The Brief

Last week, the Center Theatre Group (CTG) announced it was putting a pause on programming at the Mark Taper Forum, citing increasing production costs and significantly reduced ticket revenue.

It’s big news for L.A.’s theater community, with some companies struggling to get back to pre-pandemic stability.

“It gives you pause, in terms of the vulnerability in the current moment that we’re living in,” said Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, artistic co-director at Pasadena’s A Noise Within.

Rodriguez-Elliott said audiences have not bounced back to pre-pandemic numbers at ANW, but she is seeing people attend performances who are first-time theatergoers.

She said she hopes the news of the CTG programming pause will create greater awareness around the struggles L.A.’s regional theaters are facing.

“If you believe in theater, support the art: buy a membership, buy a subscription, buy tickets,” Rodriguez-Elliott said.

A national survey of some 100 theaters found that more than 60% were budgeting for a deficit this fiscal year.

Rodriguez-Elliott says ANW is working to make going to the theater more of an event, with pre- and post show activities that allow patrons to engage more with the art.

Ellen Geer, artistic director at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga Canyon said she was saddened to hear about the CTG cuts. “Think of all the L.A. artists who won’t get work,” she said.

So far this year, turnout for WGTB’s production of Macbeth has been strong, Geer said. That may have something to do with Geer working to keep ticket prices low ($10-$48) and the fact that their outdoor theater was one of the only tickets in town during the worst of the pandemic.

For he part, Rodriguez-Elliott at ANW hopes more people will relearn their love for live performances that may have been chilled during the pandemic.

“I think that once you’re in community, you realize what you’re missing: That shared humanity that we get to experience when we come and gather around a great story,” she said.

Searching for loyalty 

Megan Pressman, CTG’s director and CEO, joined LAist’s AirTalk to discuss this challenging moment for theater — and how CTG is looking to overcome it.

Pressman said CTG has not been able to re-emerge fully from the pandemic’s dampening effects. For many months, people were hesitant to return to crowded indoor spaces, and many people’s habits no longer align with the traditional membership model, she said.

People these days are less likely to commit to a subscription for an entire season; instead, they choose just the specific shows they have heard about before, Pressman said.

“We need folks to be with us for that whole journey,” Pressman says. “That is how you can show loyalty to these cultural institutions and give us a chance to be able to put on shows you haven't heard about, to take bigger risks.”

Facing the self-curating society

Danny Feldman is the managing artistic director of the Pasadena Playhouse. He said the birth of regional theater in much of the United States came in the 1960s, when performing artists started to leave New York City, trading the commercialism of Broadway for the opportunity to start theater companies around the country.

But in recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic and changes in audience habits have compounded the stresses that the regional theater business model has always faced, he said. Production costs are rising, while ticket sales and donations have not recovered from the hit they took during pandemic shutdowns.

Feldman said that the struggles of the subscription model reflect broader cultural shifts, like people’s freedom to design their own experiences. For example, Apple Music and other on-demand platforms allow you to purchase a specific song you like, rather than try out the entire album.

“We are now a self-curating society,” Feldman says. “In the past, you would look at an artistic leader of a theater and say, ‘I trust the quality and the brand of the theater. And I may not like everything, but I'm gonna go on an adventure.’”

The reluctance to commit manifests in other ways too, Feldman said. Buying a subscription means blocking out specific days on your calendar weeks or months in advance, but these days, people like to keep their schedules more open and buy theater tickets a few days before the show.

All of this, according to Feldman, has led to smaller audiences.

“We're having a real perfect storm of exorbitant costs,” Feldman says. “Costs are flying up in labor, but also materials, and as well as media costs, [along with a] decline of audiences, who, in my assessment of it, have just fallen out of the habit of going to the theater.”

And this is a great loss not only for theatergoers, but also for performing artists, since these spaces for employment and visibility are becoming rarer, according to Snehal Desai, CTG’s incoming artistic director.

The pause in programming led to an outpouring of support from the community — a reaction that, according to Desai, was both heartbreaking and inspiring.

“There are so few opportunities and so few platforms that anytime you take a space like the Taper out of the equation, even for a short period of time, it has an impact,” Desai said.

Feldman said that getting back into the habit of going to the theater will be important, but he feels that people still see the value of it in our current moment, when gathering spaces have declined in favor of private experiences, like scrolling on our phones.

