
San Cha, photographed in 2020, performs Thursday-Saturday at REDCAT.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
San Cha
The L.A.-based composer, musician and performance artist presents “Inebria Me,” a new experimental opera that reimagines the melodrama of telenovelas through a queer, genre-bending lens as adapted from her 2019 album, “La Luz de la Esperanza.” In Spanish with English supertitles. Postshow Q&A with San Cha on Oct 17.
8 p.m. Thursday, Oct.18. REDCAT, 631 W. 2nd St., downtown L.A. redcat.org
Culture news and the SoCal scene
Bisserat Tseggai, Claudia Logan, Victoire Charles and Jordan Rice, clockwise from top left, of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Jaja’s African Hair Braiding
Currently staging its L.A. premiere at Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum, “Jaja’s” is an uproarious workplace comedy that packs a serious political punch. I had the pleasure of interviewing four of the lead actors during a roundtable at a downtown rehearsal room a few days before the run started. The women talked about their love of the show and of the playwright, Jocelyn Bioh. They also discussed the country’s fraught political climate and how it’s laying waste to the idea of the American Dream — the one that has attracted immigrants seeking a better life for their families for hundreds of years. Their thoughts have a direct throughline to the show, which takes place on a single hot day at a West African salon in Harlem.
Times theater critic Charles McNulty caught the opening Sunday night and wrote a glowing review of the touring production, which he noted was “bursting with gossip, petty fights, audacious fashion, dazzling hair styles, full-body dancing and uncensored truth about the vulnerable lives of immigrant workers.”
Hammer biennial
Made in L.A. 2025 has officially opened at UCLA’s Hammer Museum and I recently toured the highly anticipated seventh edition of the biennial exhibition in the company of curators Essence Harden and Paulina Pobocha. The pair told me interesting backstories about the 28 participating artists, including that the four large sculptures of doors made by Amanda Ross-Ho represent a door at the nursing home where her father lived.
Artist Alake Shilling stands in front of a 25-foot inflatable psychedelic bear driving a convertible titled “Buggy Bear Crashes Made in L.A,” at the Hammer Museum in Westwood.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
I also ate lunch with the charming and kind artist Alake Shilling, whose adorable sculptures of cuddly animals featuring melancholy faces are part of the show. I trailed Shilling as she watched a test inflation of a 25-foot sculpture titled “Buggy Bear Crashes Made in L.A.,” which will be on display on an outdoor pedestal on Wilshire Boulevard through March. I made this fun video with the help of video editor Mark Potts.
LACMA Gifts
Big news keeps coming out of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which announced Wednesday that it had been gifted more than 100 works of Austrian Expressionism worth “well over” $60 million by the family of Otto Kallir, a renowned art dealer who immigrated to America in 1938 after the German Reich annexed Austria. The art will be transferred to the museum over the next several years and includes the museum’s first paintings by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Richard Gerstl. The exciting news comes two months after LACMA was gifted its first paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Édouard Manet by the Pearlman Foundation.
Best Friends Forever
Finally, I got an update from the “satirical activist” artists with the Secret Handshake. They told me they had once again received a permit to reinstall their controversial Trump-Epstein statue (dubbed “Best Friends Forever”) on the National Mall. “Just like a toppled Confederate general forced back onto a public square, the Donald Trump Jeffrey Epstein statue has risen from the rubble to stand gloriously on the National Mall once again,” a rep for the Secret Handshake wrote in an email.
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“Arabesque over the Right Leg, Left Arm in Front,” by Edgar Degas
(Norton Simon Museum)
Norton Simon acquires sculpture
The Pasadena museum announced the acquisition of a bronze sculpture by Edgar Degas titled “Arabesque over the Right Leg, Left Arm in Front.” The museum already holds more than 100 pieces by Degas in its collection, which is known as one of the largest public collection’s of the artist’s work in the world. “This significant acquisition, long sought after, completes a critical gap in the Museum’s renowned Degas collection,” a rep for the museum wrote in an email. The sculpture went on view in the museum’s 19th century wing late last week.
Mushroom Boat
Ever heard of a boat made out of mushrooms? Neither had I until someone told me about an exhibition at Fulcrum Arts in Pasadena called, “Sam Shoemaker: Mushroom Boat.” As the title implies, the artist built a kayak out of mushroom mycelium. He then proceeded to use the unusual vessel to cross the Catalina Channel — a total of 26 nautical miles. He chronicled his journey the whole way, and the results of that work are on display alongside the boat. It includes large-scale projections, time-lapse videos, and soundscapes from his sometimes wild and turbulent journey.
Los Angeles Ballet dancers in pointe shoes stretch before beginning rehearsals in 2015.
(Los Angeles Times)
An anniversary for Los Angeles Ballet
Los Angeles Ballet announced its 2025-26 season, which also happens to mark the company’s 20th anniversary, and its Music Center debut — “Giselle” at the Ahmanson Theatre in the spring. The season launches in December with LAB’s acclaimed annual presentation of “The Nutcracker” at Royce Hall and the Dolby Theatre. This season the company continues its residency at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, and is set to stage a triple-bill anniversary production, “20 Years of Los Angeles Ballet,” featuring George Balanchine’s “Rubies,” Hans van Manen’s “Frank Bridge Variations,” and a third new work by Artistic Director Melissa Barak, who assumed her position in 2022.
K.A.M.P. fundraiser
The Hammer Museum is back this Sunday with its annual fundraiser — Kids Art Museum Project, better known as K.A.M.P. Tickets support the Hammer’s free year-round family programming. Each year, the museum shuts down on a Sunday and presents an art-filled wonderland for children and families, with interactive art stations created and helmed by participating L.A. artists, as well as a special reading room featuring well-known actors. This year’s readers will be actor Justine Lupe and baseball star Chris Taylor. Artists include Daniel Gibson, Sharon Johnston & Mark Lee, Annie Lapin, Ryan Preciado, Rob Reynolds, Jennifer Rochlin, Mindy Shapero, Brooklin A. Soumahoro and Christopher Suarez.
— Jessica Gelt
And last but not least
Everybody, it seems, loves Cyndi Lauper. Readers have been going absolutely bananas for Times pop music critic Mikael Wood’s engaging profile on the iconic, red-haired pop star in advance of her induction in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
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