theater

The Bird Cage Theatre has stood inside Knott’s Berry Farm for 72 years — albeit not always soundly. Long framed by a tin roof and a tent, the theater had a reputation for discomfort, as it was a source of punishing heat and the occasional mouse sighting.

“It was hot, it stunk and it was dirty,” says Payden Adams, the park’s VP of entertainment.

Still, though it has long felt like an endangered species, the Bird Cage Theatre is one of Southern California’s most historic revival houses, a place for vaudeville-style, fourth-wall-breaking shows that deviate from the expected theme park fare. To quote the theater’s most recent production, its entertainment can be “flirtatious and a little bit saucy.”

Knott’s Berry Farm’s Bird Cage Theatre is modeled after a historic venue in Tombstone, Ariz.

(Kyusung Gong / For The Times)

Opened in 1954, the Bird Cage Theatre has specialized in vaudeville-style melodramas.

(Knott’s Berry Farm)

And now, against all odds, the Bird Cage is getting a second life. Knott’s Berry Farm recently completed a renovation designed to keep it thriving for another 72 years. Gone is the tarpaulin roof: The Bird Cage is now a fully enclosed, soundstage-like structure. And blessedly, it has modern air conditioning.

The theater reopened this past weekend with “The Great Bank Robbery,” a 30-minute-plus show in which audiences are encouraged to boo, hiss and swoon over the characters, a Bird Cage tradition since 1954. Characters are caricatures, be it a villain that feels plucked from a cartoon western, complete with a purring raccoon for a sidekick, to a greedy wannabe politician of a bank manager. Though set in Ghost Town with period garb, there are modern flourishes, such as tongue-in-cheek nods to the theme park’s attractions and a damsel in distress who ultimately proves to be anything but.

Though it once operated as a daily theater, the Bird Cage is today most active during holidays and seasonal events, such as the park’s annual Boysenberry Festival, which also began this weekend. Popular summer show “Miss Cameo Kate’s Western Burle-Q- Revue” is a 20-minute cabaret-style performance, complete with a torch song and a slightly risqué cancan finale.

When it’s running, the Bird Cage is a must-see attraction. Live theater in theme parks can feel like a moving target, as conventional wisdom often argues that today’s smartphone-addled guests are after thrills and more attention-grabbing, interactive experiences. But when it works, such as during the over-the-top silliness of “The Great Bank Robbery,” or at Universal Studios’ “Waterworld”-themed stunt show, it can offer guests some of the most memorable, personal moments at the parks.

The Bird Cage Theatre reopened this past weekend with the show “The Great Bank Robbery.”

(Kyusung Gong / For The Times)

“You’re not wrong, especially when it comes to attention spans. We experience that,” says Adams, who oversaw the theater’s restoration. “The way we’ve pivoted and navigated is just ensuring our shows are tight and clean. It might be a little over 30 minutes, but audiences are engaged. In melodramas, we ask the audience to participate, and we can train them how to participate beforehand. When you see characters, even when they’re heightened or over-the-top, people still connect with them.”

The Bird Cage Theatre first opened in the summer of 1954, its facade a near-replica of the original Bird Cage in Tombstone, Ariz. That the family-focused Knott’s would nod to the Arizona locale is an oddity in and of itself, as the actual theater had a bawdy reputation. Stories today speak of a place that initially opened with grand ambitions but eventually succumbed to gambling and prostitution.

At Knott’s, the theater was built around existing structures, although park founder Walter Knott, according to the book “Knott’s Preserved” by Chrstopher Merritt and J. Eric Lynxwiler, often talked about completing it as a full tribute to the Arizona space. That never really happened.

Knott’s re-created the original wallpaper of the Bird Cage Theatre for its remodeling.

(Kyusung Gong / For The Times)

And yet over the years the Bird Cage won over audiences thanks to programming from Vaudeville veterans. Early on, students from nearby colleges would appear at the space, including Steve Martin, whose signed photograph graces a celebrity wall in the Bird Cage’s introductory hall. Donna Mills and singer Rick Nelson have graced the Bird Cage’s horseshoe-shaped stage, as have Dean Jones and Skip Young.