“Our theaters and our performing arts organizations are uniquely situated to bring folks together to turn off their solo brains and to experience things collectively,” Feldman said. “I think we are the antidote to a lot of what's going on now.”

Los Angeles’ regional homelessness agency is working to find ways to keep thousands of people in their homes, while complying with new federal funding restrictions on permanent housing.

The governing board for the L.A. Homeless Services Authority voted Monday to start the process of reallocating about $130 million in federal funding currently being spent on permanent housing to other projects meant to serve unhoused Angelenos.

Because of new funding restrictions from the U.S. Office of Housing and Urban Development, known as HUD, about 5,000 households in the county will lose their rental subsidies, according to several LAHSA officials who spoke at a commission meeting Monday.

Those changes, along with state and county funding shortfalls for homeless services, threaten to drastically worsen the region’s homelessness crisis, they said.

"The fact of the matter is there’s going to be a tremendous and terrible impact on people, on agencies, on landlords,” said Nathaniel VerGow, LAHSA’s chief program officer.

Officials said they’re scrambling to maximize federal funding under the new guidelines while also advocating against the new HUD policy.

“It is a cliff and it feels catastrophic, but I think it forces us as a region to figure out how to save ourselves,” LAHSA Commission Chair Amber Sheikh said.

The funding challenge

Most federal homelessness dollars flow into the L.A. region through the Continuum of Care program, managed by HUD.

The Los Angeles region is eligible for more than $260 million in federal funding under that program in the coming fiscal year, including $217 million for existing projects.

But no more than 30% of those funds can go toward permanent housing projects, according to a “notice of funding opportunity” HUD issued last month.

That’s a challenge for L.A. County, because 90% of regional HUD funds currently cover people’s rent, according to LASHA officials.

Instead, L.A. and other cities and counties must spend the bulk of their federal funds on other interventions, including transitional housing and street outreach.

HUD officials have said the policy is meant to encourage self-sufficiency.

At Monday’s meeting, Commissioner Justin Szlasa urged his colleagues to consider larger funding trends.

“ There's actually a 23% increase in available funding from HUD, the federal government,” he said. “It just doesn't work with the way that we normally have done things here.”

“We need to find, in this crisis, a way to be constructive about this,” Szlasa added.

HUD policy changes

HUD released its new notice of funding opportunity last month and rescinded a previous two-year funding agreement.

Opponents have concerns with the federal housing department’s move away from “housing first” approaches. They also said HUD rolled out the changes without providing enough time to prepare service providers and clients for disruptions.

Last week, 21 states, including California, sued HUD, claiming the new federal policies “essentially guarantee that tens of thousands of formerly homeless individuals and families will be evicted back into homelessness.”

This week, a group of cities and homelessness organizations also sued over the changes. Plaintiffs include the city and county of San Francisco. The Continuum of Care for San Francisco was awarded $56 million in federal funding for Fiscal Year 2024.

Approximately 91% of that funding supports permanent housing projects, according to the complaint.

What’s next?

The LAHSA Commission voted Monday to approve its request for applications for existing and new projects.

Providers must submit applications to LAHSA over the next two weeks, and LAHSA has until Jan. 14 to craft and submit a new application to HUD.

The agency is now talking with 130 contractors about the transition.

LAHSA is also working with some permanent supportive housing providers to convert their programs to transitional housing instead, officials said.

People who were in permanent housing projects aren’t eligible for transitional housing under HUD’s guidelines because they're not considered unhoused, VerGow said.

The commission also reviewed a policy for ranking project applications and prioritizing them for federal funding. Officials said that policy has to be approved at a LAHSA Commission subcommittee on Dec. 10.

Funds are expected to be awarded in May 2026.

LOS ANGELES — As the season of Advent begins, many Christians turn toward quiet reflection and preparation for Christmas. But in several Southern California congregations with large immigrant communities, that sacred anticipation is shadowed by a looming sense of fear.

For worshippers like Mike, an Iranian asylum-seeker who attends a West Los Angeles church, the weeks leading up to Christmas feel less like a spiritual refuge and more like a time of apprehension. He asked that only the anglicized version of his Farsi name be used because he fears speaking publicly could affect his immigration case. He fled Iran after converting to Christianity.

