Highways Presents the Best Poets in LA

World Premiere Musical Camila

From Page to Stage with Judy Blume

Citywide Reads Highest Tide

Mexican Calendar Girls

Pirates and Mermaids at McCabe's

You'll Laugh, You'll Cry, You'll Think!

The Alien performs on Friday night

Become a Myspace friend of the Poetry Festival here.

Have you ever wondered if this century's Rogers and Hammerstein might be getting ready to bust out all over?  Is someone watching over the next George Gershwin? Could a budding Sondheim be sitting in a barber's chair somewhere?  L.A.'s First Festival of New American Musical is presenting these future giants of the stage in May and June in locations throughout Los Angeles.  Camila is a true story of forbidden love so powerful a government banned people from talking of it for a hundred and fifty years. Presented in a tango bar, through song and dance, Camila tells the tale of a young woman and a priest sentenced to death for the crime of falling in love.

In its sixth year, Santa Monica Citywide Reads encourages everyone who lives, works in or is visiting Santa Monica to read and discuss the same book, and participate in complementary special events.  The 2008 selection is Jim Lynch’s the Highest Tide, a touching coming-of-age novel, set in a beachside community and starring a charming thirteen-year-old protagonist trying to find his way through the world.  At An Afternoon with Jim Lynch, the author of this heartwarming novel will read and discuss his book with audience members followed by a book signing.  Copies of the book will be available for sale at the event.  Check out the Library’s blog to read others’ comments about this terrific book selection. 

The Golden Age of Mexican Calendar Art, 1930 – 1960
11:00 am – 4:00 pm
Wednesday through Sunday
The California Heritage Museum
2612 Main Street
310/392.8537

This exhibition of more than thirty images from the vibrant popular culture of post-revolutionary Mexico consists of brilliantly colored lithographic prints. 

This exhibition of more than thirty images from the vibrant popular culture of post-revolutionary Mexico consists of brilliantly colored lithographic prints.  The calendars were distributed across the country, decorating homes and workplaces from Chihuahua to Chiapas with the same pictures. It was, in part, these commercial images that popularized the idea of a unified and prosperous new nation, even as they acted as nostalgic reminders of the days before the revolution.

Leslie Bixler and the Moonfood Band
11:00 am
Sunday, May 18
McCabes
3101 Pico Boulevard
310/828.4497
Purchase tickets on line here

Songer-songwriter Leslie Bixler and the Moonfood Band perform songs about rainbows and mermaids as well as relatively terrestrial fare, such as fat cats. Bixler raises the roof at McCabe's with freeze-dancing, puppets, pirates and other madness.

Black & Bluestein
Saturdays at 8:00 pm through May 31
Santa Monica Playhouse
1211 4th Street
800/838.3006
Purchase tickets online

The return production of Jerry Mayer’s engaging dramedy, set in 1963 St. Louis, explores the ripple effect in the neighborhood when a well-to-do black scientist Dan Black wants to buy a home in an upscale, all-white mostly Jewish neighborhood from the Jewish builder, Jeff Bluestein. Tension, conflict, prejudice, fear of plunging home values, and Jewish guilt add up to gripping drama and laugh-out- loud comedy.  As a side note, the play is based on a true story and was originally pitched for an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show but was much too controversial for its time!