The Brief

A theater project bringing the world of William Shakespeare to local veterans is gearing up for its first public performance on Sunday.

For the past year, a group of about a dozen veterans have met at the West Los Angeles VA campus to study the work of the Bard of Avon.

The project is a partnership between the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles and The Veterans Collective. The group is led by trained theater artist — and fellow veteran — Aaron Lyons.

Lyons is a longtime staple of L.A.’s theater community and is a member of the Antaeus Theatre Company. He said seeing this group express themselves through these timeless works has been inspiring.

“Helping them grasp Shakespeare, not only intellectually but emotionally, has been one of the most uplifting experiences of my life,” Lyons said.

Ranging in age from their 30s to their 70s, the group includes veterans of the Vietnam War and most of its members live at the West LA VA Campus, Lyons said.

The actor, who’s performed in more than half of Shakespeare’s plays, said part of his goal with the project was to demystify Shakespeare’s canon for veterans who might not have studied it since grade school.

“Watching this group of men and women understand it and be able to connect with it in ways that they didn’t think possible was really, really inspiring,” Lyons said.

The group will perform an original work called “Shakespeare Night Live” at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 15, at McCadden Place Theatre. The performance weaves through several Shakespearian monologues and scenes.

Tickets are $10 and available at the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles website.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Arizona, California and Nevada would take less water from the Colorado River under a proposal announced Friday by the federal government to stave off crisis in the beleaguered waterway.

The proposal from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation spares Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming from facing mandatory cuts for now. But it’s a temporary fix as the states that rely on the river still fight over a long-term management plan for the dwindling resource that powers huge swaths of the Western U.S.

Under the plan, the Lower Basin states could face collective cuts up to 3 million acre-feet (130 billion cubic feet) through 2036, “subject to hydrology,” according to a press release by the Department of the Interior. That’s about enough water to serve more than 25 million people a year.

The plan would also allow annual releases between 5 million and 12 million acre-feet from Lake Powell, the basin’s second-largest reservoir. Under the 10-year federal framework, water management decisions will be made every two years.

“This framework provides the flexibility to respond to changing hydrologic conditions while preserving the opportunity for the Basin States to continue working toward durable, consensus-based solutions,” said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum in the press release.

The proposed cuts in the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada would be the biggest to date and could have huge impacts across cities and farms — higher water prices, increased groundwater reliance, more agriculture out of production and conservation mandates in places where none have existed before.

The federal plan comes after years of deadlocked negotiations and a record-dry winter that tipped Colorado River reservoirs to combined record lows. Federal officials are expected to finalize the plan in the coming days.

More than 40 million people in seven U.S. states, several tribal nations and Mexico, as well as farmers, wildlife, industries and hydropower, rely on the dwindling 1,450-mile (2,334-kilometer) Colorado River. Years of overuse combined with rising temperatures and drought have severely depleted flows in the Colorado today compared with decades past.

After a slow start, a program that aims to bring thousands of Angelenos living with serious mental illness under court-led care has seen a spike in petitions filed in recent months, Los Angeles County officials said.

CARE Court allows family members, first responders and others to ask a court — by way of a petition — to step in with a voluntary care agreement for someone living with serious, untreated mental illness, such as schizophrenia, to receive community-based mental health services.

If the agreement fails, a judge could order the individual to sign on to a treatment plan.

Since launching in L.A. County in December 2023, the program saw thousands fewer petitions each year than were initially projected.

But county officials said petitions filed in L.A. County jumped by about 85% between November 2025 and March 2026, with March seeing a total of 68 petitions.

Martin Jones, a program manager with the L.A. County Department of Mental Health, attributed the increase to working with hospitals, first responders and other groups to identify and refer people who might need help.

“We’re doing quite a bit of work to put tools in their hands to also help them identify and refer folks to us who might benefit from the support,” Jones told LAist. “I think we’re approaching the project from several fronts and we’re seeing the results of that.”

Jones added that a broadening of the diagnostic criteria in January to include people living with bipolar I disorder with psychotic features has also led to more petitions.

A ‘broken system’ 

Proponents of CARE Court say it provides a less restrictive and structured way to stabilize people living with a mental illness, and they say the recent increase in petitions shows that the program is gaining traction.

