Events
Eve Ensler with Idina Menzel
Monday, June 10, 2019
8pm
Eve Ensler
in conversation with Idina Menzel
The Apology
Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School
Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Blvd.,
Santa Monica, CA 90404
PURCHASE TICKETS
$27 General Admission Seat + Book
From Eve Ensler, author of one of the most influential works of the twentieth century–The Vagina Monologues–and one of Newsweek‘s “150 Women Who Changed the World,” comes a powerful, life-changing examination of abuse and atonement.
Eve Ensler is a Tony Award-winning playwright, author, performer, and activist. Her international phenomenon The Vagina Monologues has been published in 48 languages and performed in more than 140 countries. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller I Am an Emotional Creature, the highly-praised In the Body of the World, and many more. She is the founder of V-Day, the global activist movement to end violence against women and girls, and One Billion Rising, the largest global mass action to end gender-based violence in over 200 countries. She is a co-founder of the City of Joy, a revolutionary center for women survivors of violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, along with Christine Schuler Deschryver and 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Denis Mukwege. She is one of Newsweek’s “150 Women Who Changed the World” and the Guardian’s “100 Most Influential Women.”
Like millions of women, Eve Ensler has been waiting much of her lifetime for an apology. Sexually and physically abused by her father, Eve has struggled her whole life from this betrayal, longing for an honest reckoning from a man who is long dead. After years of work as an anti-violence activist, she decided she would wait no longer; an apology could be imagined, by her, for her, to her. The Apology, written by Eve from her father’s point of view in the words she longed to hear, attempts to transform the abuse she suffered with unflinching truthfulness, compassion, and an expansive vision for the future.
Through The Apology Eve has set out to provide a new way for herself and a possible road for others, so that survivors of abuse may finally envision how to be free. She grapples with questions she has sought answers to since she first realized the impact of her father’s abuse on her life: How do we offer a doorway rather than a locked cell? How do we move from humiliation to revelation, from curtailing behavior to changing it, from condemning perpetrators to calling them to reckoning? What will it take for abusers to genuinely apologize?
Remarkable and original, The Apology is an acutely transformational look at how, from the wounds of sexual abuse, we can begin to re-emerge and heal. It is revolutionary, asking everything of each of us: courage, honesty, and forgiveness.
Tony Award–winner Idina Menzel has a career that traverses stage, film, television, and music. Menzel’s voice can be heard as Elsa in Disney’s Oscar–winning Frozen. The film’s song Let It Go, voiced by Menzel, won the Oscar for Best Original Song and the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media. Frozen 2 is slated for a November 2019 release. Soon Menzel can be seen opposite Adam Sandler in the upcoming Safdie Brothers’ film, Uncut Gems. A skillful songwriter, Menzel’s prolific recording career includes multiple cast recordings and solo albums. She was honored as Billboard’s Women in Music “Breakthrough Artist” in 2014. Garnering huge critical acclaim in her Tony– nominated role as Maureen in the Pulitzer Prize winning Rent, Menzel reached superstardom on Broadway with her Tony Award–winning performance as Elphaba, the misunderstood green girl in the blockbuster Wicked. Menzel was most recently seen on Broadway in the original production If/Then, for which she earned her third Tony nomination. Last season, she starred in Roundabout Theatre Company’s Off-Broadway production of the Joshua Harmon hit comedy, Skintight, and was the recipient of the Drama League Special Recognition Award for Achievement in Musical Theatre. Philanthropy is also important to Menzel, who co-founded the A BroaderWay Foundation in 2010. This organization is dedicated to offering girls from underserved communities an outlet for self-expression and creativity through arts-centered programs.
Celeste Barber with Jameela Jamil
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
8pm
Celeste Barber
in conversation with Jameela Jamil
Challenge Accepted!:
253 Steps to Becoming an Anti-It Girl
Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School
Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Blvd.,
Santa Monica, CA 90404
PURCHASE TICKETS
$50 Reserved Section + book
$40 General Admission + Book
$20 General Admission
Celeste Barber is an actor, writer, comedian, wife, mom and stepmom to four children. Celeste has been working in the entertainment industry in Australia for over a decade, and her fan base in the US is growing with the launch of her new podcast, Celeste & Her Best, which debuted May 2019, and the release of her book, Challenge Accepted. Celeste went viral with #celestechallengeaccepted, an IG photo series in which she candidly recreates celebrity photos. Both her podcast and her book are extensions of this kind of authenticity; they add to and amplify the meaningful (and often hilarious) conversations that grew out of her insanely popular Instagram feed. In June, Celeste begins her second US comedy tour and will film her first stand up special for Showtime.
