Monster Mash: Jim Parsons returning to Broadway?; 'Finding Neverland'

Emmy winner: Jim Parsons, who stars in TV's "The Big Bang Theory," is in talks for a Broadway revival of "Harvey." (New York Times)

Resurrected?: "Finding Neverland," the new musical that was canceled at the La Jolla Playhouse, will have workshop productions in London. (Daily Mail)

Under the weather: Placido Domingo was unable to sing this week in Florida Grand Opera's performance of "Luisa Fernanda" due to a throat infection. (Miami Herald)

Hot topic: A look into the worldwide debate concerning the repatriation of antiquities. (The Art Newspaper)

Free money: California organizations received $4.3 million in the latest round of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. (Los Angeles Times)

Going public: Artist Ai Weiwei spoke to television journalists about his battle with Chinese officials over taxes. (Guardian)

Staying put: Conductor Leonard Slatkin has signed a new three-year deal with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, extending his tenure as music director through the 2015-16 season. (Detroit Free Press)

Nature's best: Some ancient paintings are being restored with the help of special bacteria. (Wired)

Heading home: Indiana University will return a painting depicting the flagellation of Christ to the Berlin palace from which it disappeared in 1945. (Associated Press via Chicago Tribune)

Major composers: The Salzburg Festival has commissioned new operas from Gyorgy Kurtag, Marc-Andre Dalbavie, Thomas Ades and Jorg Widmann. (Associated Press)

Maintaining dignity: The financially struggling New York City Opera has rejected offers from musicians to perform for free. (NY1)

Gray matter: Samples of Albert Einstein's brain are going on display at the Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Stranger than fiction: A painting by a mythical artist has sold at auction. (Guardian)

Improvising: The Kentucky Opera has notified patrons that it will not have an orchestra for its Friday and Sunday performances of Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro." (Louisville Courier-Journal)

Baring it all: A male porn star will give a master class at New York's Museum of Arts and Design. (Huffington Post)

Also in the L.A. Times: Film critic Kenneth Turan reviews "Eames: The Architect and the Painter."

-- David Ng

Photo: Jim Parsons in CBS' "The Big Bang Theory." Credit: Cliff Lipson / CBS

Muzeo exhibit hall in Anaheim has a new executive director

Muzeo, the downtown Anaheim exhibition hall that opened four years ago aiming to establish that culture could join theme parks on visitors’ itineraries, has appointed John A. Scola as its new executive director.

Scola is a veteran fundraising executive for nonprofit organizations. He was president of the Orange Catholic Foundation, the fundraising wing of the Diocese of Orange, from 2006 to 2009, then started a consultancy. The Mission Viejo resident began his new job this week, succeeding Peter Comiskey, Muzeo’s first executive director.

Comiskey said in a statement that he had been dividing his time between Muzeo and as manager of the Downtown Anaheim Assn., a nonprofit group that promotes the area, which is about two miles from Disneyland, as an aspiring urban hub.  He said Muzeo has reached the stage where it needs “the full-time attention of a full-time executive director.”

Muzeo doesn’t have a collection; its eclectic mission is to bring in touring exhibits ranging through art, history and science. The two current shows deal with the Victorian era -- “The Queen’s Gallery: Art from the Collection of Dr. Howard and Linda Knohl,” and “Steampunk: History Beyond Imagination.”

Muzeo’s 2010-11 federal nonprofit tax return shows that during its first four years it nearly managed to break even, while bringing in average annual revenues of about $1 million -- most of it from memberships and contributions rather than the single admissions that would reflect a booming trade from tourist walk-ins.

In the overall O.C. exhibitions scheme, the Discovery Science Center and Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach and Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach (which also named a new director this month) are the top four, with yearly expenses of about $9 million, $5 million, $3.5 million and $1.5 million, respectively.  Muzeo and the Irvine Museum in Irvine follow at about the $1 million mark.

RELATED:

Ancient Rome in Disney central

Malcolm Warner of Kimbell to run Laguna Art Museum

Mexican art show to open for free at Anaheim's Muzeo

-- Mike Boehm

Photos: Muzeo exhibition hall in Anaheim; John Scola, new executive director of Muzeo in Anaheim. Credits: Muzeo

Monster Mash: Table talk at MOCA; the fork is with us

Talking heads: How strange was it, sitting under a banquet table with your head emerging through a hole in the center, staring at MOCA patrons while they ate dinner? (Los Angeles Times)

They think not: Citing historical inaccuracies, Ford's Theatre won't be selling Bill O'Reilly's book about Abraham Lincoln's assassination. (New York magazine)

Post-Berlusconi biennial: Silvio Berlusconi's choice to be the new president of the Venice Biennale has withdrawn his name from consideration after the Italian prime minister's resignation. (The Art Newspaper)

"Spidey" trouble: Could Julie Taymor's lawsuit against "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" actually stop the show? (Hollywood Reporter)

"Fork" art: An 18-foot-tall wooden fork in Pasadena is refurbished, reinforced, insured and finally legal. (Los Angeles Times)

