March 2023 events calendar for Los Angeles

Geek out with fellow TV nerds at PaleyFest, the annual weeklong festival of exclusive episodes, clips and panel discussions with the cast and creators of the hottest TV shows. This year’s lineup includes The Mandalorian, Yellowjackets, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Yellowstone, Abbott Elementary, Grey’s Anatomy and The Late Late Show with James Corden.

Kicking off at Dodger Stadium, this annual parade of physical endurance and community spirit winds its way through 26.2 miles of L.A., and usually would wrap up in Santa Monica—though this year’s route again loops back around West L.A. and toward Century City. More than 25,000 runners will participate, and even if you aren’t one of them, being a spectator can be an exhilarating experience as well.

RECOMMENDED: L.A. Marathon guide

Anna Deavere Smith’s one-woman play, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, turned firsthand interviews about the still-fresh riots into an astounding documentary-theater piece. Three decades later, the play comes home for a run at the Mark Taper Forum (Mar 8–Apr 9), this time around as an ensemble piece—which during its Off Broadway run in 2021, our theater critic in New York awarded five stars and called “a work of brilliantly sustained deep focus.”

This beautiful, free festival celebrates the history and whimsy of the kite. Watch as hundreds take to the sky, or bring your own—there will be contests for highest flying kite, best handmade kite and youngest kite flyer. You can also help to launch a 25-foot wide kite. There also tends to be a slew of (rather random) activities on the pier all day, including a hot dog on a stick eating contest and dance performances.

The desert-spanning biennial is back, with premieres of site-specific works from a slate of to-be-announced artists. For its third iteration, Desert X will once again stage outdoor installations across about 40 miles of the Coachella Valley from March 4 to May 7, 2023. This year’s artists include Rana Begum, Lauren Bon, Gerald Clarke, Paloma Contreras Lomas, Torkwase Dyson, Mario García Torres, Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser), Matt Johnson, Tschabalala Self, Marina Tabassum and Héctor Zamora.

Gotta get up, gotta get out to the Walt Disney Concert Hall for this performance from alt-folk troubadour Nathaniel Rateliff, who’ll be tackling Harry Nilsson’s 1973 collection of Great American Songbook standards, A Little Touch Of Schmilsson in the Night.

Find out whether “Piano Man” or “Landslide” sparks a louder sing-along as Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks coheadline this SoFi Stadium show.

This lively Cirque production loosely follows life after the death of a clown. After a brief run at the Forum during a 2019 tour, the spectacle returns to L.A. for a significantly longer stint at the Microsoft Theater. Despite the name, expect Corteo—an italian word for procession—to be anything but funerary, with swinging chandeliers and bouncing beds among its acts.

After years on the margins, singer SZA’s career blew up in 2017 with the release of her long-awaited debut album Ctrl, which delivered modern-day R&B with introspective reflections and a willingness to borrow from other genres. Ctrl led to an appearance on the Black Panther soundtrack and her career has only climbed since then.

Rolling Loud doesn’t have every major hip-hop act on its lineup, but it’s typically pretty damn close. See Playboi Carti, Future, Lil Wayne and—deep breath—Travis Scott headline the three-day fest, which this year heads to Inglewood at Hollywood Park, on the grounds next to SoFi Stadium. The absolutely massive lineup also includes the likes of Kodak Black, Tyga, Lil Baby, Lil Uzi Vert, Saweetie, Ski Mask the Slump God and dozens more—seriously, we weren’t kidding about all the hip-hop.

The woodsy masters of harmonies return to L.A. for this one-off show at the Belasco, dubbed “The Spring Recital” with an unannounced special guest.

If you’re sick of First Fridays only offering a high density of food trucks and lines at your favorite dive bars, check out something old—in a good way, we promise—at the Natural History Museum, where First Fridays offer dinosaurs and DJs. The first Friday of every month from February through June plays host to a KCRW-presented evening of music, allowing visitors of all ages to stay late for a night at the museum. Each month offers a different lineup of musical guests and DJs, guided museum tours, and scientist-led talks.

The Moscow-born, Bronx-raised piano prodigy, singer and anti-folk queen makes a welcome return with this intimate show.

The ’90s kids are all grown up, but they can still indulge their Disney nostalgia under the guise of theater night. Check out Julie Taymor’s The Lion King for Simba, Nala, Rafiki and all the other iconic animals of the African pride lands. Oh, and give your neighbors a courtesy heads-up that you’ll be belting “The Circle of Life” for the next two weeks. 

Catch sets from up-and-coming performers and local legends during this free music series at the Getty, which features a pair of shows from a different band each weekend.

The synth-pop pioneers return to L.A. for one of its first live shows in five years—and its first tour following the death of founding keyboard player Andy Fletcher. Expect darkly melodramatic and sleazy, stadium-scaled electro rock from Dave Gahan and Martin Gore, offset by the odd tender pop ballad, as only DM can pull off.

The masters of alfresco rooftop movie viewing have returned for another season of screenings. You don’t even need to bring your own camping chair—Rooftop Cinema Club provides you with your very own comfy lawn chair. And instead of listening to the movie over loudspeakers, you’ll get a set of wireless headphones so you never have to miss a word.

If your life is lacking spectacle, the playful, psychedelic band’s live show—packed with gratuitous confetti, colorful costumes and hamster ball crowd surfing—should fill the void.

This springtime spin-off in Insomniac’s Wonderland series takes its whimsical, carnival-like atmosphere to this trance-heavy festival. The dreamy, multi-stage experience includes the likes of Dillon Francis, Flosstradamus, Kaskade, Tiësto, Rusko and more.

Jane’s Addiction, the band that practically invented the notion of “alternative rock,” swings by the Hollywood Palladium on a short West Coast tour.

Sing the sorrow with AFI as the moody sort-of-punk band celebrates the 20th anniversary of, well, Sing the Sorrow. The supporting lineup for the show at the Forum is surprisingly strong, too, with sets from Jawbreaker, Chelsea Wolfe and Choir Boy.

It’s no emerald seaside, but Hermosa Beach injects a bit of Irish spirit into the coastal city for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. Bagpipers, marching bands, cars decked out in green and festive pups from the Irish Setters Club of Southern California typically all make their way across the seven-block route. The parade kicks off near City Hall on Valley Drive, heads west on Pier Avenue and ends at the corner of Hermosa Avenue and 10th Street.

Mark the annual gray whale migration from the shore with a parade and street fair, or sail the ocean to spot the massive marine mammals for yourself.

Every Sunday you can find dozens of food vendors at this market at ROW DTLA, with a mix of much-loved pop-ups and future foodie stars. Look out for this year’s new vendors, including The Golden Skewer, Shlap Muan and Thai Town's Rad Na Silom.

William Kentridge’s works have rarely popped up in L.A. collections, so it’s understandable if you’re unfamiliar with him. In fact, we’d say that might be the ideal way to head into this nearly four-decade-spanning survey, which has surprises waiting in seemingly every gallery—including a showstopping, barely-illuminated immersive environment.

This essential and energetic display at the Academy Museum spotlights an entire century of often-overlooked filmmaking and demonstrates how Black artists have been a vital part of cinema since its inception.

See how works of 18th-century French decorative arts informed the residents of Beauty and the Beast’s castle and Sleeping Beauty’s enchanting forest at this assembly of Disney-inspiring works.

This traveling exhibition celebrates a loose group of artists who came together in 1938 in New Mexico, linked by an inclination toward spiritually heightened abstraction. If you’ve day tripped into the deserts near L.A., you’re probably already familiar with a certain mystical quality among the artwork there, and the canvases here conjure that vibe—but decades earlier. You’ll see colorful geometric paintings that mix bold, colorful lines with pastel backgrounds (the homages to Wassily Kandinsky are particularly obvious if you’ve just come from LACMA’s modern galleries). The exhibition is broken up by artist with a focus on painters Raymond Jonson, Emil Bisttram, Agnes Pelton and Lawren Harris. While you’re there, make sure to venture into the adjoining gallery—an unrelated exhibition, to be clear—to see some remarkable lacquer works from East Asia.

These beautifully ugly large-scale paintings from neo-expressionist George Condo would be worth seeing regardless of the context. But for this L.A.-channeling exhibition (the name is an homage to the classic song by the Doors), we’re particularly interested because it marks the debut show at Arts District mega-gallery Hauser & Wirth’s new West Hollywood space, housed in a former classic car showroom.

Kick off the Bob Baker Marionette Theater’s 60th anniversary with this bustling big top-inspired show. Over 100 handcrafted marionettes—including elephants and plenty of clowns—fill the Highland Park production, which actually predates both of the BBMT’s locations (late founder Bob Baker first staged the show as a department store window display in the ’40s).

More than 100 works spanning from the 17th century to today chart the history of the transatlantic slave trade and its legacies in the African diaspora. The works and expressions on display in this LACMA exhibition come from just about every landmass that touches the Atlantic—and therefore places that participated in the slave trade—with works that are hundreds of years old shown next to contemporary creations.

Perhaps most recognizable to Angelenos for his projections that’ve blanketed both the Walt Disney Concert Hall and a block of DTLA, Refik Anadol creates works of art based on points of data. For this exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch, Anadol’s works all visualize data sets from California environmental data, including weather data around L.A., images of national parks and wind forecasts over the ocean. The gallery show also includes his traveling Infinity Room, an immersive wall of real-time data.

Hungarian-American artist Rita Ackermann’s large-scale oil paintings layer colorful, gestural lines atop scenes and figures. Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi creates monumental abstract landscapes that recall color field paintings. Both will be on display at Hauser & Wirth as part of the DTLA gallery’s late-winter exhibitions.

Dive into the origins of digital art with this survey of the artists, writers, musicians, choreographers and filmmakers who first started integrating computers and algorithms into their practices.

See how American quilters have knitted together stories since the 1600s at the Skirball’s celebration of quilt makers. Over 40 artists will have work on display, as will a complementary exhibition, “Together for Good: Caron Tabb and the Quilting Corner,” a large-scale collection of keepsakes that respond to the pandemic. Both run at the same time as outdoor sculpture exhibition “Chloë Bass: Wayfinding.”

The museum atop Forest Lawn’s Glendale cemetery is celebrating 60 years of the beloved Bob Baker Marionette Theater with a display of about 100 historical pieces, including puppets, concept art, archival photos and an animatronic band.

Swing by on October 20 for the opening reception, which includes exhibition tours, marionette performances, complimentary drinks and hors d’oeuvres, and a DJ set from OK Go’s Timothy Nordwind, who’ll be spinning vintage records from the theater’s music library. Email museum@forestlawn.com to RSVP.

Don’t worry about a thing at this Bob Marley exhibition, which arrives in L.A. this winter. The One Love Experience first debuted in London and will now fill 15,000 square feet of the second floor of Ovation Hollywood (formerly Hollywood & Highland) with photos, posters and artwork of the late reggae legend.

The Marley Family and Terrapin Station Entertainment production boasts the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s entire Bob Marley archive, which is stuffed with photos and memorabilia, as well as a silent disco, a street art area and a celebration of the Marley family. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the exhibit will absolutely play up Marley’s connection with marijuana via the “One Love Forest,” a Jamaica-inspired, garden-like gallery that invites you to get together and feel alright, as well as a special 4:20 package available from 4 to 5pm daily.