Goldstar

Katrina Lenk, the acclaimed star of the rock opera Lovelace, visits Highways Performance as her alter-ego moxy phinx in The Wanting. Blending music, dance and theater, The Wanting showcases phinx's original songs and intense vocal performance, which has been described as a blend of Bjork, Marlene Dietrich and Prince. The show also features puppets, six dancers, and film projections. Learn more...

Come get into the perfect Halloween mood and sail with Highways at their 5th-annual undead glitter rock show/party. Featuring bawdy audaciousness, reckless splendor, mondo-art-redemption, lively libations and a cast of electrifying players who will go to any lengths to tantalize and entertain. Witness: joyous mayhem, neo-sex-fueled musical acts, genitals of the damned, balloon animal sacrifice to the psychedelic gods of pleasure, and their candy-flipping mega-medley "Rave Misérables." Learn more...

A performance piece that combines elements of traditional theatre and movement with contemporary art, Bias Cut weaves together the contrasting stories of a Los Angeles garment worker and a veteran film industry seamstress. Personal interviews, historical images, artifacts, and immigrant stories create a poignant and sometimes humorous contrast between the glamour of Hollywood fashion and the reality of the sweatshop. Learn more...

Highways Performance Space presents KDUB Dance's Fruit, an evening of original dance theatre by emerging Los Angeles choreographer Kevin Williamson. Fruit grapples with the trite, forbidden and experimental ritual of our discordant beliefs. Learn more...

Highways Performance Space presents Highways' 5th Annual Latin@ New Works Festival with three nights of radical new performance works. ProcliTvities starts off the festival on Friday and Saturday, where the cast shares their thoughts on on sexuality and eroticism. On Sunday, Butchlalis de Panochtitlan and La Maricolectiva present Queer Economy, an over-the-top, sexy and radical sketch-driven show about queer immigrant experiences. Learn more...

CounterPULSE's Performing Diaspora is a festival and symposium featuring dance, music, theater, media and interdisciplinary artists who are using traditional forms as a basis for experimentation and innovation. The evening features works-in-progress by Dulce Capadocia's Silayan Philippine-American Dance Company, Ana Maria Alvarez's CONTRA-TIEMPO, Gema Sandoval's Danza Floricanto, Prumsodun Ok and Sri Susilowati. Learn more...

Performance artists Ian MacKinnon and Clint Steinhauser are joined by a cast of local artists for Homosensuality at Highways Performance Space. This multimedia art piece incorporates movement, spoken word and video and sound collage to explore gay life now and in the future. Learn more...

Highways Performance Space presents the 14th ensemble show by narrative performance collective The Quarterly Report. Falls From Grace is a compilation of searing, sweaty, and socially taboo tales featuring intimate, personal stories about bad words, bad karma and bad choices. Learn more...

Conceived and directed by Los Angeles-based performance artist Gregory Barnett, Die Muthafuckah Die!!! features an army of dancers, actors, strippers, and sex workers who exist in a world where intimacy and pain are inextricably linked, the characters surviving in purgatory with hopes of eventual fulfillment. Learn more...

Artist Barbara T. Smith's Hold Your Mud, L.A. is a symphony based on a "score" made of Smith's black and white photographs of palm trees and power lines taken from a moving car n the 1970s. The symphony, which is literally structured by the images, will be performed by a group of musicians while an actor plays in the mud. Learn more...

Highways Performance Space presents a collection of three new dramatic and satirical stage works. Programs include Antwone Fisher's Finding Fish, based on his bestselling autobiography, which offers a new perspective on events in the Denzel Washington movie Antwone Fisher. Also featured are Tina Andrews' one-act about race, Charlotte Sophia, and J.M. Morris' two-part Uh-Uh!. Learn more...

Highways Artistic Director Leo Garcia presents Don't Trust Anyone Over Thirty: EZTV 1979-2009, a weekend of live and video performance and exhibition from L.A.'s independent media arts group. In celebration of their 30th Anniversary, EZTV takes a two-day trip down memory lane combining special surprise live guest performances with clips from past video projects. Learn more...

Highways Performance Space presents curator Ian MacKinnon's Big Gay Peep Show, an arty party fundraiser where local and national performance artists expose their hearts, minds, bodies, childhoods, dirty stories, and maybe even the contents of their underwear to benefit Highways. Learn more...

Highways Performance Space presents Sergia Perez's one-woman show I Didn't Cry. In this tragic true love story, Perez speaks through a variety of voices to tell the story of Shaila, a young girl coming to grips with the untimely death of her older sister, Santa, a 14-year old Latina. Learn more...

Once upon a very terrible time, a woman coped with the slaughter of her friends and family by turning herself into a hen. That's the premise of Creature/Creations (A Political Fable about Responsibility and Delusion in Oppressive Times), a one-woman show written by Argentinean writer Eugenio Griffero during the country's military dictatorship. This new production is adapted and directed by Abraham Celaya and performed by Minerva Garcia. Learn more...

