It’s October, which means it’s officially the start of spooky season. I’m arts and culture writer Ashley Lee, here with my colleague Jessica Gelt to bring you all the Essential Arts news and The Times’ top picks for what to check out around Los Angeles and beyond.
Best bets: On our radar this week
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1. Luminex 3.0
Back for a third year, this free, one-night-only event tasks multimedia artists with transforming the buildings of L.A.’s South Park district into massive canvases for digital art installations. Featured artists include JOJO ABOT, Refik Anadol, Alice Bucknell, Nao Bustamante, Petra Cortright, Marc Horowitz, Carole Kim and Sarah Rara, plus works with Los Angeles Video Artists. While the outdoor exhibition is walkable, pedicabs are available to book beforehand. Saturday, 7-11:30 p.m. 1119 S. Olive St., downtown. luminexla.com
2. Hwy 62 Open Studio Art Tours
Head to the desert for the state’s largest open studio event back for its 24th year. The annual gathering — which is entirely free and takes place over three weekends this month — sees more than 180 artists in the Joshua Tree region opening their studios for community engagement, self-guided tours and direct purchases. This year’s edition adds “Art Tours After Dark,” offering live music performances by more than 70 local acts at venues throughout the area. Oct. 5-6, 12-13 and 19-20. hwy62arttours.org
3. “Tesla: A Radio Play for the Stage”
This PST Art production, recounting the extraordinary life and works of Nikola Tesla, stars French Stewart as the titular inventor, alongside Gregory Harrison as George Westinghouse, Hal Linden as Thomas Edison and Mark Twain, Dan Lauria as Stanford White and J. Pierpont Morgan, and more. Written by Dan Duling and directed by Michael Arabian, the radio drama features live sound effects by Tony Palermo. I’ll be at one of the five performances, which run Friday through Sunday. Ramo Auditoriumat Caltech, 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena. pst.art
And for devout revelers of the aforementioned spooky season, features columnist Todd Martens collated the best Halloween events around town: “Nights at museums, days at pumpkin patches and evenings at everything from haunted houses to botanical gardens to burlesque experiences. Halloween season is surprisingly diverse in its offerings.”
— Ashley Lee
The week ahead: A curated calendar
FRIDAY
“Crevasse” German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl goes to Hollywood in 1938 and Walt Disney is the only studio head who will meet with her in this encore presentation of Tom Jacobson’s acclaimed drama, following its world premiere in July.
8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 4 p.m. Sundays, through Oct. 27. Victory Theatre Centre, 3326 W. Victory Blvd., Burbank. thevictorytheatrecenter.org
Latinx New Play Festival The free event includes in-person readings of new works, panel discussions and more.
Through Sunday. La Jolla Playhouse, 2910 La Jolla Village Drive, La Jolla. lajollaplayhouse.org
NOFX The band ends its 40-year-run with its final performances at its very own all-day Punk in Drublic festival.
12:30 p.m. Friday-Sunday. Berth 46, 3011 Miner St., San Pedro. punkindrublicfest.com
San Diego Symphony The orchestra puts its newly renovated home, the Jacobs Music Center, to the test with Mahler’s Second Symphony (“Resurrection”), the very work that Esa-Pekka Salonen chose to prove the greatness of Walt Disney Concert Hall 21 years earlier. 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. Jacobs Music Center, 1245 Seventh Ave., San Diego. sandiegosymphony.org
Wonmi’s Warehouse programs The first in a series of live events, “Build This House” is a celebration of ballroom culture co-presented by the Banjee Ball Foundation and includes a weekend of workshops and performances culminating in a ball.
5 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, 152 N. Central Ave., Little Tokyo. moca.org
SATURDAY
Omar Apollo The singer brings to life his yearning breakup songs and glistening club jams at his biggest L.A. headlining gig to date. With Kevin Abstract, now concentrating on a solo career after nearly a decade with the hip-hop boy band Brockhampton.
7 p.m. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood. hollywoodbowl.com
Michael Feinstein The singer performs “Because of You: My Tribute to Tony Bennett” with the Carnegie Hall Big Band.
8 p.m. Segerstrom Center for the Performing Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. scfta.org
“Heading Into Night” Cirque du Soleil clown Daniel Passer stars in this humorous play about memory, co-created by director by Beth F. Milles.
Through Nov. 17. Odyssey Theatre, 2055 South Sepulveda Blvd. odysseytheatre.com
Long Beach Symphony Music director Eckart Preu leads the ensemble as it celebrates its 90th anniversary with a program featuring the West Coast premiere of Anna Clyne’s “Quarter Days Concerto for String Quartet” along with Dvorak’s “New World Symphony.”
7:30 p.m. Saturday. Terrace Theater, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach. longbeachsymphony.org
“Norwid’s Return” Marek Probosz directs and stars in this monodrama that uses classical music and the words of the 19th-century writer to investigate his complex inner life; in Polish with English supertitles.
8 p.m. Saturday; 3 p.m. Sunday. Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. odysseytheatre.com
SUNDAY
Academy Museum Two new exhibitions open: “Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema” features film clips, photographs, posters, production cels and color charts, iconic props and costumes; “Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Cinema” examines the impact and influence of the sci-fi subgenre on movie culture.
