Despite the tropical storm (and little earthquake), KCON Los Angeles successfully wrapped up its 11th year at the Los Angeles Convention Center and Crypto.com Arena with over 140,000 fans in attendance.
What you first see: Actors dressed up in hilarious dorky crab costumes. What you actually get: A brilliant satire about the impact of “crab mentality” on oppressed communities whose members work against one another instead of together.
Latino Theater Company will partner with two Los Angeles-based Asian American companies and San Francisco’s Magic Theatre to close out 2023 with a fall season of exciting premieres at downtown’s Los Angeles Theatre Center.
Have you ever seen theatre that felt more like a defibrillator coursing electricity through your entire being, rather than the kind that makes (most) people snooze away? Then that is exactly the sensation you will be getting in the Geffen Playhouse’s latest production and world premiere of Ramiz Monsef‘s The Ants, directed by Pirronne Yousefzadeh, and starring Hugo Armstrong, Nicky Boulos, Megan Hill, Jeremy Radin, and Ryan Shrime.
LineCon, I mean, Anime Expo, is now upon us this weekend at the Los Angeles Convention Center and here’s a snippet of the things we are most excited about! From the countless activities, events, panels, and concerts that you can attend and all the endless artists & vendors you can support, there’s something for all the anime lovers guaranteed to swarm the halls:
Palm trees wrapped around the streets of Beverly Hills, and gorgeous golden rope lights wrapped around them, on the way to the exclusive William Morris Endeavour Screening Room, located near the heart of one of California’s most famous zip-codes.
If there’s a single name in the world of collectibles today that fills every fan with anticipation, it’s Funko. Featuring a wide array of Loungefly bags and, of course, Pops, the announcement of new projects from the venerable toy company always peaks interest among its millions of fans worldwide.
After a record breaking cold spell across usually-sunny California, the customary 80-degree weather had begun to pick up again in mid April; as the sun set over South Broadway’s historic Ace Hotel Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles, the golden views and massive crowds were a fitting way to welcome in students, poets, writers and songwriters from far and wide to the annual 2023 Classic Slam Competition Finals.
I have to make a conscious effort of reviewing plays I am invited to cover without learning anything about it and just go in completely blind. In this day and age, such an effort is difficult to do and even more so when the individual such as myself is an information devouring maniac.
Fuse’s standout original series Made From Scratch invites viewers into the kitchens of their favorite celebrities, like comedian Atsuko Okatsuka, as they cook their favorite dishes while sharing their most cherished memories with loved ones.
KCON Los Angeles is finally upon us this Friday, August 19 through Sunday, August 21 — and people are wondering WHAT DO I DO?! How do I navigate through this mecca of all things Hallyu?
CJ ENM revealed their headline artists for the World’s No. 1 K-Culture Festival, KCON 2022 in Los Angeles! Celebrating its 10th anniversary, KCON 2022 LA presented by Toyota will be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center and Crypto.com Arena from August 19-21.
I will always cherish plays, especially original plays, that have global majority actors be the leads in content that have nothing to do with their race/culture but rather other pressing issues of life, which in this particular case is an upcoming baby shower for a group of friends and the “baby question” that all the women in Nina Braddock’s Untitled Baby Play individually grapple with. Presented by IAMA Theatre Company and currently playing at the Atwater Village Theatre, the play does a tremendous job giving each of the ensemble members a chance to shine.
You would be hard pressed to find me wanting to watch a Shakespeare production willingly. While I am painfully aware his works are considered the echelon of fine performance arts training, my distaste for it only grew as a vast majority of Shakespeare productions only utilize white actors for the meaningful parts.
As in-person theatre is making more of a return throughout the United States and particularly in Los Angeles where I reside, there’s been a surge of plays that deal with traumatic topics of race when all or most of their cast members are that of Global Majority.
Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty takes viewers on a stylized journey through one of the most important times in the team’s legacy; the beginning of the 1980s. Known as the “Showtime Era,” this moment in NBA history changed the league immensely, revitalizing public interest in basketball, and introducing the world to the Lakers dynamo squad of Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Norm Nixon. These star players ball alongside the rest of the packed Lakers team, coached by Jerry West, and led by Jerry Buss.
Every so often, when a new series is introduced, it is immediately compared to what people may consider to be the most related to that. This rings especially true for new sitcoms and comedies starring people of color. When NBC’s Grand Crew was first announced as a series surrounding the lives of a group of Black friends at a wine bar, there were so many comparisons to HBO’s Insecure and ABC’s Black-ish that it straight away was labeled as a “Black” show.
Grab your purple and gold jerseys and a big tub of popcorn, it’s time to play ball. Or rather, it’s time to watch a bunch of other people play ball. Or… actually, it’s time to watch a guy buy a team of people who play ball. Point is, Lakers fans have a lot to be excited about.
To be watching plays again inside a theatre after 18 months was certainly a strange experience considering that Poor Clare, now playing at the Echo Theater Company, was something I was supposed review right before the pandemic shut everything down and drastically altered our lives for many months to come. To finally be able to watch this play (written by Chiara Atik and directed by Alana Dietze) was made all the worthwhile in how utterly fantastic it was and how much its themes struck even harder after everything we experienced during this chaotic time.
Since its debut on Netflix last month, the Korean survival drama Squid Game has become an obsession for everyone. With over 142 million households viewing the series, which helped Netflix add 4.38 million new subscribers, Squid Game‘s cultural phenomenon is not slowing down anytime soon.
Internet sensation Frankie Quinones arrives in a low rider with two of his most well known characters Creeper and Juanita in his first sketch and stand up comedy special on HBO in EntreNos Presents: Frankie Quinones: Superhomies. Frankie takes us through musings and anecdotes of his life, his family, and the community he grew up in with a lovely celebration of how far he has come; however, he has a hard time withstanding the weight of sharing the stage with three strong personas.
2020 has been a hard year for the entire world and for some business owners, the complete loss of their livelihood. Poet/Rapper/Activist, Jason Chu, recently reached out to The Nerds of Color to tell us the story of one of his favorite Los Angeles Hot Spots and how his latest single “AYCE” shines the spotlights on ‘Hop Woo Chinese BBQ & Seafood Restaurant’ and why we should support this Chinatown institution.
They all have a million secrets. What’s so bad about this one? The St. Catherine’s drama club is struggling to put up its first school play – Sophocles’ “Antigone.” As if staging this tragedy in an all-girls Catholic school isn’t challenging enough, the cast’s beloved director ends up betraying them in an unforgivable way — and it’s almost opening night! The cast must figure out the right course of action, all while rehearsing a classic play about impossibly difficult choices. What is the right thing to do? And must the show go on?
Antigone, Presented By The Girls Of St. Catherine’s came with much eager anticipation. Presented by Sacred Fools (which put up a fantastic world premiere production of Gifted), written by Madhuri Shekar, and directed by Reena Dutt (who knocked it out of the park with her previously directed play Defenders), did the play met my expectation? More after the jump below: