This week, 18th-century playboy Don Giovanni returns to the UCLA stage donning a black-and-white suit and fedora. On Feb. 14, Opera UCLA premiered a contemporary production of Mozart’s classic two-act opera “Don Giovanni.” A winner of the Luciano Pavarotti International Voice Competition, guest director Jeffrey Buchman’s production is showing again at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse this Friday and Sunday. Read more...

Photo: Opera UCLA, UCLA Philharmonia and the Department of Theater collaborate on a modern adaptation of Mozart’s two-act “Don Giovanni” by guest director Jeffrey Buchman. The performance premiered at the Freud Playhouse on Feb. 14 and continues with performances this Friday and Sunday. (Austin Yu/Daily Bruin)

As the lighting dims to near-darkness, Olivia Schafer’s disembodied torso appears to dance above the black Marley floor. Schafer and the other dancers, clothed in white turtlenecks and jet-black pants, seem to float through the intricate routine. Read more...

Photo: Hosted by the world arts and cultures/dance department in Kaufman Hall, WACsmash’D is a showcase that features 16 performance pieces incorporating film, photography, spoken word and dance. Produced by Olivia Schafer, a fourth-year world arts and cultures/dance and communication studies student, the showcase includes “The Warning,” a five-person hip-hop, jazz and contemporary dance piece. (Photo credit: Yin Fu/Daily Bruin)

A sign in Beverly Hills read“Stop making stupid people famous.” A makeshift grave marked victims of gun violence on Melrose Ave. A “Useless Plastic Box” was priced at $99.99 inside a Sherman Oaks Best Buy. Read more...

Photo: Plastic Jesus is a Los Angeles-based artist whose artwork is inspired by popular culture, politics and news. His work, which will be on display in Kerckhoff Art Gallery until Feb. 1, aims to draw viewers attention to problems the artist sees in society, such as homelessness.

A woman furrows her eyebrows and grits her teeth, bracing herself as she pulls up the hem of her skirt. She injects a syringe into her thigh, and on the table beside her sits the source of her pain and detrimental pleasure: morphine. Read more...

Photo: UCLA’s Hammer Museum’s newest exhibition, “Tea and Morphine: Women in Paris, 1880 to 1914,” comprises of about 100 works that explore Parisian female archetypes, including Eugene Grasset’s “La morphinomane (The Morphine Addict).”

To costume designer and professor Deborah Landis, the story of a stage performance begins before the characters utter a single word. Landis, founding director of the David Copley Center for the Study of Costume Design, said costumes are integral in developing the characters’ story. Read more...