“Color in Motion,” through July 13; “Cyberpunk,” through April 12, 2026. Academy Museum, 6067 Wilshire Blvd. academymuseum.org
Fall Exhibitions David Hockney’s “Big Tech” features homemade prints created on an office color copy machine in the 1980s, as well as his 21st century iPad and iPhone drawings; Derrick Adams explores Black life through collage, printmaking, painting and installations in “Selected Editions.”
Through Oct. 19. Leslie Sacks Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., B6, Santa Monica. lesliesacks.com
“Sangre de Nopal/Blood of the Nopal” The exhibit “Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Contemporary Art” features the work of Tanya Aguiñiga and Porfirio Gutiérrez, as well as other artists, exploring the scientific and Indigenous origins of cochineal, a red dye developed by the Zapotec peoples.
Through Jan. 12. Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, 653 Paseo Nuevo. mcasantabarbara.org
“Sing Joyfully” The Los Angeles Master Chorale’s 60th Anniversary Celebration Concert includes William Byrd’s titular work, along with compositions by Anton Bruckner, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla, Morten Lauridsen, Elinor Remick Warren, Moses Hogan and Leonard Bernstein, among others.
7 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. lamasterchorale.org
Dispatch: Gavin Creel
The Tony Award-winning theater actor, known for his roles in “Into the Woods,” “Waitress,” “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and “Hello, Dolly!,” died Monday of an aggressive form of cancer. He was 48. Friends and colleagues from the Broadway community, including Bette Midler, Sutton Foster and Josh Gad, mourned his loss with many citing his incredible kindness. “Everyone fell in love with Gavin,” wrote “The Book of Mormon” star Andrew Rannells on social media.
Times theater critic Charles McNulty remembered Creel as a “blazing talent” who “had a way of blending innocence with irony that made him the most sincere, dashing and lovable Broadway ham of his era. And by ‘ham,’ I mean of course musical comedy virtuoso.”
Culture news and the SoCal scene
One of L.A.’s biggest arts posts has been filled. The Hammer Museum this week announced the selection of Zoë Ryan to be its new director. Ryan, who arrives from the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, will replace departing director Ann Philbin, who became a towering figure in the art world during her 25 years with the Hammer. Ryan brings with her an enthusiasm for the Hammer’s artist-centric mission statement and a wealth of knowledge about architecture and design.
John Perrin Flynn, who co-founded Rogue Machine in 2008, has announced his retirement effective at the end of the current season. In a candid interview with Charles McNulty, Flynn talked about the myriad challenges facing 99-seat theaters since the pandemic. At 77, Flynn said it was time for him to step away and called his job as artistic director “thankless and difficult.” Still, his love of theater shines through much of the conversation. He just wishes that big theaters weren’t so risk-averse, making it hard for new work and new artists to break through.
McNulty also took time to reflect on the life and career of the lateMaggie Smith — an actress who he notes was a paragon of versatility. Smith got her start in theater and was trained as a repertory stage actor in England. McNulty recalls that he saw Smith only once onstage, back when he was still a student in 1990. The play was Peter Shaffer’s“Lettice and Lovage,” and it would be Smith’s last time on Broadway. Her performance earned her a Tony Award. “Audiences flocked to the Ethel Barrymore Theatre to see a comic virtuoso in full fight. Watching Smith lob verbal grenades with her co-star Margaret Tyzack was like watching Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova trade forehands at Wimbledon,” McNulty writes.
What’s more, in a hectic week for theater, McNulty managed to weigh in on Robert Downey Jr.’s Broadway debut in the world premiere of Ayad Akhtar’s play “McNeal,” about a literary lion who succumbs to the temptations of AI. “Downey, who plunged into tech’s moral gray zones in his ‘Iron Man’ outings, makes it possible for an audience to both deplore McNeal and delight in the abrasive pleasure of his company,” wrote McNulty. “What his impressively embodied portrayal can’t overcome is the play’s lifeless set of relationships.”
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Long Beach Opera artistic director and chief creative officer James Darrahwill join the faculty of UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music as a professor of music this fall. He will also serve as the new director of Opera UCLA. Darrah will remain with Long Beach Opera while taking on these new roles.
The annual MacArthur Fellowshipswere announced earlier this week, and just like that, 22 Americans recognized for extraordinary achievement and promise in their respective fields were awarded a no-strings-attached stipend of $800,000, to be disbursed over a period of five years. The honor, known as the MacArthur Genius Grant, is doled out by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and this year’s winners include a number of artists and performers, including the cabaret-inspired performer Justin Vivian Bond, media artist Tony Cokes, violinist Johnny Gandelsman, multimedia artist Ebony G. Patterson, dancer and choreographer Shamel Pitts and visual artist Wendy Red Star.
A life-size canvas from the Museo Nacional del Prado will go on view at the Norton Simon Museum from Dec. 13 to March 24. “Queen Mariana of Austria,” (1652–53), a portrait of the 18-year-old monarch by 17th century Spanish painter Diego Velázquez, has never before been exhibited on the West Coast. A selection of the artist’s other works will also be on display during this time.
—Jessica Gelt
And last but not least
A powerful and universal reminder from the late and widely loved Creel, via composer-lyricist Benj Pasek.