Some mental health and civil liberties advocates don’t see it as a positive development.

“The number of petitions says nothing about outcomes, which is the real point of the program,” said Eve Garrow, policy analyst at the ACLU of Southern California. “Positive outcomes are really miniscule compared to the population in need.”

Analysis of the program statewide has shown that about half of the petitions end up getting dismissed, but L.A. County officials say more than 4,000 Californians statewide have been set up with alternative county services when a CARE agreement or plan is not appropriate.

Some critics, including Garrow, have called the program a waste of taxpayer money.

An analysis by the state Assembly Committee on the Judiciary on CARE Court looked at the 100 participants in the program statewide in fiscal year 2024 and found the cost per person was about $713,000.

Garrow said CARE Court ultimately doesn’t address the underlying problem: a mental and behavioral health system that is underfunded.

“Basically what it does is it slaps a court order onto a broken system instead of fixing the system,” Garrow said.

Between Dec. 1, 2023, and June 30, 2026, there were 1,111 petitions filed in L.A. County, far below the roughly 3,800 state officials projected the county could expect annually.

An L.A. County Department of Mental Health spokesperson said that through June 2026, 21 people had graduated from a 12-month CARE court program, with four additional participants scheduled to graduate within the next year.

The department added that, in L.A. County, "63% of CARE Court participants have opted to continue receiving services and support through CARE instead of graduating."

Don’t understand the 70mm IMAX craze for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey?

LAist host Julia Paskin talked to Taylor Umphenour, one of L.A.’s top IMAX projectionists, on FilmWeek to understand why the format is becoming a filmmaker favorite and why audiences are clamoring to theaters to see The Odyssey in the largest format possible.

What is IMAX 70mm?

It might be easier to explain in comparison to other formats.

35mm film is 35 millimeters wide, hence its name. 70mm is two times that width.

“ What IMAX did, was they took 70mm film, which runs vertically through the projector, and they turned it on its side, and then they repeated it over three times,” said Umphenour.

Thus, IMAX 70mm is three-times the size of a conventional 70mm film stock and runs through the projector horizontally.

Take a film like Lawrence of Arabia, which was released in 1962 and shot on 70mm film.

“ When you get to IMAX — three times the size of 70 millimeter film, the height of an IMAX film frame is the width of Lawrence of Arabia,” Umphenour said.

In other words, it’s massive — top to bottom.

What does this mean for image clarity?

Again, it may be easier to explain by comparing to other formats — specifically digital.

Most of us know that digital images are made up of tiny, square pixels. The bigger the image, the more pixels it contains, so the better the resolution.

The same is essentially true for film, but film is crystallized through an emulsion process. Chemicals are blended and washed over the film, which develops the image.

Umphenour said this means the image is deeply embedded in the film itself.

“When you increase the size of the film, you increase that clarity and that sharpness because you're allowing the emulsion to contain all that information, but you're giving it a wider image area to hold it,” he said.

In other words, film formats lead to a more organic image. And the bigger the film, the more clarity.

So why aren’t all theaters showing IMAX 70mm?

Currently, there are only 25 theaters in the U.S. capable of showing The Odyssey in IMAX 70mm — theaters with screens large enough to project it.

“ Widescreen fills your field of vision left to right,” Umphenour said. “But what IMAX does, it takes that even further and it fills your field of vision all the way to the top and all the way to the bottom, in that fully expanded aspect ratio.”

So, while not all theaters house screens large enough to project the IMAX 70mm version of The Odyssey, many theaters across the country and in L.A. are able to show The Odyssey in the next best thing… 70mm.

Umphenour helped the Alex Theater in Glendale retrofit its projector and renovate the technical booth so that it could do just that, opting to keep the historical integrity of the theater.

“ We want to maximize the resolution of the film formats that we're using to project there so that people can have the best experience,” he said. “But it's ultimately a more classical, cinematic, theatrical environment.”

Where to see The Odyssey in SoCal — in its biggest 70 mm format

• Hollywood - TCL Chinese Theatres IMAX
• Irvine - Regal Irvine Spectrum & IMAX
• Los Angeles - Regal LA Live & IMAX
• Ontario - Regal Edwards Ontario Palace Stadium & IMAX
• Universal City - Universal Cinema AMC at CityWalk Hollywood & IMAX