It was, to say the least, a quirky place to perform. “Knott’s Preserved” tells of a show in which a mouse once sat at the base of the stage, and quotes Martin as reminiscing over performances affected by the weather. “When it rained, no one could hear each other because the rain was beating so hard on that tarp,” Martin said.

None of that should be a problem anymore, although returning guests will likely feel they’re in a familiar space. Though the Bird Cage has been outfitted with modern lighting capable of new theme park tricks and projections, the rig is hidden among curtains designed to re-create the look of the original tent. Lights, in bird cage enclosures, still hang above the audience seating area, which has room for about 250 guests.

The Bird Cage Theatre at Knott’s Berry Farm now has a properly enclosed roof and air conditioning.

(Kyusung Gong / For The Times)

And along the way a few discoveries were made. Adams says that when they began stripping away wooden walls added sometime in the 1970s, they found the Bird Cage’s original wallpaper, a scarlet-red strip that surrounds the space with flower-adorned bird cages. Not all of it could be salvaged, so Knott’s meticulously re-created the look. With the new-old wallpaper intact, Adams estimates that guests can count about 11,055 bird cages throughout the theater.

The original pieces will be preserved in the park and gifted to important Bird Cage players. Adams jokes, “If you have a mailing address for Mr. Steve Martin, I have a gift to send him.”

Universal Pictures will now keep its new films in theaters for at least five weekends, a reversal from the studio’s previous policy of at least 17 days that was set during the pandemic.

The change takes place immediately, the studio said Thursday. That means it will apply to its newest film, the Colleen Hoover romance “Reminders of Him,” which is out in theaters this weekend. Other upcoming films include Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” which will be released in July.

“Our windowing strategy has always been designed to evolve with the marketplace, but we firmly believe in the primacy of theatrical exclusivity and working closely with our exhibition partners to support a healthy, sustainable theatrical ecosystem,” Donna Langley, chair of NBCUniversal Entertainment, said in an email to the New York Times, which first reported the news.

Focus Features, Universal Pictures’ specialty film arm, will keep its existing theatrical exclusivity policies, which vary on a case-by-case basis. Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet,” for instance, was in theaters for 99 days, while 2024’s “Nosferatu” played for 58 days. The minimum is 17 days.

The amount of time films are available exclusively in theaters — known as “windowing” in industry jargon — has become a contentious topic of conversation in Hollywood.

That debate ramped up during the pandemic, when some studios shortened theatrical exclusivity periods in order to move films to release for video on demand or streaming.

Prior to the pandemic, those windows could be as long as 90 days. Now, the average is around 30 days.

Theater owners have argued that shorter windows cut into box office profits and train audiences to wait to watch a movie at home. Distributors have countered that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t necessarily work for smaller or mid-budget films, which may find a bigger audience via at-home viewing.

At last year’s CinemaCon trade conference, top theater lobbyist Michael O’Leary called on distributors to establish a minimum 45-day window, arguing there needed to be a “clear, consistent starting point” to set moviegoers’ expectations and affirm commitment to theatrical exclusivity.

The debate has become even more fierce as box office profits still have not recovered from the pandemic. Last year, theatrical revenue in the U.S. and Canada totaled about $8.87 billion, just 1.5% above 2024’s disappointing $8.74-billion tally.

The iPic dine-in movie theater chain has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and intends to pursue a sale of its assets, citing the difficult post-pandemic theatrical market.

The Boca Raton, Fla.-based company has 13 locations across the U.S., including in Pasadena and Westwood, according to a Feb. 25 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of Florida, West Palm Beach division.

As part of the bankruptcy process, the Pasadena and Westwood theaters will be permanently closed, according to WARN Act notices filed with the state of California’s Employment Development Department.

The company came to its conclusion after “exploring a range of possible alternatives,” iPic Chief Executive Patrick Quinn said in a statement.

“We are committed to continuing our business operations with minimal impact throughout the process and will endeavor to serve our customers with the high standard of care they have come to expect from us,” he said.

The company will keep its current management to maintain day-to-day operations while it goes through the bankruptcy process, iPic said in the statement. The last day of employment for workers in its Pasadena and Westwood locations is April 28, according to a state WARN Act notice. The chain has 1,300 full- and part-time employees, with 193 workers in California.

