San Diego's Top Weekend Arts Events: Wonderspaces, Moonlight Amphitheatre And 'Little Shop Of Horrors'

Speaker 1: 00:00 San Diego has plenty of summer staples in this weekend to favorites return wonder spaces and moonlight amphitheater, summer season plus a non traditional staging of little shop of horrors here with details as KPBS arts editor, Nina Garren. Hi Nina. Hello. So wonders bases. It's, it's back for another year of art. Can you remind us what this is? This is a pop up museum that features large installations that you'd normally see at festivals like Coachella. And the idea behind it is that art is for everyone and so if you make art more accessible, it leads to people being more creative this year. Wonder spaces has a theme, right? Yeah. This year's theme is in common and it's basically how are we shaped by our environment and our relationships. So all the artwork that you'll see was created keeping other people in mind and tell us more about some of the unique installations. Speaker 1: 00:54 Yeah, there's one called rainbow rooms and it is kind of like a colorful home scene and everything is covered in rainbow yarn and this reflects the artist's experience as a gay man growing up in South Africa and questioning the ideas of masculinity. There's another one called confessions, which is inspired by Japanese shrine prayer walls. You go in the confessional booth, you write a private confession and then they are artfully displayed for everyone to read. So how does this work? Can you just show up? You can't show up but it's better to make a reservation online in advance. They say to plan on 90 minutes and when you make a reservation you can reserve by time slot. So that's the recommended way to do it. Wonder spaces is open daily through September 1st at the Beach Street pier. Also moonlight as a theater kicked off it's summer season this week. Remind us about the season, the season open with the producers and then it goes on to Matilda, the musical, which is family friendly and July and August. Speaker 1: 01:54 It's one of my favorites, west side story and it closes in September with Victor Victoria. And there are a lot of people in San Diego who have never seen this theater, but it's one of your favorites. Why is that? Yeah, it's in Vista and it's not easy to find, but it's this beautiful venue. It's a lot bigger than you'd expect. They put on real professional shows and the thing that people love about it is that you can bring your own food and have picnics before this show and they have picnic areas. They give you lawn chairs. It's just a really great summer experience and a show called the producers is playing now. Remind us about that. This is a Mel Brooks musical, which means it's really funny. It's about a failing producer and an accountant and they scam people into investing into an offensive musical called springtime for Hitler expecting it to bomb, but the highbrow audiences, they think it's a satire and it becomes a hit in the spirit of comedy. Let's listen to will Ferrell perform. Have you heard the German band Speaker 2: 02:52 [inaudible] mean? Does mean does that medicine is the only kind of using set fee all dot Hotez love to Speaker 1: 03:10 the producers is at moonlight amphitheater through June 29th and you wanted to mention another musical in North county little shop of horrors. Who's putting that on? That's put on by new village arts in Carlsbad. It's a small theater, but they've put on some of my favorite shows in the last couple of years and remind us about the story. Little shop of horrors is a five fi horror musical and it has music from the 1960s style. Um, it's about Seymour, who's like a geeky floral shop assistant. He finds a strange plant that he calls Audrey to after his crush Audrey, the plant comes to life and has a thirst for human blood and also for world domination. Let's listen to one of the songs. This is little shop of horrors from the 2003 Broadway cast recording. Speaker 3: 03:58 [inaudible] call the cops. [inaudible] watch him. Speaker 1: 04:21 The local production has also made a few changes, hasn't it? Yeah. This is a gender and color blind version. Adria is usually a wavy blonde, but in this one, she's played by black actress Cachet Manye. The shop owner is usually a man, Mr Mush, but here she's played by Melissa Fernandez, so it's Mrs much nick and the choir, as you heard, is usually three women, but in this one there's two women and one male tenor, and also the plant moves around a lot more than usual. So it's really kind of a new twist on this musical, adding some diversity to the cast there. All right. A little shop of horrors is@newvillagearchthroughaugustfourthandyoucanfindmoreartseventsatkpbs.org slash. Arts I've been speaking with Nina Garren arts editor. Thanks so much, Nina. Thanks. Have a good weekend. You too.