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The Skirball Cultural Center partially reopens this weekend with “Ai Weiwei: Trace,” the artist’s portraits of imprisoned dissidents and free-speech advocates, all crafted with Lego bricks. It’s a smaller version of Ai’s installation for his unprecedented 2014 exhibition on Alcatraz, which Times critic Christopher Knight called “an always-poignant, often-powerful meditation on soul-deadening repressions of human thought and feeling.”
The Skirball show leads our weekend list of cultural offerings for your viewing consideration. All times are Pacific.
SoCal in-person events
“Ai Weiwei: Trace”
The acclaimed artist and activist‘s Lego portraits go on view in an 8,000-square-foot gallery lined with a gold-colored wallpaper, a design by Ai’s studio that turns images of surveillance equipment into a decorative pattern. 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., L.A. Saturday through Aug. 1. $7-$12; kids under 2 are free; advance timed-entry tickets required. skirball.org
The Huntington will present the virtual premiere of
Eleanor Burgess s
Lisa Banes and
Jordan Boatman. The show is free and will be available until June 13. Viewers can sign up to see it here.
Tony-nominated actor
We Have to Hurry, streaming live via Broadway on Demand for two performances only, Saturday,
June 5, at 8pm and Sunday,
June 6, at 3pm. The heartwarming new play, about a pair of mature people reigniting their spark during the sunset years of life, is written by playwright, director and actor
Dorothy Lyman and is directed by
Patricia Vanstone. Proceeds will benefit the Actors Fund Home East and West. Tickets are available here.
Anna & Sergei. Did you rethink how you wanted to tell the story?
Well, it was written for [in-person] theater. When the pandemic hit, I was rehearsing here and we were scheduled literally to go to America with the whole team, two weeks later, something like that. March 10th everything shut down here, so all that was annulled of course.
So this was supposed to be a stage play and that was the way we worked it. And then as I started adapting it for the screen I realized Nicholas has a much bigger part onscreen because Rachmaninoff is talking directly to the audience in a fever dream, and who he s talking to in the fever dream is the Tsar. But you can t quite do that on film; it would be very awkward. You can do it in the theater because, you know, it captures differently. So I realized we can t just say Anna & Sergei when the Tsar is one of the main characters. The structure of the play is the same; it s just how it s told on film is with more characters, and so I thought it would
Verdi’s
Nabucco. Conductor: Marco Armiliato, director: Günter Krämer. With Plácido Domingo, Freddie De Tommaso, Riccardo Zanellato, Anna Pirozzi. Production from January 2021. Register for free and view here. 8 am ET: Wigmore Hall presents Timothy Ridout & Tom Poster. 2019 New Generation Artist Timothy Ridout joins Tom Poster from Wigmore Hall’s Associate Artists, the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, to bring the world première of Kurt Schwertsik’s
Haydn lived in Eisenstadt, written especially for this concert. This will be performed between two Brahms viola sonatas which were originally written for clarinet. Register, view here and on demand for 30 days. LIVE
Marco Ramirez s
Rachel Chavkin,
through May 16 for free via Broadway On Demand. Those looking for access can register on the Lincoln Center Theater website. Ramirez s drama is inspired by the life of
Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight world champion. The production opened at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater on March 7, 2016, with a cast made up of
McKinley Belcher III, Khris Davis, Montego Glover, John Lavelle, and
Clarke Peters.
Sergei Rachmaninoff in the world premiere of
Anna & Sergei Live From Florence on
May 16 at 8pm ET. Taking place as a memory play in the house in which the Russian Rachmaninoff died in Beverly Hills, this is the story of a very strange meeting between Rachmaninoff and Anna Anderson, the woman who claimed to be the sole surviving member of the Romanov Dynasty, the Princess Anastasia. Featuring Rachmaninoff s most beloved melodies and music. Purchase includes the live stream and a week of ON DEMAND viewing access to the recording of the liv