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2012 Arts District Winterfest
Art • Theater • Poetry • Music
Thursday through Sunday, January 5–8
Los Angeles Downtown Arts District
5 PM to 8 PM: Art Exhibitions & Video Installation (4 PM on Sunday)
8 PM to 10 PM: Readings by Padua Playwrights
10 PM to 12 AM: Live Music
Celebrate the arts and the new year at the 2nd annual Arts District Winterfest in Downtown Los Angeles on January 5-8, 2012.
This FREE four-day series of events is centered around nightly new play readings from Padua Playwrights, including new work by Guy Zimmerman, Heidi Darchuk, and Rachel Jendrezewski, among others, and culminating in Paul Mackley’s critically acclaimed performance of Wallace Shawn’s award-winning “The Fever”.
The 2012 Arts District Winterfest also features an exhibition of new paintings by contemporary artist Richard Kessler; an interactive video installation by Michael French; and collaborative large-scale works by street artists Cryptik, Chor Boogie, Vyal, Slick, and Defer, along with live music by Tawny Ellis, Eddie Reed Swing Quartet, Brad Culver and Andrew Gilbert of Poor Dog Group, The Wulf, and composer Drew Lesso.
Organized by the Los Angeles River Artists & Business Association (LARABA) and LADADspace. Supported by Warner Bros., Lot 613, and year-round filming location contributions to the neighborhood.
ADMISSION: FREE. No-host bar and gourmet food trucks also on site.
WHEN: January 5-8, Thursday-Saturday 5 PM to 12 AM | Sunday 4 PM to 11:30 PM
WHERE: Lot 613 in Downtown Arts District @ 613 Imperial St., Los Angeles, 90021
PARKING: Available on surrounding streets and nearby parking lots
ABOUT DOWNTOWN ARTS DISTRICT: Founded in the 1980s as an artist enclave, this 52-block neighborhood includes artist studios and art galleries; coffeehouses such as Urth Caffé, The Pie Hole, and Novel Café; restaurants and night spots as Wurstküche and Nola’s Taste of New Orleans; creative entrepreneurs; nonprofits such as Padua Playwrights, Cornerstone Theater Company, and Art Share Los Angeles; industrial businesses; and government agencies – all anchored by SCI-Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture) and located in the heart of the city’s CleanTech Los Angeles Corridor. Neighborhood boundaries are Alameda Street on the west, Los Angeles River on the east, 101 Freeway on the north and 7th Street on the south.
ABOUT LARABA: Founded in 1991, the Los Angeles River Artists & Business Association (LARABA) is a 501(c)(4) community organization that seeks to improve the quality of life and enhance opportunities in the Downtown Arts District by encouraging a lively and healthy social, cultural and economic environment, coordinating the voices of resident artists and businesses, and promoting the area as a creative community for the benefit of all Angelenos. To learn more about LARABA, visit www.laraba.org.
ABOUT PADUA PLAYWRIGHTS: Founded in 1978, Padua Playwrights exists to generate innovative, transformative plays for the public by preserving the playwright’s traditional place at the heart of the writing and production process. Unique voices in American theater are cultivated via intensive workshops, engagement with the classics, stage and media productions of new work and, finally, publication. Padua Playwrights began as an annual Festival and Workshop when Murray Mednick invited five other playwrights, including Sam Shepard and Maria Irene Fornes to join him on the old Padua Hills estate in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, just east of Los Angeles. The playwrights, as well as playwriting students and actors, were given free reign to re-investigate their creativity, developing writing exercises for the morning, rehearsing in the afternoon, and presenting the results in he evening. Under Mednick's artistic direction, the Festival became a model that, staged annually, had a lasting impact on American theater. Among its prominent alumni are Henry David Hwang, John Steppling, John O’Keefe, Jon Robin Batiz, Marlane Meyer, Julie Hebert, Kelly Stuart, Guy Zimmerman and Wesley Walker. Since 2001, under the artistic direction of playwright and director Guy Zimmerman, the company has been offering regular seasons of new work from new and established Padua playwrights to critical acclaim. In its first nine seasons the company staged 26 productions, including three in New York City and three abroad, and garnered a host of LA Weekly, Garland, and Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards. In 2003, the company began publishing this series of new play anthologies, six to date, all distributed nationally by Theatre Communications Group.
ABOUT LOT 613: Lot 613 is a multi-use industrial event space created in Arts District for the art and dance community. Lot 613 is owned and operated by Premiere Events and is a one-of-a-kind “blank canvas” ready to be creatively transformed for product launches, fashion shows, filming, live performances, corporate events, and weddings.
