In the early 1990s, writer Viet Thanh Nguyen read a book about the Mexican-American border he found timely: “Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border,” by Luís Alberto Urrea. Read more...
Photo: Authors Viet Thanh Nguyen, a refugee from Vietnam, and Luís Alberto Urrea, an immigrant from Mexico, will discuss their writing and personal backgrounds in Royce Hall on Thursday. (Courtesy of BeBe Jacobs and Joe Mazza)
Los Angeles is more than just one city – it’s Brentwood and Culver City, Santa Monica and Inglewood, Westwood and more. However, the different sides of the city aren’t well represented in film, said Matthew Oquendo, director of “LA Metro Project,” a new web series that connects each episode by way of the Metro. Read more...
Photo: “The LA Metro Project,” which premieres Thursday night at the James Bridges Theater, takes audience members to different locations throughout Los Angeles. Director Matthew Oquendo wanted to avoid the typical tourist locations, instead highlighting different aspects of the city. (Courtesy of Carlos E. Pèrez)
Thirty years ago, buying cannabis was difficult, expensive and illegal. Buying cannabis in 2019 is somewhere between picking up a prescription from a pharmacy and buying beer from a liquor store. Read more...
Photo: The Cure Company, a cannabis cultivation facility near Boyle Heights, houses thousands of plants in eight different grow rooms. Seedlings at the facility begin their life in a nursery and are then moved into other grow rooms as they reach maturity. (Liz Ketcham/Assistant Photo editor)
Klezmer originated in Eastern Europe but finds its future in a new generation of American Jewish youth. UClezLA, which took place Sunday at Schoenberg Hall, is a Yiddish culture festival which included workshops on klezmer, a musical genre containing Jewish influences and a mixture of sounds from Romani music and Polish folk music. Read more...
Photo: Miri Koral, a professor of Yiddish culture and language at UCLA, read Yiddish poetry during a workshop Sunday while musicians from the band Klezmer Juice played music behind her. (Amy Dixon/Photo editor)
Evgenia Citkowitz met Mona Simpson around 35 years ago – she was the latter’s summer intern at The Paris Review. On Tuesday, Simpson, a novelist and English professor at UCLA, will moderate a book talk at the Hammer Museum centered around Citkowitz’s new fictional novel “The Shades,” which was released June 19. Read more...
Photo: Author Evgenia Citkowitz will discuss her novel “The Shades” at the Hammer Museum moderated by English professor Mona Simpson. Citkowitz will read an excerpt of her novel, which explores the anguish of a family following the death of their 16-year-old daughter. (Courtesy of Natalya Sands)
A performer was already standing on the Royce Hall stage as the audience shuffled toward their assigned seats. He emulated the frozen stride of an Egyptian hieroglyph while his head gently pivoted on its axis to scan the space. Read more...
Photo: “The Great Tamer,” a piece of dance theater created by Dimitris Papaioannou, premiered in the U.S. on Friday in Royce Hall through the Center for the Art of Performance. (Courtesy of Julian Mommert)
Shawn Simmons watched a child get beat up by about five other children, only to stand back up and throw a rock at his tormentors. Though he was only about eight years old at the time, the memory stayed with him and eventually inspired a scene in his YouTube Originals series, “Wayne.” Simmons said the scene was the first part he wrote for the show a few years ago, with the boy manifesting as the eponymous character, Wayne. Read more...
Photo: Mark McKenna and Ciara Bravo star in “Wayne,” an upcoming YouTube Originals story following the titular character as he searches for his deceased father’s stolen car. (Courtesy of Jacara Jenkins)