Miami noir: The departure of founder Edward Villella from the Miami City Ballet was more complicated and less voluntary than originally portrayed. (New York Times)

Worrisome trend? The president of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts says the influence of citizen critics is scary. (Huffington Post)

Worrisome trend II? Should we be watching live performances in movie theater? (Radio Times)

European adventure: The Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra's recent trip to Bulgaria is featured in a half-hour documentary that will air several times on KOCE. (Orange County Register)

Another serving: Tustin's defunct Elizabeth Howard's Curtain Call Dinner Theater is under new ownership and will open in December under the name Encore Dinner Theatre & Club. (Orange County Register)

Berliners: Two artists born on opposite sides of the Berlin Wall work together to make a painting on a surviving portion of the wall located on Wilshire Boulevard in L.A. (Los Angeles Times)

Also in the L.A. Times: Mark Swed reviews the Labèque sisters with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Carl Stone concert at the Getty; Charles McNulty reviews "Bring it On" at the Ahmanson Theatre.

-- Kelly Scott and Sherry Stern

Above: One of the performers at the gala for the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art on Saturday. Credit: Frazer Harrison / Getty Images for MOCA

Curator Dan Cameron heading to Orange County

The Orange County Museum of Art has announced its hiring of Dan Cameron as chief curator, effective January.

An internationally known curator with roots in New York who is not afraid to try new cities, Cameron was the founding director of Prospect New Orleans, a citywide art exhibition launched in 2008 that drew critical praise but did not succeed in staying under budget or on a biennial schedule. Previously he had curated the 10th Taipei Biennial, "Dirty Yoga" in 2006 and the 8th Istanbul Biennial, "Poetic Justice," in 2003. From 1995 to 2006, he was senior curator at the New Museum in New York.

Cameron's appointment signals a renewed seriousness of purpose for the Orange County Museum, which has struggled to find its niche in the crowd of contemporary art museums in Southern California since the departure of chief curator and deputy director Elizabeth Armstrong in 2008.

As part of his new post Cameron will be in charge of the museum's "California Biennial," which a museum spokesperson confirmed will be held in summer 2013 despite what could be serious competition from a new 2012 biennial organized by the Hammer Museum.

RELATED:

Calder and Contemporaries at OCMA

Review: 2011 California Biennial

— Jori Finkel

www.twitter.com/jorifinkel

Image: Dan Cameron in front of Peter Saul's "Typical Saigon," 1968, at the Orange County Museum of Art, where he guest curated a Saul exhibition in 2008. Artwork loaned from the Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Festival of Arts Purchase Fund. Image from Orange County Museum of Art.

Segerstrom Center plans 'Off Center' performance festival

Building on the concept of alternative and youth-oriented offerings it launched in 2008, the Segerstrom Center for the Arts is announcing Wednesday that its first “Off Center Festival” will run Jan. 13-21. Minimalism and eclecticism are among the creative approaches; affordability is a guiding principle with tickets $20 for each performance, discounted to $10 each in multi-show packages. 

Music, theater, dance and a variety show infused with intellectual as well as entertainment value will take place in the Costa Mesa center’s two smaller venues and outdoor plaza; next-door neighbor South Coast Repertory will lend its Nicholas Studio for one of the plays.

“Ten Tiny Dances” (Jan. 20-21), billed as “an experiment in confined space” devised by Portland, Ore., choreographer Mike Barber, will take place on a 4-by-4-foot square stage inside the Samueli Theater. The repertoire will include new pieces created for the occasion by Southern California dance makers Meg Wolfe, Melanie Rios and Jennifer Backhaus.

“The Car Plays” (Jan. 14-15, 20-21), overseen by Paul Stein, former artistic director of L.A.’s Moving Arts troupe, offers 10-minute scripts that not only are set in automobiles, but performed in them, with actors and audience sharing a car's cabin. A ticket will get you admission to one of three separate five-play sequences performed in vehicles parked on the center’s plaza. New scripts that South Coast Repertory commissioned will be included.

Normal stages will suffice for “ReEntry” (Jan. 18-20) and “The Word Begins” (Jan. 19-21). “ReEntry,” in Founders Hall, is a 2009 documentary play that creators Emily Ackerman and KJ Sanchez scripted from interviews with U.S. Marines and their families, about the experience of returning from combat in Iraq. Sanchez, an alumna of Anne Bogart's SITI Company, is directing the production by her new documentary-theater troupe, American Records. "ReEntry" opens this month at Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky, where SCR's new artistic director, Marc Masterson, included it in the final season he picked for his former stage.

Sondheim snowed in, will miss Saturday's Orange County appearance

The unexpected snowstorm that hit the East Coast has left Stephen Sondheim stranded and unable to fly, so he will miss Saturday's performance of "Stephen Sondheim: In Conversation" at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa.

The Sondheim event will be rescheduled at a date to be established. But the show will go on, in a fashion; singers Brian Stokes Mitchell and Christine Ebersole, who are in Southern California, will perform a vocal program with musical accompaniment, beginning at 8 p.m.

