As thousands of firefighters continue to battle the Palisades and Eaton fires and the unfathomable damage is assessed, the arts communities are mobilizing. Actors, musicians and comedians are putting together performances that benefit those affected by the blazes. Theaters are making donations to firefighters and first responders, sharing their surplus costume stock and offering their venues as donation centers and safe spaces to recharge and commune.
And some of L.A.’s biggest arts institutions — including the J. Paul Getty Trust, LACMA, MOCA and the Hammer Museum — are among those backing the L.A. Arts Community Fire Relief Fund, an emergency reserve for artists and arts workers that currently stands at $12 million. (My colleague Jessica Gelt spoke to J. Paul Getty Trust president and CEO Katherine E. Fleming and LACMA director Michael Govan about how the extraordinary effort came to be, and shared information for how to apply for a grant if you have been affected by the fires.)
The previously announced Concert for America, scheduled for Monday in New York City, plans to now raise funds for the California Community Foundation, an organization supporting L.A. County wildfire recovery efforts. “The full impact of the ongoing devastation in Los Angeles is unknown, but we know the need for support will continue for months and even years to come,” said producers Seth Rudetsky and James Wesley Jackson in a press release. Performers including Ingrid Michaelson, Richard Kind, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Kelli O’Hara, Merle Dandridge, Rosie Perez and Susie Essman , among many others, will appear onstage from the Town Hall in Manhattan. Jon Cryer and Lisa Joyner are coordinating talent in Los Angeles, including Melanie Lynskey, Jason Ritter, Wayne Brady, Rachel Bay Jones and Cheyenne Jackson, who will join the event virtually, via a free livestream available to all starting at 4 p.m. PT . Rudetsky and Jackson said the show is a means of “acknowledging this crisis, hearing from our friends and colleagues across the country, and giving back the best way we know how.”
I’m Times staff writer Ashley Lee, hoping this fresh edition of Essential Arts serves as an ounce of normalcy amid all the unpredictability that we Angelenos have faced this past week.
Best bets: On our radar this week
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Photograph by Janna Ireland from the Even by Proxy portfolio, 2024.
(Janna Ireland / City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs)
‘Janna Ireland: Even by Proxy’
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House “is a transitional work in many respects — a bridge between the scores of charismatic Prairie Style houses he’d designed in the Midwest and the starker architecture he’d turn to once he was fully established in Los Angeles,” wrote former Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne. “It features a number of nods to Mayan architecture, including a horizontal band of carved ornament under the roofline. With its walled interior court, the house also owes a clear debt to Spanish Revival architecture.”
Janna Ireland, commissioned on the occasion of Hollyhock House’s centennial, presents 21 photographs of Wright’s masterpiece. These photos highlight the quiet details of the design, as well as the care and conservation that sustain L.A.’s only UNESCO World Heritage Site. The exhibition — with a title that mirrors that of Wright’s autobiography while also pointing to the house’s famously fraught origins — is on view Thursdays through Saturdays until Sept. 27. Hollyhock House, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., East Hollywood. hollyhockhouse.org
‘Evanston Salt Costs Climbing’
Times theater critic Charles McNulty called Rogue Machine Theatre’s production of Will Arbery’s “Heroes of the Fourth Turning” one of his favorite shows of 2023: “Guillermo Cienfuegos directed a pitch-perfect cast in a play about young Catholic conservatives that shined a light on the ideological fault lines emerging from the emboldened Christian nationalist movement.”
Rogue Machine is now staging Arbery’s latest piece, “Evanston Salt Costs Climbing,” in which the playwright “turns his focus to a subject of even greater catastrophic proportions, the existential climate crisis. Cienfuegos directs a cast that includes Kaia Gerber and Hugo Armstrong in a production that deepens the relationship between one of the city’s indispensable intimate theaters and one of the country’s most prescient and provocative playwrights.” Previews begin Saturday, with opening night Jan. 25, and performances through Mar. 9. Matrix Theatre, 7657 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood. roguemachinetheatre.org
‘Stomp’
The global sensation celebrates 30 years of unconventional percussion with a North American tour, which stops in Northridge this weekend for three family-friendly performances at the Soraya. “‘Stomp’ is a meditation on the primal desire to entertain ourselves, on camaraderie and natural artistry,” wrote former Times theater critic Laurie Winer when the show made its L.A. debut in 1994. “But it has the most to say about manual work — the joy in work, the power in work and the music in work.” Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge. thesoraya.org
— Ashley Lee
Due to the ongoing fires, some events may be postponed or canceled. Please check with individual organizations for updates.