Traveling from the death of Garland to the election of Obama, Highways presents Gay Powered: Now & Then, featuring "Stonewall Rapture," a curtain raiser performed by John W. McLaughlin and the evening's centerpiece, "So Hard," Derek Ringold's hit solo performance piece. Learn more...

Gangs of Jews, Mexicans, Caribbeans and Japanese occupy Highways Performance Space for choreographer Keith Glassman's latest work, Far From Home. The full-evening performance explores the continuity of culture, and how communities originating long ago in distant locales persist and flourish today, with cultural remnants embedded in contemporary life. Learn more...

Highways Presents the two-day summer solstice vaudeville extravaganza Juggling the Layers of Gender. There will be over 15 performances across the two nights that tantalize, tango with, and dazzle our senses through circus-style traditions such as queer mime, sexy trapeze acts, drag burlesque, gender-bending body builders, psychological acrobatics and so much more. Learn more...

Highways presents Scott Turner Schofield's Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps, a solo theater work that employs comedy, multimedia storytelling, aerial acrobatics and audience participation to reveal just a few of the 127 stories that comprise the life of a guy who just happens to have been born a girl. Learn more...

Building on the traditions of socially progressive alternative performance, four emerging Latino artists are selected to develop and present fierce new works. Performance includes pieces from Adelina Anthony, Reina Alejandra Prado, Yosimar Reyes and R. Ernie Silva. See the additional details section for more information. Learn more...

Celebrating 20 years of developing and presenting of new work, Highways presents a fusion of dance, theater, puppetry and animation in this evening of two intermedia parables for the 21 Century. Director/choreographer Mira Kingsley and playwright Sibyl O'Malley team to present Oh My Tiger, and innovative theater director Chi-wang Yang stages Ocean/Flight. Learn more...

Lay of the Land is the newest of writer-actor Tim Miller's internationally acclaimed solo performances. Framed by a No on Proposition 8 protest, the show humorously explores modern gay life and topics ranging from same-sex marriage to jury duty. Learn more...

The Senkotsu (Mis)Translation is a multimedia "performance installation" from award-winning performance artist Denise Uyehara. The work combines elements of theater, butoh-inspired dance and live music to explore the American occupation of Japan's Okinawa islands. As guests walk through the installation, they are invited by the performers to play a series of games and interact with the proceedings. Learn more...

Highways Performance Space in association with Descent Performance Laboratory present Global Descent, two provocative evenings of Butoh theater, featuring world-renowned Butoh master Katsura Kan from Kyoto, Japan, dancers from Vangeline Theater of New York, Body Weather Laboratory and Descent Performance Laboratory of Venice and Los Angeles. Learn more...

Hunter Lee Hughes' unique theater piece is structured as a ritualized initiation rite, directly addressing and involving the audience as a man (Hughes) is ceremonially broken down and reborn. The play explores the relationship between the gay experience, gender roles and narcissism, and examines the nature of public performance. Learn more...

Highways Performance Space's fifth annual poetry festival is a three-day examination of the many ways performance poets present their work, using theatrics, vocal skills, music, film and costumes to enhance the written word. Personal Is Political features a number of top local poets selected by poet and KPFK host Michael Datcher. Learn more...

Los Angeles Women's Theatre presents a festival celebrating solo women artists that kicks off with a Champagne Gala and Awards Ceremony and the rest of the shows include: A Relationship to Objects, Stars and Stripes, Language Defined, And Sometimes Love, and La La Revisited. See the full listing for more program information. Learn more...

French actress and performance artist Nathalie Broizat tackles issues of identity and absurdity in her surreal dance-theater piece Amour, Where Are You?. The evening also features a line-up of established performance artists and musicians. Learn more...

Highways Performance Space presents Fringes-Margins-Borders, a new works performance featuring L.A.'s Queer Exchange: Deadlee, Ian MacKinnon, Saleem and guest artist Scott Turner Schofield, plus San Francisco artists Stephanie Cooper, Sean Dorsey Dance and Gigi Otalvaro-Hormillosa. Learn more...

DreamAwake's highly theatrical, physical comedy Simple Matters mixes slapstick with surrealism at Highways. Without red noses, five clowns from four countries take the audience on a journey through the miraculous unraveling of everyday life, dancing on the ridge between the absurdity of our current reality and a really good time. Learn more...

Highways Performance Space presents Dancers Without Borders's Translation: Missed Communications, a dance theater piece that pulls at the frayed edges between language. A combination of story and non-narrative performance, dance and theater, Translation uses vulnerability and humor to address the joys and struggles of communicating across language barriers. Learn more...

Naked Creatures features solo and group performances by gay-centered artists who utilize and rejoice in the naked body. Through dance, music, video, and farce, some of L.A.'s most exciting queer artists team up to take it off, reminding us that underneath everything we are all naked creatures. Learn more...

Highways presents Southern California choreographers Louie Cornejo, Keith Glassman, Terrence Luke Johnson, Stephanie Nugent, and Kristen Smiarowski as they join forces for the fourth annual THEN, an evening of new dances and works-in-progress. THEN provides an opportunity for professional choreographers to interface with each other and the public in the sharing of new ideas in dance. Learn more...