“Prepare to laugh when reading this memoir. Just when Celeste has you in stitches, she hits you right in the heart.” —Reese Witherspoon
“Celeste Barber makes me laugh and is a daily reminder to not take it all too seriously!” —Cindy Crawford
“My daily dose of happiness.” —Gwyneth Paltrow
From funny woman, Instagram star, and international comedy sensation, Celeste Barber’s Challenge Accepted! is a raucous, hilarious, and outspoken guide to life, unwanted gas, and how to rock a sexy scar.
Part memoir, part comedy routine, part advice manual, Challenge Accepted! is Celeste at her best, revealing her secrets to love, friendship, family, and marriage (oh hai, #hothusband), and how to deal with life’s many challenges—why she checks the bath for sharks, how Nutella quite literally shaped who she is as a woman, and why being famous on Instagram is like being rich in Monopoly. It’s real, like totally, really real.
Jameela Jamil can currently be seen starring in Mike Schur’s Golden Globe-nominated series for NBC, The Good Place, where she stars opposite Ted Danson and Kristen Bell. She also can be seen hosting the TBS game show, The Misery Index which will premiere in 2019, making her the only female woman of color hosting late night Television.
In 2009, Jameela Jamil, an English Teacher at the time, was picked from obscurity to host the British breakfast TV program Freshly Squeezed where she went on to become a favorite weekend and weekday morning face for the station T4. In 2010, Jameela got her first solo presenting role on Koko Pop, a music show filmed in Camden’s iconic club, Koko which proved to be a big hit on Channel 4. The following year Jameela fronted E4’s cult series, Playing It Straight and BBC Radio 1 announced her as the new host for their Request Show on Sunday evenings. By 2013 she landed the role of first female presenter to host BBC Radio 1’s The Official Chart Show.
In 2016 Jameela made her move to United States television where she was cast to portray the role of Tahani on NBC’s The Good Place. The show has won both an AFI Award and a Critics Choice Award and is currently in its third season. She is a frequent contributor and guest host for the NBC talk show Last Call with Carson Daly. She has also been cast in the Disney series Mira, Royal Detective with an all-Indian cast that includes Freida Pinto and Kal Penn, set to air in 2020.
Jameela has also fronted a TV ad campaign for Maybelline and has been featured in many publications including the covers of The Guardian, The Times, Stylist, Red and US Nylon as well as featured in Allure, Elle, Glamour,UK Vogue, Cosmo, InStyle, PAPER, Marie Claire UK, Grazia and Esquire. She is an advocate for many causes and in 2018 launched a movement and social media platform @i_Weigh which encourages women to feel valuable and look beyond the flesh on their bones. The movement has been recognized by both media outlets and the movement’s hundreds of thousands of followers over the world.
Jared Diamond
Thursday, May 16, 2019
8pm
An Evening with
Jared Diamond
discussing his book,
Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis
Aratani Theatre
Japanese American Cultural & Community Center
244 S. San Pedro Street
Downtown Los Angeles, CA 90012
PURCHASE TICKETS
$75.00 first three rows (includes book)
$55.00 orchestra section (includes book)
$45.00 balcony section (includes book)
$20.00 balcony
Upheaval is the final book in Jared Diamond’s trilogy. Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Upheaval reveals how nations and individuals recover from crisis and become more resilient.
Jared Diamond, a noted polymath, is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. Among his many awards are the U.S. National Medal of Science, Japan’s Cosmos Prize, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of the international best-selling books Guns, Germs, and Steel, Collapse, Why Is Sex Fun?, The World until Yesterday, and The Third Chimpanzee, and is the presenter of TV documentary series based on three of those books.
“A riveting and illuminating tour of how nations deal with crises — which might hopefully help humanity as a whole deal with our present global crisis.”―Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
In his earlier bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, in the final book in this monumental trilogy, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis, he reveals how successful nations recover from crisis through selective change — a coping mechanism more commonly associated with personal trauma.