The week ahead: A curated calendar
FRIDAY
Brooklyn Rider The group marks its 20th anniversary with “Temples of Resonance: The String Quartets of Philip Glass.”
7:30 p.m. Friday. The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. thewallis.org
SATURDAY
Doug Aitken The artist exhibits new works with “Psychic Debris Field,” a poly-media composition featuring large-scale sculptures, light and sound installations, botanic artworks and fabric works at Regen Projects. Meanwhile, “Lightscape,” Aitken’s collaboration with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, continues at Marciano Art Foundation.
Through Feb. 22. Regen Projects, 6750 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles. regenprojects.com; Through March 15. Marciano Art Foundation, 4357 Wilshire Blvd. marcianoartfoundation.org/
Faustin Linyekula The Congolese dancer and choreographer tells stories of his ancestors, sharing the histories of the women in his clan in “My Body, My Archive.”
8 p.m. Saturday, UCLA Freud Playhouse, Macgowan Hall, 245 Charles E. Young Drive East, Westwood. cap.ucla.edu
Josh Gad An evening with the writer-performer, who has a new collection of essays, “In Gad We Trust: A Tell-Some.”
7 p.m. Saturday. Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City. centertheatregroup.org
GRAHAM100 The Martha Graham Dance Company commemorates its centennial with a program that includes classics such as “Appalachian Spring” and new works.
7:30 p.m. Saturday. Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. scfta.org
Hammer Contemporary Collection Conceptual sculptures using found materials — Jennifer Bolande’s Pinnacle (1989), Mona Hatoum’s Bourj (2010), and Alison Saar’s Stubborn and Kinky (2023) — are featured.
Through April 20. UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood. hammer.ucla.edu
Sandra Tsing Loh The writer-performer’s work-in-progress “I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Come to It (An Hilarious Self-Immolation by Sandra Tsing Loh)” details the explosive aftermath of her new play being dropped from Center Theatre Group’s 2023 all-female season.
8 p.m. Saturday. Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. odysseytheatre.com
Yoshitomo Nara The artist’s first exhibition in the U.S. features eleven new large-scale bronze sculptures.
Through March 8. Blum Gallery, 2727 S. La Cienega Blvd. blum-gallery.com
“The Seagull” Sasha Alexander and James Tupper star in director Bruce Katzman’s production of the classic Anton Chekhov play.
8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. theseagull-la.com
Culture news and the SoCal scene
A smoky haze fills the dusk landscape as a home smolders during the Eaton fire.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
The savage fires in Los Angeles caused Times theater critic Charles McNulty to turn to Shakespeare for solace. “Shakespeare helps me envisage the unimaginable, and a speech from ‘The Tempest’ has been running through my mind since images of charred sections of Pacific Palisades and Altadena started circulating,” McNulty wrote, before diving into particular passages and detailing how they shed light on this modern disaster.
The unincorporated, fire-ravaged community of Altadena, nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains, had a magnetic pull for artists, musicians and writers. In a personal essay, I explored why the creative folks I knew and loved in my 20s and 30s headed there to buy homes and build families.
Art dealer Douglas Chrismas in 2017.
(Donato Sardella / Getty Images for MOCA)
The legal saga of disgraced Ace Gallery founder Douglas Chrismas finally reached its conclusion when the 80-year-old was sentenced to 24 months in prison after a jury found him guilty of embezzling more than $260,000 from the bankruptcy estate of Ace Gallery while he served as its trustee and custodian.
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ArtNews reported on a flare-up of the controversy surrounding the water usage of prominent L.A. art collectors and philanthropists Lynda and Stewart Resnick, who own the Wonderful Company, which according to the story is, “an agribusiness conglomerate that includes Fiji Water, pistachios, pomegranate juice (the distinctly shaped Pom Wonderful), Halos mandarins and Teleflora, America’s largest flower delivery service. Their $13-billion fortune is owed in no small part to their 185,000 acres of land and majority stake in Kern Water Bank, located in the southern swath of California’s Central Valley.” As the fires rage, online anger has been whipped up about how much of the region’s water is controlled by the couple. The Wonderful Company responded with a statement attributing the uproar to “viral conspiracy theories.”
And last but not least
An exhibition celebrating the finest writing tools? Tom Hanks knows the type.