The theatrical business, including the exhibition industry, still has not recovered from the pandemic’s effect on consumer behavior. Last year, overall box office revenue in the U.S. and Canada totaled about $8.8 billion, up just 1.6% compared with 2024. Even more troubling is that industry revenue in 2025 was down 22.1% compared with pre-pandemic 2019’s totals.

IPic noted those trends in its bankruptcy filing, describing the changes in consumer behavior as “lasting” and blaming the rise of streaming for “fundamentally” altering the movie theater business.

“These industry shifts have directly reduced box office revenues and related ancillary revenues, including food and beverage sales,” the company stated in its bankruptcy filing.

IPic also attributed its decision to rising rents and labor costs.

The company estimated it owed about $141,000 in taxes and about $2.7 million in total unsecured claims. The company’s assets were valued at about $155.3 million, the majority of which coming from theater equipment and furniture. Its liabilities totaled $113.9 million.

The chain had previously filed for bankruptcy protection in 2019.

By day, you’d be forgiven for walking past the newest theater in downtown L.A.

It isn’t hidden in an alley or obscured via a nameless door. No, this performance space is essentially a theater in disguise, as it’s designed to look like an electrical box — a fabrication so real that when artist S.C. Mero was installing it in the Arts District, police stopped her, concerned she was ripping out its copper wire. (There is no copper wire inside this wooden nook.)

Open the door to the theater, and discover a place of urban enchantment, where a red velvet door and crimson wallpaper beckon guests to come closer and sit inside. That is, if they can fit.

With a mirror on its side and a clock in its back, Mero’s creation, about 6 feet tall and 3 feet deep yet smaller on its interior, looks something akin to an intimate, private boudoir — the sort of dressing room that wouldn’t be out of place in one of Broadway’s historic downtown theaters. That’s by design, says Mero, who cites the ornately romanticized vibe and color palette of the Los Angeles Theatre as prime inspiration. Mero, a longtime street artist whose guerrilla art regularly dots the downtown landscape, likes to inject whimsy into her work: a drainage pipe that gives birth, a ball pit for rats or the transformation of a dilapidated building into a “castle.” But there’s just as often some hidden social commentary.

With her Electrical Box Theatre, situated across from the historic American Hotel and sausage restaurant and bar Wurstküche, Mero set out to create an impromptu performance space for the sort of experimental artists who no longer have an outlet in downtown’s galleries or more refined stages. The American Hotel, for instance, subject of 2018 documentary “Tales of the American” and once home to the anything-goes punk rock ethos of Al’s Bar, still stands, but it isn’t lost on Mero that most of the neighborhood’s artist platforms today are softer around the edges.

Ethan Marks inside S.C. Mero’s theater inside a fake electrical box. The guerrilla art piece is near the American Hotel.

“A lot of galleries are for what can sell,” Mero says. “Usually that’s paintings and wall art.”

She dreamed, however, of an anti-establishment place that could feel inviting and erase boundaries between audience and perfomer. “People may be intimidated to get up on a stage or at a coffee shop, but here it’s right on street level.”

It’s already working as intended, says Mero. I visited the box early last week when Mero invited a pair of experimental musicians to perform. Shortly after trumpeter Ethan Marks took to the sidewalk, one of the American Hotel’s current residents leaned out his window and began vocally and jovially mimicking the fragmented and angular notes coming from the instrument. In this moment, “the box,” as Mero casually refers to it, became a true communal stage, a participatory call-and-response pulpit for the neighborhood.

Clown Lars Adams, 38, peers out of S.C. Mero’s theater inside a fake electrical box. Mero modeled the space off of Broadway’s historic theaters.

A few days prior, a rideshare driver noticed a crowd and pulled over to read his poetry. He told Mero it was his first time. The unscripted occurrence, she says, was “one of the best moments I’ve ever experienced in making art.”

“That’s literally what this space is,” Mero says. “It’s for people to try something new or to experiment.”