Highways Performance Space commemorates the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday with Religion: The Content of Their Character III. In light of Prop 8 and the Rick Warren Inauguration Innovation controversy, this year's theme centers on the impact of religion on various characters. Learn more...

Filled with live hip-hop performances, Street Cred 101 follows a group of gay rappers who attend a lecture about building street credibility as they strive to attain mainstream success. The cast includes real-life veterans of the gay hip-hop scene. Learn more...

Highways Performance Space presents a tribute to postmodern dance pioneer Rudy Perez with Surrender, Dorothy!, previews of collaborative work by members of the Rudy Perez Performance Ensemble. Inspired by the poems of Dorothy Parker, the tribute will include an assemblage of choreography by Perez and the Ensemble, with live music by Steve Moshier and the Liquid Skin Ensemble. Learn more...

Highways Performance Space and Saleem explore the exotic and intoxicating nature of Arabic and Mediterranean dance, as represented in its most homoerotic forms by men of the Middle East with Sultans of Middle Eastern Dance. The performance reflects male sensuality in the Arab world and the Mediterranean, as performed by an all-male cast from the Middle East and the U.S. Learn more...

Frustrated by the looming specter of war with Iran, performance artist Robert Farid Karimi seeks out divine intervention in the form of sainted pop star Freddie Mercury. Part documentary theater, part rock concert, Mercury tells the story of Iranian/Guatemalan Robertito, who must face the demons of war while balancing the Chicano Punk Rock Scene, his search for a wrestling champion, and the death of his Iranian grandmother. Learn more...

Un-Cabaret creator Beth Lapides presents her new show 100% Happy 88% of the Time. It mixes funny personal stories with eye-popping visuals and mind-blowing information that add up to a more convenient truth about our times. Learn more...

Highways Performance Space presents the 3rd Annual Dia De Los Muertos Ritual & Performance from Paulina Sahagun & The Center for Celebration Arts. In this traditional Mexican celebration, participants will honor their ancestors and the recently departed with altars, ofrendas and performance. Learn more...

The new mini-musical The Final Descent is a fun-filled weekend of Halloween debauchery, fabulous frights and delicious delights. Hell is full and Death himself is coming to break-up the band, and the crew must risk everything by seducing him in their spectacular "Final Voyage." The Final Descent is a live rock and roll extravaganza that entertains you all the way to Hades. Learn more...

Highways Performance Space presents the 4th Annual Latino New Works Festival, the first and only Westside festival dedicated to contemporary performance and visual art created by Latino artists. This year's festival features queer performances by Beto Araiza, Racquel Gutierrez, Monica Palacios and Jose Reynoso; dance by Gustavo Caldas and Emeka + L'Esprit d'Afrique; and the presentation of Lindsey Haley's new play Favorite Cousins. Learn more...

Highways Performance Space celebrates the Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema with Fading in 3/4, a multidisciplinary event featuring dance video and live performance. Fading in 3/4 features an international selection of videos from Australia, Switzerland, Mexico, Canada and the U.S. that were featured in the Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema. Learn more...

Highways Performance Space and The World Festival of Sacred Music present the world premiere of Anatta, a program of new contemporary music and dance works by four acclaimed artists: interdisciplinary performer Michael Sakamoto, new music composer Amy Knoles, sound artist Bob Bellerue and dancer-choreographer Waewdao Sirisook. Learn more...

Highways Performance Space presents the opening concerts celebrating the tour of Full of Life Now: The Love Songs of Walt Whitman, the debut album from The Dream Brothers. Singer-songwriters Stephan David Hewitt and Gary Glickman revive the ageless and radical messages of Whitman's visionary lyrics, cultivating songs of spirit and healing. Learn more...

Highways Performance Space presents Cage Free, Born Free, a new multi-media performance by artist Mariel Carranza. An abstract performance involving chickens and a blindfolded piano player, Cage Free... offers commentaries on the fragility of human relationships and the boundaries built as a result of fear. Learn more...

"Fabricated Artifictions and Other Costume-Based Works" is a collection of performances, videos, installations and sculptures that investigate and redefine how costume functions in contemporary art. All the artists in this group show create work whose content and form are derived from the wearable object. Learn more...

As part of Sweat!, its first annual festival of new dance by emerging choreographers, Highways Performance Space presents a dynamic double bill featuring the premieres of W Ruchu Na Skos by Wanda Gala and Words are no-words by Wen Chu Yang. Learn more...

Curated by Sue Roginski, Spill, Splash and Splendor offers new choreography dripping with feminine complexity and bathed in visions of women past and present, with emerging female Southern California dance artists Alison Bory, Cynthia Lee, Rosie Trump and Sadie Weinberg. Styled with wit and exaggeration, these works embrace and complicate themes of romantic attraction, nostalgic vocation and lofty representation. Learn more...

As part of Sweat! -- Highways Performance Space's 1st annual festival of new dance by emerging choreographers -- artist and curator Flora Wiegmann and her select group from New York and Los Angeles present Pleiades. Highways will host this part commune, part collective for seven working days in which the group will create brand new material within a shared space. Learn more...