In a dazzling comparative study, Diamond shows us how seven countries have survived defining upheavals in the recent past — from US Commodore Perry’s arrival in Japan to the Soviet invasion of Finland to Pinochet’s regime in Chile — through a process of painful self-appraisal and adaptation, and he identifies patterns in the way that these distinct nations recovered from calamity. Looking ahead to the future, he investigates whether the United States, and the world, are squandering their natural advantages, on a path towards political conflict and decline. Or can we still learn from the lessons of the past?
Adding a psychological dimension to the awe-inspiring grasp of history, geography, economics, and anthropology that marks all Diamond’s work, Upheaval reveals how both nations and individuals can become more resilient. The result is a book that is epic, urgent, and groundbreaking.
Jon Meacham
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
8pm (6:30-7:30pm Reception)
An Evening with
Jon Meacham
The Soul of America:
The Battle for Our Better Angels
Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School
Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Blvd.,
Santa Monica, CA 90404
This event has been cancelled. All attendees with tickets have been notified by email. If you had tickets you can either get a full refund, or apply towards another upcoming event.
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history when hope overcame division and fear.
Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer. The author of the New York Times bestsellers Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Franklin and Winston, and Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, he is a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University, a contributing writer for The New York Times Book Review, and a fellow of the Society of American Historians. Follow him on Twitter: @jmeacham
“This is a brilliant, fascinating, timely, and above all profoundly important book. Jon Meacham explores the extremism and racism that have infected our politics, and he draws enlightening lessons from the knowledge that we’ve faced such trials before. We have come through times of fear. We have triumphed over our dark impulses. With compelling narratives of past eras of strife and disenchantment, Meacham offers wisdom for our own time and helps us appreciate the American soul: the heart, the core, and the essence of what it means to have faith in our nation.”
—Walter Isaacson
Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature” have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson, and illuminating the courage of such influential citizen activists as Martin Luther King, Jr., early suffragettes Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt, civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and John Lewis, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Army-McCarthy hearings lawyer Joseph N. Welch, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. He writes about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the birth of the Lost Cause; the backlash against immigrants in the First World War and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s; the fight for women’s rights; the demagoguery of Huey Long and Father Coughlin and the isolationist work of America First in the years before World War II; the anti-Communist witch-hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy; and Lyndon Johnson’s crusade against Jim Crow. Each of these dramatic hours in our national life have been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back, to assert hope over fear—a struggle that continues even now.
While the American story has not always—or even often—been heroic, we have been sustained by a belief in progress even in the gloomiest of times. In this inspiring book, Meacham reassures us, “The good news is that we have come through such darkness before”—as, time and again, Lincoln’s better angels have found a way to prevail.
Melinda Gates with John Legend
Tuesday, May 7, 2019
8pm
Melinda Gates
in conversation with John Legend
discussing her book,
The Moment of Lift:
How Empowering Women Changes the World
Aratani Theatre
Japanese American Cultural & Community Center
244 S. San Pedro Street
Downtown Los Angeles, CA 90012
PURCHASE TICKETS
$75.00 first three rows (includes book) — SOLD OUT
$55.00 orchestra section (includes book– SOLD OUT
$45.00 balcony section (includes book)– SOLD OUT
$20.00 balcony — SOLD OUT
Melinda French Gates is a philanthropist, businesswoman, and global advocate for women and girls. As the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Melinda sets the direction and priorities of the world’s largest philanthropy. She is also the founder of Pivotal Ventures, an investment and incubation company working to drive social progress for women and families in the United States. Melinda grew up in Dallas, Texas. She received a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Duke University and an MBA from Duke’s Fuqua School. Melinda spent the first decade of her career developing multimedia products at Microsoft before leaving the company to focus on her family and philanthropic work. She lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband, Bill. They have three children, Jenn, Rory and Phoebe.
