Theater/Arts: The color red is the star of new MoLAA exhibit – Press Telegram

At the Museum of Latin American Art, “red” becomes much more than just a color.

“RED RED RED, Geometry of a Scar,” which opened on Sunday. Oct. 4, and remains on view through Feb. 21, brings together the work of about 40 women artists from 20 countries in an exhibition organized by MIA Art Collection and curated by guest curator Sebastián C. Strenger.

Across painting, sculpture, video, textiles and installation, the exhibit considers red as a color of passion, love and attraction — but also of power, resistance, danger, violence and freedom.

The exhibit offers a broad view of women’s artistic perspectives by placing works from different generations and geographic backgrounds in conversation.

Red moves between abstraction and figuration, sometimes appearing as a literal subject and elsewhere functioning more subtly as a psychological state.

Color, here, is not simply an aesthetic choice but a way of exploring the experiences and associations carried by women-created art.

That conversation is grounded in a longer history of these artists struggling for recognition. “RED RED RED” looks back to a time when women were excluded from state art academies, and established their own schools and artistic networks, as well as to artists whose contributions were subsequently overlooked or minimized.

Among the historical figures represented is Ottilie W. Roederstein, whose crimson-toned “Portrait of a Young Man” reflects the career of an artist who successfully exhibited internationally but later fell into obscurity.

The exhibition also points to the shifting understanding of artists such as Hilma af Klint, whose early experiments with abstraction predated the work of Wassily Kandinsky but remained largely unrecognized for decades.

Gabriele Münter, meanwhile, spent much of her career understood primarily through her relationship with Kandinsky before her own artistic accomplishments received greater attention.

These stories provide a historical backdrop for the contemporary artists included in the exhibit and the wider question of whose work becomes part of art history.

From there, “RED RED RED” moves into the modern era, where women artists increasingly challenged conventional ideas about gender, the body, sexuality, domestic life and power.

Works by artists such as Marina Abramović, Louise Bourgeois, Meret Oppenheim and Simone Haack demonstrate the range of approaches to those subjects.

The exhibit is organized by MIA Art Collection, an international nonprofit founded by philanthropist and collector Alejandra Castro Rioseco to support and promote women artists. The collection encompasses more than 900 works by artists from more than 35 countries, with a mission that includes increasing women’s participation in museums, galleries, art fairs, leadership and scholarship.

In fact, “RED RED RED, Geometry of a Scar” marks MIA Art Collection’s first international exhibition presented in a museum and continues its collaboration with MoLAA following a joint exhibition in the United Arab Emirates in 2025.

For MoLAA, 628 Alamitos Ave., the exhibition arrives during the museum’s 30th anniversary year, adding an international and cross-generational perspective to its programming.

For more information, go to molaa.org/2026-red-red-red.

Alex’s Bar

Long Beach’s underground music scene will get a midweek, Midwestern jolt when Blanky, The Pangs and Y Try take over Alex’s Bar, 2913 E. Anaheim St., on Wednesday, Oct. 14.

The three-band bill brings together a lineup of alternative-leaning sounds for a night in one of our city’s coolest live-music rooms — with Blanky, The Pangs and Y Try each bringing their own take on alt music.

Blanky, hailing from Lawrence, Kansas, brings a hazy blend of shoegaze, jangly surf rock and folk noir, led by the distinctively dry vocals of songwriter Anthony Cunard.

The Pangs and Y Try, on the other hand, are both local Long Beach acts.

This eclectic, left-of-center triple bill will begin at 8:30 pm.

For more information, go to alexsbar.com.

‘Reefer Madness’

Long Beach Playhouse turns the hysteria of an infamous piece of anti-marijuana propaganda into outrageous musical comedy with “Reefer Madness: The Musical,” running from Saturday, Oct. 10, to Nov. 15 in the Playhouse’s Studio Theater.

Inspired by the earnest 1936 public-service film “Reefer Madness,” the musical takes the film’s wildly exaggerated warnings about marijuana and pushes them even further.

What begins as a cautionary tale about clean-cut young people supposedly falling prey to “reefer” becomes an absurd descent into deception, obsession, sex, violence and, of course, musical-theater madness.

As a deliberately over-the-top satire that sends up both the moral panic of the original film and the conventions of old-fashioned melodrama, it’s a lot of fun.

The story follows wholesome teenager Jimmy Harper after he is lured into a reefer den, with his increasingly chaotic journey framed by a pompous lecturer who insists on presenting the action as a dire warning.

Along the way come gangsters, jazz, exaggerated villains, “reefer girls” and other larger-than-life characters.

With music and book by Dan Studney, and lyrics and book by Kevin Murphy, the Long Beach production is directed by Rovin Jay, choreographed by Sonya Randall and musically directed by Stephen Olear.

“Reefer Madness: The Musical” is part of Long Beach Playhouse’s 2026 Studio season, and its Studio Theater is well suited to the show’s exaggerated, adult-oriented brand of theatrical comedy.

Note that the production contains adult language and content, including simulated drug use — this is reefer madness, after all.

Performances continue through Nov. 15 at Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St. The schedule includes Friday and Saturday evening performances at 8 p.m. and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m., with an opening-night Champagne Gala on Sunday.

For more information, go to lbplayhouse.org.