The White Album By Joan Didion
Performance created by Lars Jan/ Early Morning Opera
"We tell ourselves stories in order to live." —Joan Didion, The White Album
Lars Jan is a Los Angeles-based director, writer, visual artist, and a former CAP UCLA Artist-in-Residence. His work has been commissioned by the Whitney Museum and presented at the BAM Next Wave Festival, Under the Radar, Sundance Film Festival, the Hammer Museum, the Kirk Douglas Theater, and the PICA TBA Festival. His newest piece, The White Album, is a multimedia performance that uses Joan Didion’s seminal essay to apply a uniquely inventive approach to the intersection between observation, storytelling, audience participation, choreography, and architecture.
Obie Award-winning actress Mia Barron delivers the essay in its entirety, while behind her, a parallel performance unfolds. Separated, two audiences—one, large and seated; the other, small and mobile—experience different but resonant works simultaneously as they confront one another across generational and racial divides and varied perspectives, visually demonstrating stark similarities in the cultural dynamics of 1968 and now. The essay’s legendary first line, "We tell ourselves stories in order to live," provokes the project’s double-edged embarkation, challenging us to look critically at the past and to define new paths forward.
This event is presented by the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA.
Event Date: Apr. 5–7, Friday–Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m.
Venue: Freud Playhouse
Price: $26–$56*
*UCLA Students: $15, UCLA Faculty & Staff $25
The Freud playhouse is located in the northeast corner of campus, next to the Broad Art Center, off of Sunset Boulevard and Hilgard Avenue.
Parking is available in Lot 3.
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