John Legend, critically acclaimed and multi-platinum singer-songwriter, has garnered ten Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a Tony Award, and an Emmy Award among others. He is the first African-American man to earn an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award and one of only 15 people in the prestigious “EGOT” club. John has released six celebrated albums over the course of his career including, Get Lifted(2004), Once Again(2006), Evolver(2008), Love in the Future(2013), Darkness and Light (2016), and A Legendary Christmas(2018). John starred as Jesus in NBC’s Jesus Christ Superstar Live!in April 2018. That year, he was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor (in a Limited Series Or Movie) and won an Emmy as a producer in the category of Outstanding Variety Special (Live) for the show. It was announced that John would be a coach for season 16 of NBC’s The Voice, airing in 2019. In October 2018, John released his first Christmas album, A Legendary Christmas, and closed out the year with his A Legendary Christmastour. Beyond his music career, he is a principle partner in Get Lifted Film Co., a film and television production company based in Los Angeles. Get Lifted Film Co. served as Executive Producers on NBC’s live production of Jesus Christ Superstar Live!,the HBO documentary Southern Rites, 2018 Tribeca Audience Award Winner Documentary United Skates, WGN America’s series Underground, and films such as Southside with Youand La La Land. As a philanthropist, John initiated the #FREEAMERICA campaign in 2015 to change the national conversation surrounding our country’s misguided criminal justice policies and to end mass incarceration.
For the last twenty years, Melinda French Gates has been on a mission. Her goal, as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her: If you want to lift a society up, invest in women.
In The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World, Melinda traces her awakening to the link between women’s empowerment and the health of societies. She shows some of the tremendous opportunities that exist right now to “turbo-charge” change. And she provides simple and effective ways each one of us can make a difference. Convinced that all women should be free to decide whether and when to have children, Melinda took her first step onto the global stage to make a stand for family planning. That step launched her into further efforts: to ensure women everywhere have access to every kind of job; to encourage men around the globe to share equally in the burdens of household work; to advocate for paid family and medical leave for everyone; to eliminate gender bias in all its forms.
Throughout, Melinda introduces us to her heroes in the movement towards equality, offers startling data, shares moving conversations she’s had with women from all over the world―and shows how we can all get involved.
A personal statement of passionate conviction, this book tells of Melinda’s journey from a partner working behind the scenes to one of the world’s foremost advocates for women, driven by the belief that no one should be excluded, all lives have equal value, and gender equity is the lever that lifts everything.
Melinda will be donating all the amounts she receives from this book to charity.
Photo Credit: Pivotal Ventures–Jason Bell
Moby with Lizzy Goodman
Monday, May 6, 2019
8pm
Moby
in conversation with Lizzy Goodman
discussing the second volume of his memoir,
Then It Fell Apart
*** and performing a few acoustic songs with a guest vocalist
Aratani Theatre
Japanese American Cultural & Community Center
244 S. San Pedro Street
Downtown Los Angeles, CA 90012
PURCHASE TICKETS (On sale Jan 11, 10am)
$65.00 first four rows (includes book)
$50.00 orchestra section (includes book
$40.00 balcony section (includes book)
$20.00 balcony (on sale April 5, 10am)
Marking the 20th anniversary of his landmark album Play, Moby’s new memoir Then It Fell Apart is a wild ride of celebrity, addiction, and reckoning.
Moby was born in Harlem in 1965. He is a singer-songwriter, musician, DJ and photographer. The first volume of his memoirs, Porcelain, was published in 2016.
“Somehow this chronicle of a long, dark night of the soul also involves funny stories involving Trump, Putin, and a truly baffling array of degenerates.” ―Stephen Colbert
Lizzy Goodman a writer and the author of Meet Me in the Bathroom, an oral history of music in New York City from 2001-2011. She lives in LA with her basset hound, Jerry Orbach.
What do you do when you realize you have everything you think you’ve ever wanted but still feel completely empty? What do you do when it all starts to fall apart? The second volume of Moby’s extraordinary life story is a journey into the dark heart of fame and the demons that lurk just beneath the bling and bluster of the celebrity lifestyle.
In summer 1999, Moby released the album that defined the millennium, PLAY. Like generation-defining albums before it, PLAY was ubiquitous, and catapulted Moby to superstardom. Suddenly he was hanging out with David Bowie and Lou Reed, Christina Ricci and Madonna, taking ecstasy for breakfast (most days), drinking bottles of vodka (every day), and sleeping with super models (infrequently). It was a diet that couldn’t last. And then it fell apart.
The second volume of Moby’s memoir is a classic about the banality of fame. It is shocking, riotously entertaining, extreme, and unforgiving. It is unedifying, but you can never tear your eyes away from the page.