Articles

GANG OF ACTORS REACHES A NEW STAGE

The Actors’ Gang, now in residence at the historic Ivy Substation in
Culver City, is celebrating its 25th anniversary. The substation,
constructed in 1907 by the Los Angeles Pacific Railroad, looks more
like a Spanish mission than an electric power facility, strangely
appropriate for The Actors’ Gang, which is both a theater troupe with a
strong sense of mission and [...]

LACMA gets Contemporary

In February, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will unveil the
first phase of its renovation and expansion, including the opening of a
new building devoted to contemporary art — the Broad Contemporary Art
Museum (that’s Broad as in Eli and Edythe Broad, our local Medicis) or,
as the acronymists at LACMA have dubbed it, BCAM.
On a recent [...]

Dreaming of a blue future (Roger Director)

Let me state, for the record, that I know nothing about sports.
I don’t watch them; I don’t follow them. My parents didn’t. I never
did as a kid. I don’t now with my family. Occasionally in the finals of
a season, a few names flutter into my consciousness and then, just as
quickly, disappear. I’m not proud of [...]

Picturing LA (Julius Shulman)

Julius Shulman, the still much-in-demand architectural photographer, famous for his photos of Modernist homes, turned 97 a few weeks ago, and the partying has been pretty much nonstop — which is the way Shulman likes it.

Michael Chabon’s Amazing (Jewish) Adventures

On the occasion of the first annual “Celebration of Jewish Books” at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, the Jewish Journal asked me to engage Michael Chabon in a (brief) conversation about the Jewish flavor of his work.
Herewith the results:

Novelist Michael Chabon has an agent, Steven Barclay, who handles his speaking engagements and who [...]

Rivers of Music

Producer, songwriter and musician Larry Klein is having a good year. In a way, one could say his current success is the culmination of a process of recontextualizing his background, his experience, his talents and his interests.
Two records he produced have just been released on Verve Records: “River: The Joni Letters” by jazz great Herbie [...]

Let Us Travel To Iran

This fall, I am asking you to travel to Iran.
Not the present-day, front-page, headline-grabbing, nuclear-developing, Holocaust-denying, Israel-hating Iran, but the Iran of just 20 or 30 years ago, as described in two newly published novels, Gina Nahai’s “Caspian Rain” (MacAdam Cage) and Dalia Sofer’s “The Septembers of Shiraz” (Ecco).
Although Nahai’s novel takes place over the [...]

Summer and the start of school

In one of his most famous works, the French poet Francois Villon asked: “Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan? (But where are the snows of yesteryear?).” I might ask the same about where this summer went. It seems like just last week my daughter was getting out of class, and now she’s about to start [...]

Zsa Zsa Gabor: The Last of the Hungarian Mohicans

“I want a man with kindness and understanding. Is that too much to ask of a millionaire?”
– Zsa Zsa Gabor
Lately, I have been thinking about Zsa Zsa, and it makes me sad. A few years ago, she crashed her car on Sunset, and she has been wheelchair-bound since. She had been a recluse for some [...]

Big Fun Under the Big Top

with additional reporting by Natasha Teicholz
When I heard that the circus was coming to town, I couldn’t wait to take my daughter. I’m talking about the Greatest Show on Earth, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, appearing in Orange County until Aug. 5.
I know that Cirque du Soleil has its fans — but I [...]