The inspiration for Sarah Alida LeClair’s play “Audition Sides” was the 19th-century romance between pianist/composer Clara Schumann, wife of the famous composer Robert, and another noted maestro, Johannes Brahms.
“These two (Clara and Brahms) wrote letters to each other, which are now historical documents, over the course of decades,” said LeClair. “She would never allow them to be together, but they had this love where they were like the other half of each other’s soul. My thought was, who would they be if she were a modern-day opera singer and he was a modern-day actor? How do you behave when you’re in the room with that person?”
LeClair’s “Audition Sides,” which her Riot Productions first produced for the 2024 San Diego International Fringe Festival, is a dramedy about two married-ex lovers who find themselves auditioning together for a show. In a new, three-performance production of “Audition Sides” being staged at Moxie Theatre, LeClair will co-star with Timothy Benson. Josalyn Johnson is also in the cast. Performances are next Thursday, Jan. 30, and Feb. 1.
“Audition Sides” is also very much about that role-seeking process that theater artists go through.
“It’s this very heightened space where we’re supposed to act like we’re calm and in control for an audition that lasts 45 seconds,” said LeClair, who’s not only an actor but a teacher of acting and singing, primarily for audition coaching. “There’s so much performative mask-wearing and underneath it all is this boiling stress as you’re preparing to try to bring this authentic performance.
“There’s a lot of absurdity about the audition room for us as actors.”
The touring company of “Spamilton: An American Parody,” which plays Sunday at the Balboa Theatre in San Diego. (Ron Elkman)
Musical parody
It didn’t take long for somebody to spoof the monster Broadway hit “Hamilton” and make money doing so. Almost exactly a year after Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop-infused show opened on Broadway in 2015, writer-director Gerard Alessandrini (“Forbidden Broadway”) brought his parody “Spamilton” to New York’s Upper West Side. Its music and lyrics skewer not only “Hamilton” but other smashes like “The Book of Mormon” and “Sweeney Todd.”
The skewering will happen here, at the Balboa Theatre downtown, on Sunday. https://www.sandiegotheatres.org/events/detail/spamilton-2026 “Spamilton: An American Parody” features spoofy tunes written by Alessandrini such as “Aaron Burr, Sir, Nervous-er” and “Daveed Diggs – The Fresh Prince of Big Hair.” (“Hamilton” fans remember Diggs as both the original Thomas Jefferson and Lafayette on Broadway.)
Detail from Wagner Humphreys’ “Timeless,” a color pencil and color marker on paper art piece celebrating San Diego Museum of Art’s 100-year history. It’s part of the museum’s “Local Visions: Reimagining the Facade” exhibit opening Saturday. (Wagner Humphreys)
Visual art
Balboa Park – and this is not going to be about the pay-for-parking fracas – boasts many iconic buildings, and among them is the San Diego Museum of Art with its Spanish Colonial Revival façade. Not surprisingly artists admire it as much as park patrons do.
From this admiration came an exhibition titled “Local Visions Reimagining the Façade,” which opens on Saturday in the museum’s first-floor Gallery 6.
Local artists were invited through a local call to, as the title suggests, reimagine the museum’s exterior utilizing their own contemporary perspectives. Ten artists are featured in the exhibition, which runs through July 26.
Moderator and Wisconsin morning TV show host Tiffany Ogle chats with John Cusack at a screening of his 1989 romantic comedy “Say Anything.” (Daniel Ojeda, courtesy of The Backlog Project)
Celebrity screening
Just a couple of months after hosting an appearance by music writer/filmmaker Cameron Crowe, the Magnolia Theater in El Cajon is bringing to its stage on Friday John Cusack, the star of the first film Crowe directed, 1989’s “Say Anything.”
Cusack, who’s on a tour that features screenings of not only “Say Anything” but of “High Fidelity,” the 2000 movie directed by Stephen Frears, will be on hand at 7 p.m. Friday for a Q&A that accompanies a showing of Crowe’s film, which co-starred Ione Skye and prominently featured Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.”
Mel Brooks, seen here at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in 2014, is the subject of a new HBO documentary. (AP)
Television
I wonder if Mel Brooks had any notion way back in the ‘50s when he and Carl Reiner created a sketch titled “The 99 Year Old Man” that he’d still be around – at age 99. Well, Brooks is still around, and his life and career are celebrated in a two-part documentary, “Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man,” premiering now on HBO Max.
The documentary is co-directed by filmmaker Judd Apatow, who wrote in The Atlantic a couple of years ago that Brooks is the reason he went into comedy. Reminiscences from Brooks include those about Reiner and about actress Anne Bancroft, who was Brooks’ spouse for 41 years.
UCTV
University of California Television invites you to enjoy this special selection of programs from throughout the University of California. Descriptions courtesy of and text written by UCTV staff:
“Harnessing Nature’s Innovations from the Sea”
How do most organisms communicate in the natural world? Through chemistry. Marine biologists Bradley Moore and Natalie Grayson of Scripps Institution of Oceanography explore how ocean life uses molecules as a kind of language. From the pigment that lets squid and octopuses shift color for camouflage to the chemical compounds produced by corals and their microbial partners, these molecular signals help organisms survive and adapt. Some of these natural compounds are even making their way into human medicine — like a molecule now in phase three clinical trials for treating glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer. Their research has broad applications in biotechnology, from developing new materials to improving the global food supply and advancing human health.
Peter Godfrey-Smith, professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Sydney, explores the evolutionary roots of consciousness by tracing how felt experience may have emerged across different animal lineages. He considers two major philosophical questions: whether consciousness arises gradually in partial forms, and whether it represents a unified phenomenon or a collection of distinct traits. Drawing from biology and philosophy, Godfrey-Smith examines how features of consciousness — such as awareness and subjective experience — could evolve in different ways. Author of “Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection and Living on Earth,” he brings a unique interdisciplinary lens to one of science’s most enduring mysteries: how consciousness arose, and what it means for how we understand life itself.
Public health often operates quietly — preventing illness, protecting communities, and conducting research that rarely makes headlines. In this timely program, epidemiologist and science communicator Dr. Katelyn Jetelina explains why it’s critical to bring public health into the spotlight. She explores how trust in science is eroding amid rising misinformation, and how we can rebuild it by telling clearer, more compelling stories with data. Jetelina emphasizes the need to make science more accessible, not just during crises but in everyday life. She also underscores the importance of representation — ensuring that communities see themselves reflected in public health efforts. Her insights offer a powerful reminder: to protect health at scale, we must make the invisible visible.