Ticketholders to the Sondheim event, which was organized around an on-stage Q&A with the Broadway playwright, accompanied by Stokes-Mitchell and Ebersole singing selections from his songbook, will be admitted to Saturday's performance, and their tickets will be honored for the rescheduled Sondheim event at a future date.

RELATED:

Influences: Actress and singer Christine Ebersole

-- Christopher Smith

Photo: Stephen Sondheim. Credit: Michael Lionstar

 

Music review: Gergiev & Mariinsky play Tchaikovsky at Segerstrom

Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony begins with a solo horn playing eight bars of a folk song. Those eight bars are framed by a loud whole note, slowly getting quieter over four long beats.

Can the soul of a country be conveyed in four such beats?  Or course not.

The folk song is Ukrainian. Tchaikovsky was every inch a moody Russian, but he was also a cosmopolitan composer. The version of his symphony -- which has been nicknamed (not by him) the “Little Russian” -- was composed in Germany and modeled on Beethoven. And no one pays much mind, anyway, to Tchaikovsky’s early symphonies. There is an old saw that Tchaikovsky wrote three symphonies: his Fourth, Fifth and Sixth.

Thursday night those “Little Russian” horn calls coated rather than filled the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, like an ancient varnish radiating from the walls. They summoned ghosts of a Russia longed for but long vanished.

This was the start of first of two programs of Tchaikovsky symphonies by the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra under its music director, Valery Gergiev. The Second and Fifth were performed Thursday, the Third and Fourth Symphonies will be on Monday. Gergiev and his itinerant orchestra dash off to Berkeley for a full Tchaikovsky symphony cycle over the weekend. Then on Tuesday they are at the Valley Performing Arts Center with a mixed Russian bill.

Soka Performing Arts Center: Tuning a young concert hall

The unlikely locale of Aliso Viejo may have just become Southern California’s most obliging host to orchestras coming our way.

Tuesday night’s performance by the St. Petersburg Symphony in front of more than 600 at the new Soka Performing Arts Center, the second appearance by an orchestra at the hall, confirms initial impressions that the Orange County venue welcomes all musical comers.

Yasuhisa Toyota -- largely acknowledged as the world’s leading acoustician -- has bestowed an acoustic alchemy that makes orchestras playing here sound nigh on splendid. And while there was a noticeable schism in Tuesday night’s program -- the St. Petersburg ensemble seemed more assured delivering Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony vs. Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto -- the hall itself again delivered sonic luster at almost every note.

Leaving aside the ups and downs of the performance under the baton of conductor Alexander Titov, and with guest pianist Xiayin Wang, the continuing revelations about how music sounds here are worth exploring.

Three years in the planning and two years in the construction, the acoustic design comes from Toyota, who most famously did Walt Disney Concert Hall. If anything, the sound here in this more intimate, multi-purpose hall has an even warmer sound.

Theater review: 'How the World Began' at South Coast Repertory

 
On the evolutionary ladder of playwriting, “How the World Began,” Catherine Trieschmann’s new drama about a standoff between a biology teacher and irate creationists, occupies a relatively low rung. The issue under discussion is distressingly topical, but the work seems better suited to a school auditorium than to a playhouse of South Coast Repertory’s standing.

To Trieschmann’s credit, she tries to be fair to all sides, situating the views of her characters, no matter how extreme, in personal details that are chosen with empathy. But neither the intellectual debate nor the human story is sharply illuminated.

Susan Pierce (Sarah Rafferty, cleanly doing what she can with the part) is a new teacher in Plainview, Kan., a town that is rebuilding after a tornado wreaked havoc. Unmarried, pregnant and not fully licensed, she has a degree from Brooklyn College, some messy personal history in New York and a desire to make a new start for herself.

She also has powerful convictions about the teaching of science and an urban impatience with provincial narrowness. Her words aren’t always measured, and something she said in class — a reference to “gobbledygook” when talking about unscientific theories of how life on Earth arose — comes back to haunt her.

Micah Staab (Jarrett Sleeper), one of her students, has taken offense. He demands an explanation of her comments, and the two engage in a kind of lawyerly cat-and-mouse that’s like David Mamet without the verbal fangs and toxin.

O.C.'s Segerstrom Center for the Arts turns 25

The Segerstrom Center for the Arts will be 25 years old on Thursday.

What have been your favorite experiences at the Segerstrom Center and why? Biggest disappointments? And hopes for the future? Share your memories in the comments below.

The Costa Mesa institution that until this year was known as the Orange County Performing Arts Center has of course been primarily a showcase for dance, music, touring Broadway shows and other attractions. But in some ways it also has mirrored the transformation of its community.

What truly has changed -– and the center sometimes haltingly with it -– is Orange County. In 1980, as fundraising began following the Segerstrom family’s 1979 donation of the center’s site, the county’s population was 78% non-Hispanic white (the U.S. Census Bureau’s term).  In 2010, just 44.1% of the county’s 3 million residents fit that description.

In that light, perhaps the most socially defining moment for the center came in 1993. Call it a last gasp of the old Orange County, as center leaders tried to enforce a narrow definition of the arts and culture.