Marks jumped at the chance to perform for free inside the theater, his brassy freewheeling equally complementing and contrasting the sounds of the intersection. “I was delighted,” he says, when Mero told him about the stage. “There’s so much unexpectedness to it that as an improviser, it really keeps you in the moment.”

A downtown resident for more than a decade, Mero has become something of an advocate for the neighborhood. The area arguably hasn’t returned to its pre-pandemic heights, as many office floors sit empty and a string of high-profile restaurant closures struck the community. Mero’s own gallery at the corner of Spring and Seventh streets shuttered in 2024. Downtown also saw its perception take a hit last year when ICE descended on the city center and national media incorrectly portrayed the hood as a hub of chaos.

Artist S.C. Mero looks into her latest project, a fake electrical box in the Arts District. Mero has long been associated with street art in the neighborhood.

“A lot has changed in the 13 years when I first got down here,” Mero says. “Everybody felt like it was magic, like we were going to be part of this renaissance and L.A. was going to have this epicenter again. Then it descended. A lot of my friends left. But I still see the same beauty in it. The architecture. The history. Downtown is the most populous neighborhood in all of L.A. because it belongs to everybody. It’s everybody’s downtown, whether they love it or not. And I feel we are part of history.”

Art today in downtown ranges from high-end galleries such as Hauser & Wirth to the graffiti-covered towers of Oceanwide Plaza. Gritty spaces, such as Superchief Gallery, have been vocal about struggles to stay afloat. Mero’s art, meanwhile, remains a source of optimism throughout downtown’s streets.

At Pershing Square, for instance, sits her “Spike Cafe,” a mini tropical hideaway atop a parking garage sign where umbrellas and finger food props have become a prettier nesting spot for pigeons. Seen potentially as a vision for beautification, a contrast, for instance, from the nature intrusive barbs that aim to deter wildlife, “Spike Cafe” has become a statement of harmony.

Elsewhere, on the corner of Broadway and Fourth streets, Mero has commandeered a once historic building that’s been burned and left to rot. Mero, in collaboration with fellow street artist Wild Life, has turned the blighted space into a fantastical haven with a knight, a dragon and more — a decaying castle from a bygone era.

“A lot of times people are like, ‘I can’t believe you get away with that!’ But most people haven’t tried to do it, you know?” Mero says. “It can be moved easily. It’s not impeding on anyone. I don’t feel I do anything bad. Not having a permit is just a technicality. I believe what I’m doing is right.”

Musician Jeonghyeon Joo, 31, plays the haegeum outside of S.C. Mero’s latest art project, a theater in a faux electrical box.

After initially posting her electrical box on her social media, Mero says she almost instantly received more than 20 requests to perform at the venue. Two combination locks keep it closed, and Mero will give out the code to those she trusts. “Some people want to come and play their accordion. Another is a tour guide,” Mero says.

Ultimately, it’s an idea, she says, that she’s had for about a decade. “Everything has to come together, right? You have to have enough funds to buy the supplies, and then the skills to to have it come together.”

And while it isn’t designed to be forever, it is bolted to the sidewalk. As for why now was the right time to unleash it, Mero is direct: “I needed the space,” she says.

There are concerns. Perhaps, Mero speculates, someone will change the lock combination, knocking her out of her own creation. And the more attention brought to the box via media interviews means more scrutiny may be placed on it, risking its confiscation by city authorities.

As a street artist, however, Mero has had to embrace impermanence, although she acknowledges it can be a bummer when a piece disappears in a day or two. And unlike a gallerist, she feels an obligation to tweak her work once it’s out in the world. Though her “Spike Cafe” is about a year old, she says she has to “continue to babysit it,” as pigeons aren’t exactly known for their tidiness.

But Mero hopes the box has a life of its own, and considers it a conversation between her, local artists and downtown itself. “I still think we’re part of something special,” Mero says of living and working downtown.

And, at least for now, it’s the neighborhood with arguably the city’s most unique performance venue.

