• Friday Night Sing-along - 70's Funk at the Keck Amphitheatre at Disney Hall
• Summer on the Plaza - free concerts at 7th & Fig - Fridays through the end of the month
• Bloomfest LA - arts and music festival on the streets in the Artists District on Saturday
• Los Feliz Village Street Festival on Hollywood Blvd between Vermont & Hillhurst on Sunday
• Movies on the Green starts up this Saturday in Warner Park in Woodland Hills (free concerts continue on Sundays)

ALSO THIS WEEK:

• The Orange County Fair now through mid August
• Downtown at Sunset - L.A. Conservancy's summer program offering tours of historic L.A. on Wednesday evenings now through August
• South Central Farm Tour : "Sweat is Beautiful" - spend the day at a farm near Bakersfield. Take a bus from L.A. or carpool. This is a very inexpensive trip. You've missed today's tour but they are offering it again on a Saturday in August.

TIP: you can find events and other things to do near you - you'll find neighborhood and regional calendar links at the bottom of all Eye Spy LA web pages.

 

There are more events this week of course check out the July Calendar for other things to do this weekend and beyond.  PLAN AHEAD: August Calendar .

Steve Connell and Sekou Andrews fearlessly unleash their own powerful brand of humanism through an acerbic frenzy of riveting spoken word, hip-hop and philosophical musings. Between them, language is their only weapon as they tackle monumental issues with the deadly accuracy of David against Goliath. Spiritual, complex, urban and urbane, their words ricochet against the graffiti-painted walls, hitting their mark and hitting home "what must be spoken/must be heard."

 

And the people are listening. Originally produced at the Signature Theatre and later developed at the Ojai Playwrights Festival, "The Word Begins" also appeared most recently at the LA Radar Festival to critical acclaim. Now at the Rogue Machine in partnership with the Hip-Hop Theater Festival, a new crop of listeners are hanging onto their every word... 

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After watching Chef/Owner Scott Conant on the show, Chopped, show no mercy when Italian dishes were cooked improperly, I was definitely curious as to what his food was going to be like. Will his exacting standards follow through on his own menu at his newly opened restaurant, Scarpetta, in Beverly Hills?

 

  

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Miguel Gutierrez is charming, intelligent and beguiling.

  

Co-presented by Show Box L.A. and Blankenship Ballet at the Alexandria Hotel in a two part format (once like a visit to his studio, but more personal and the second the "performance") HEAVENS WHAT HAVE I DONE has Gutierrez dress and undress the performance medium for us-explaining each bit we see while simultaneously making clear it all means little... 

 

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Sometimes fiction is stranger than the truth, especially when a married couple of writers reinvent their lives in the pages of their journals. What is real and what is fantasy becomes a Gordian knot; entangling one woman who acts as their muse into their zinger-laden relationship.

 

Steven Dietz's writer-centric play, (if you're not a writer you won't appreciate much of the humor), borders on melodrama when Linda (Courtney Sara Bell), a creative writing professor with one breakout novel under her belt, is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. With only three weeks to live, she asks her husband Michael (Darren T. Mangler) if she can read his journals, opening up a Pandora's Box of trouble...

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 It's tempting to play around with what if's concerning two titan figures of the stage and screen, but does it make for good theater? That's the crux of the problem in Gregg Ostrin's new play.

 

What if?...an unknown actor and a celebrated playwright tussled in an egocentric driven power play...who would win? I can almost hear Michael Buffer's catchphrase, "Let's get ready to rumble!"...

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