Somewhere in the middle of Theatre 40’s spirited performance of “Twelfth Night,” the servant Fabian (Rachael Lyerla) steps up to the audience, cheekily pulls down her character’s elasticized beard, and declares, “If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.” Director Steven William, abetted by a more-than-able cast, seizes upon this line, one suspects, and turns his rendition of the play into a festival of metadramatic madness. Read more...

Christopher Gorham has UCLA’s School of Theater, Film, and Television to thank for his marriage. The star of UPN’s new show “Jake 2.0″ met his wife in an acting class when he was attending school here about 10 years ago. Read more...

In the Scottish play, a flabbergasted Macduff, not knowing what to make of the two sides he’s just witnessed of the exiled Malcolm, famously utters, “Such welcome and unwelcome things at once / ‘Tis hard to reconcile.” Macduff’s lines neatly sum up the Shakespeare’s Globe production of “Twelfth Night” now playing to sold-out houses at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse. Read more...

Jacqueline Warwick is just one example of a pioneering musicologist from UCLA. She obtained her Ph.D. in 2002 after writing a dissertation on the connection between popular music in the 1960s and the female identity. Read more...

Recent landscape architecture graduate Claire Touze-Shawaf has visions of a children’s park near LAX without any metal monkey bars or slides. Her model involves a miniature Stonehenge that helps kids spot certain stars, and grass mazes just tall enough for small children to completely submerge. Read more...

By Jake Tracer dB MAGAZINE SENIOR STAFF [email protected] At 6613 1/2 Hollywood Blvd., among the sex and novelty shops, east of the wax museum and tourist traps, there exists, well, a boarded up building with a big “For Lease” sign posted on it. Read more...

Picture a Broadway musical starring nine distinctive personalities and talents. Take away the melodrama, and then add some high-end hip-hop and original poetry. The result is the “Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam.” In essence, “Def Poetry Jam” is a presentation of performance poetry inspired by current events. Read more...