At one point in “Bring It On: The Musical,” inspired by the rival cheerleading film of the same name, Bridget, the team’s chubby mascot, gets some moxie from a pep talk about a boy she likes.
When Canter’s Deli first opened in Los Angeles, it was not at its now-famous location on Fairfax Avenue, but in Boyle Heights. And though Canter’s and most of the neighborhood’s Jews have long since deserted Boyle Heights, it was forever touched by the culture of the Jewish community that once called it home. Later waves of immigration brought Japanese, Latino and Russian immigrants to the area, giving Boyle Heights a unique and vibrant ethnic vibe.
He was often called “the Jewish James Bond” and “the Conscience of the Holocaust” for his activities in the pursuit of Nazis. It was a mission to which the late Simon Wiesenthal dedicated some 58 years of his life, after having been a prisoner in several concentration camps during World War II. The iconic figure lives again in the one-man show “Nazi Hunter — Simon Wiesenthal,” starring and written by Tom Dugan. The production is now running at Theatre 40, a professional theater company located on the campus of Beverly Hills High School.
Murray Schisgal’s comedy “LUV” is, as the alert reader might suspect, about love, even passionate love, but don’t expect any moon in June or till death do us part nonsense. Actually, “LUV” works best as an anti-love play, and, after seeing it, any starry-eyed boy or girl might opt for a celibate life of devotion, if only their parents would let them.
It may seem a sign of overconfidence for someone to tell you he’s rewriting a major work by Beethoven, but for David Lang, who reconceived Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” for his Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning 2008 opera, “The Little Match Girl Passion,” it’s just business as usual.
Jason Alexander immediately apologizes for his voice when he comes to the phone. He’s hoarse because he’s been yelling nonstop for his current role, Mel Edison, in the darkly comic “Prisoner of Second Avenue,” which is in the midst of a three-week run at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood. The show closes May 15 .
USC freshman Shayna Turk, a 2010 graduate and former class president of New Community Jewish High School in West Hills, didn’t expect a nice gesture with a simple purpose to turn into a mitzvah with the power to save and restore young lives. The musical theater summer camp she created seven years ago, Shayna Turk’s Academy of Rising Stars (S.T.A.R.S.), has evolved into a substantial philanthropic enterprise. Her selfless, charitable pursuit garnered her the title of Young Entrepreneur of The Year in June 2010 and a $10,000 college scholarship from the National Federation of Independent Business Young Entrepreneur Foundation and Visa.
The original title of Jake Ehrenreich’s show-in-the-making was a rather bland “Growing Up in America,” but, fortunately, it will open Feb. 16 at American Jewish University under the more pointed title, “A Jew Grows in Brooklyn.”\n\nHow the title change came about is described by his director, Jon Huberth, in the companion book to the show.
It wasn’t the fact that stars like Andy Garcia and Calista Flockhart were walking the red carpet that had people buzzing on Jan. 29. It was where they did it — not Hollywood and not downtown. It was Northridge. As a pink sky turned purple, more than 1,400 people gathered at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) to celebrate the long-awaited opening of its Valley Performing Arts Center (VPAC).
In a rehearsal room of the Ahmanson Theatre, Moises Kaufman recounts a story about Ludwig van Beethoven, a central figure in his new play, “33 Variations” — or, rather, a story about the composer’s hair. When Beethoven died in 1827, the custom was to trim the locks of famous decedents to sell as relics; eventually some of that hair came into the possession of a Jewish family, who traded it for their freedom from the Nazis.
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