The lovely, funny “American Classic,” premiering Sunday on MGM+, is a love letter to theater, community and community theater. Kevin Kline plays Richard Bean, a narcissistic stage actor. He’s famous enough to be opening on Broadway in “King Lear,” but he has to be pushed onstage and is forgetting lines. After he drunkenly assails a hostile New York Times critic — caught on video, of course — he’s suspended from the play, and his agent (Tony Shalhoub) advises him to get out of town and lay low until the heat’s off, as they used to say in the gangster movies.

Learning that his mother (Jane Alexander, acting royalty, in film clips) has died, Richard heads back to his small Pennsylvania hometown, where his family — all actors, like the Barrymores, but no longer acting — owns a once-celebrated theater. To Richard’s horror, it has, for want of income, become a dinner theater, hosting touring productions of “Nunsense” and “Forever Plaid” instead of the great stage works on which he cut his teeth.

Brother Jon (Jon Tenney), running the kitchen at the theater, is married to Kristen (Laura Linney), Richard’s onetime acting partner, who dated him before her marriage; now she’s the mayor. Their teenage daughter, Miranda (Nell Verlaque) — a name from Shakespeare — does want to act and move to New York, as her mother had before her, but is afraid to tell her parents. Richard’s father, Linus (Len Cariou), is suffering from dementia, though not to the point he won’t actively contribute to the action; every day he comes out again as gay.

Across the eight-episode series, things move from the ridiculous to the sublime. Richard’s attempt to stage his mother’s funeral, with her coffin being lowered from the ceiling, while “Also sprach Zarathustra” plays and smoke billows toward the audience, fortunately comes to naught; but he announces at the ceremony that he’ll direct a production of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play “Our Town” at the theater, to “restore the soul of this town.” (His big idea is to ignore Wilder’s stage directions, which ask for no curtain, no set and few props, with a “realistic version,” featuring a working soda fountain, rain effects and a horse.) Fate will have other plans for this, and not to give away what in any case should be obvious, the title of the play will also become its ethos, with a cast of amateurs, including Miranda’s jealous boyfriend, Randall (Ajay Friese), and ordinary people standing in for the ordinary people of Wilder’s Grover’s Corners.

The series has a comfortable, cushiony feeling; it’s the sort of show that could have been made as a film in the 1990s, and in which Kline could have starred as easily in his 40s as in his 70s; it has the same relation to reality as “Dave,” in which he played a good-hearted ordinary Joe who takes the place of a lookalike U.S. president. The town is essentially a sunny place, full of mostly sunny people, to all appearances, a typical comedy hamlet. But we’re told it’s distressed, and Mayor Kristen is in transactional cahoots with developer Connor Boyle (Billy Carter), who wants clearance to build a casino on the site of a landmark hotel. (Much of the plot is driven by money — needing it, trading for it, leaving it, losing it.) He also wants his heavily accented, bombshell Russian girlfriend, Nadia (Elise Kibler), to have a part in “Our Town.”

As in the great Canadian comedy “Slings & Arrows,” set at a Shakespeare Festival outside of Toronto, themes and moments and speeches from the play being performed are echoed in the lives of the performers, while the viewer experiences the double magic of watching a fine actor playing an actor playing a part. Kline, of course, is himself an American classic, with a long stage and screen career that encompasses classical drama, romantic and musical comedy and cartoon voiceovers; the series makes room for Richard to perform soliloquies from “Hamlet” and “Henry V,” parts Klein has played onstage. He brings out the sweetness latent in Richard. Linney, who played against her sweetheart image in “Ozark,” is happily back on less deadly ground (though she’s tense and drinks a little). Tenney, who was sweet and funny on “The Closer,” and who we don’t see enough of these days, is sweeter and funnier here, and gets to sing. (All the Beans will sing, except for Linus.)

As a comedy, it is often predicable — you know that things will work out, and some major plot points are as good as inevitable — but it’s the good sort of predictability, where you get what you came for, where you hear the words you want to hear, ones you could never have written yourself. “American Classic” is not out to challenge your world view in any way but wants only to confirm your feelings and in doing so amplify them. Shock effects are fine in their place — and to be sure there are major twists in the plot — but there is a certain release when the thing you’re ready to have happen, happens, whether it brings laughter or tears. Either is welcome.