"I kept this secret, my faith as a secret, for like 12 years," he said.

Mike arrived in Los Angeles 18 months ago and says he has tried to build a life rooted in community and respect for his new home. But a series of immigration enforcement actions in the region — including the June arrests of two men outside a nearby church with a large Iranian membership — has shaken him.

"Even church is not safe because it's a public place," he said. "They can get there and catch you."

The Department of Homeland Security says enforcement actions at churches require secondary approval and are expected to be rare. Still, the concern is real inside Mike's congregation, where church leaders asked that the name of the church not be published.

A significant number of Iranian parishioners worship there, and the pastor often invites them to pray in Farsi during services. Lately, fewer take her up on the offer.

"It's part of the heartbreak of these days," the pastor said. "They feel like they have to be apprehensive about it — not even wanting to speak in their own language here."

She said the fear is especially painful during Advent, a season she describes as a time to prepare to "give thanks for this God we have who wants to be with us."

Room at the inn, despite fears

East of Los Angeles, at Baldwin Park United Methodist Church, Pastor Toña Rios unzips a red tent pitched in the middle of the sanctuary. For years, the church took in newly arrived immigrants, providing a place to sleep while they looked for work and housing.

The tent remains as a reminder of that welcome — and of the fears many congregants now carry. Rios estimates that about 80% of her church members are immigrants and says many don't have legal status.

"A lot of them say, 'Don't open the door. Just close the door,'" she said.

Rios urges a different posture, especially during Advent. She uses the tent to help her congregation imagine being the ones who offer shelter, not shut others out.

"It is very hard," she said. "But Jesus is going to be born in our heart. That's why we need to be prepared."

For longtime church member Royi Lopez, the sense of vulnerability goes beyond immigration status. Lopez is a U.S. citizen but says she often feels targeted because she is Latina. Many of her relatives are undocumented, and she worries constantly about them.

"What if on my way to church, they catch us?" she said. "On a daily basis, we're scared of going to the school, to work, to church, to even the grocery store."

Lopez says that during Advent, these fears remind her of the Christmas story itself — of Mary and Joseph searching for somewhere to stay, turned away again and again until somebody finally took them in.

"Even though so many doors were closed, somebody opened a door," she said.

That theme of welcome runs through the hymn chosen for every Sunday of Advent at Baldwin Park United Methodist Church, "All Earth is Hopeful." Its lyrics speak of a world longing for liberation, where people labor to "see how God's truth and justice set everybody free."
Copyright 2025 NPR

The Supreme Court today is hearing a billion-dollar case about whether internet providers can be liable for their users' committing copyright violations using their services.

The legal battle pits the music entertainment industry against Cox Communications, which provides internet to over 6 million residences and business.

A coalition of music labels, which represent artists such as Sabrina Carpenter, Givēon and Doechii, sued Cox alleging that company should be responsible for the copyright violations of internet users that Cox had been warned were serial copyright abusers.

The coalition argues Cox was sent numerous notices of specific IP addresses repeatedly violating music copyrights and that Cox's failure to terminate those IP addresses from internet access means that Cox should face the music.

In its briefs, the coalition argued many of Cox's anti-infringement measurements seem superficial and the company willingly overlooked violations.

The coalition points out that Cox had a 13-strike policy for potentially terminating infringing customers, under which Cox acted against a customer based on how many complaints it received about a particular user. The Cox manager who oversaw the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the law at issue in this case, told his team to "F the dmca!!!"

"Cox made a deliberate and egregious decision to elevate its own profits over compliance with the law," the coalition asserts.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and a jury agreed with the coalition, with the jury awarding the coalition more than a billion dollars in damages.

Cox argues it should not be liable for its customers' actions as it never encouraged the copyright infringements, its terms of service prohibit illegal activities, and it does not make additional money when customers use its internet to infringe on copyrights.

In its briefs, Cox specified that less than 1% of its users infringe on music copyrights and that its internal compliance measures "got 95% of that less than 1% to stop." It asserts that if the Supreme Court does not side with them, then "that means terminating entire households, coffee shops, hospitals, universities and even regional internet service providers (ISPs) — the internet lifeline for tens of thousands of homes and businesses — merely because some unidentified person was previously alleged to have used the connection to infringe."

A decision in the case is expected this summer.

Copyright 2025 NPR