Director Sang-il Lee sets his epic-scaled “Kokuho” in the vivid world of kabuki theater, but it’s not just the movie’s milieu that distinguishes it. Spanning 50 years and running nearly three hours, “Kokuho,” which has become Japan’s biggest live-action hit ever, evinces intensely mixed feelings about its two main characters’ quest for greatness. Kabuki is presented as an art form of balletic skill, but it can never fully redeem or repair the film’s central figures, who once were friends before ambition got in the way.

In 1964 Nagasaki, 14-year-old Kikuo (Soya Kurokawa) performs at a New Year’s event, impressing Hanjiro (Ken Watanabe), a beloved kabuki legend. But after Kikuo’s father, a yakuza crime boss, is murdered, Hanjiro takes the grieving teen under his wing. Soon, Hanjiro is training Kikuo and his own son Shunsuke (Keitatsu Koshiyama) in his Osaka studio to become “onnagata” — male kabuki actors who portray female characters. Both sweet and bashful, Kikuo and Shunsuke quickly grow close, enduring Hanjiro’s exacting requirements as he shapes them to be graceful, disciplined performers.

“Kokuho” then fast-forwards to the early 1970s as we meet the grown-up versions of Kikuo (Ryo Yoshizawa) and Shunsuke (Ryusei Yokohama). Now practically brothers, the young men are making their name as a well-regarded kabuki duo, but their personalities have begun to diverge. Kikuo remains soft-spoken, while Shunsuke is more of a partier and big talker, dominating their interviews with local journalists. Hanjiro still thinks highly of them both, although each pupil faces disadvantages. Kikuo is more gifted but in this nepotistic art form, being part of a respected kabuki lineage is crucial, something this yakuza scion doesn’t possess. Shunsuke, meanwhile, lacks his friend’s formidable technique, but because he’s Hanjiro’s son, his future prospects are practically assured. Kikuo and Shunsuke complement one another as performers but a shocking turn of events will sever their bond.

Adapting a novel by Shuichi Yoshida, Lee maps the arc of a friendship while exploring the minutiae of kabuki, both on stage and behind the scenes. (The movie’s Oscar-nominated makeup is an acknowledgment of the blinding-white face paint and bright red lipstick that kabuki actors wear to transform into their roles.) Much like ballet, kabuki necessitates precise choreographed actions: Not only does “Kokuho” provide generous samples of different kabuki pieces but also includes captions that list the title of the individual works and a brief synopsis. Rarely do these pieces directly echo the two men’s interpersonal drama, but the information adds context to the actors’ enchanting movements, which are backed by gorgeous outfits and striking set design that accentuate the mythical tales being played out.

Kikuo and Shunsuke’s fortunes shift over the decades — one of them will literally be kicked when he’s down on two separate occasions — but Lee doesn’t let us settle on a definitive impression of either performer. Our sympathies change as we witness both men’s failings as well as their enduring virtues. “Kokuho” is a hearty melodrama with a little bit of everything — sex scandals, betrayals, unlikely comebacks, health scares — but the film’s gaudy plot twists (which shouldn’t be spoiled) belie the filmmaker’s unsentimental attitude regarding stardom’s perils. Refreshingly, “Kokuho” is that rare film to be un-awed by talent alone. Both Kikuo and Shunsuke will enjoy high highs and low lows, but it’s their perseverance that ultimately means more than arbitrary benchmarks like “genius” or “brilliance.”

The film’s title translates to “national treasure,” another clichéd term thrown around when trying to categorize greatness. Kikuo and Shunsuke revere kabuki’s bygone giants, who are affixed with that moniker. But as “Kokuho’s” characters seek such an accolade for themselves, they come to realize how misleading it is. Yoshizawa and Yokohama bring abiding tenderness to their characters’ friendship while refusing to allow either protagonist to be reduced to a simple set of qualities. Kikuo’s delicate features suggest a pure soul, but Yoshizawa gradually reveals other sides to this gifted, haunted performer. And Yokohama ably depicts a privileged young man who rightly views his good fortune as both blessing and curse.

Their lives intersect, then disentangle, then return to each other’s orbit again. That elegant dance matches what we see on stage, the kabuki performances melding melancholy and beauty, anguish and catharsis.