Sights, Sounds From Big Top to Big Band

* THEATER: “Eleemosynary,” Lee Blessing’s sensitive exploration of the intricacies of mother-daughter relationships, features engaging performances by Meredith Bishop, D.J. Harner and Bobbi Holtzman at West Coast Ensemble. . . . Director Matthew Wilder’s keenly attuned staging does full justice to Sam Shepard’s blackly comic collage “The Unseen Hand” at Eclectic Company Theatre in North Hollywood.

* FAMILY: With high-tech flair and small-town charm, the African American “Universal Big Top Circus” is a big-top spectacular filled with circus magic, clowns, high-wire artists, aerial gymnasts, illusionists, clowns and much more. It ends its run at Exposition Park Sunday. . . . Canada’s master clown Gale LaJoye explores childhood dreams in “Castles in the Sky,” his whimsical solo show, Sunday at 2 and 5 p.m. at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall in Westwood.

* POP MUSIC: Vicente Fernandez, a towering figure in ranchera music, plays the Universal Amphitheatre tonight through Sunday. . . . England’s new sensation Kula Shaker makes its L.A. debut tonight at the Whisky.

* JAZZ: The spirit of revolutionary composer and bandleader Charles Mingus surfaces at the Veterans Wadsworth Theatre Saturday when the Mingus Big Band drops in from New York with saxophonist John Handy, trumpeter Randy Brecker, baritonist Ronnie Cuber and others to play the music of the late great bassist.

* MOVIES: “The English Patient” (general release) is a mesmerizing romantic epic taken from a prizewinning novel and starring Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche and Kristin Scott Thomas in parallel World War II love stories that illustrate the theorem that “the heart is an organ of fire.” Poetic, elusive and evanescent. . . . LACMA’s “French Society on Film” presents tonight at 7:30 Andre Antoine’s long-lost 1921 epic version of Emile Zola’s “La Terre,” a landmark in French realism, and Jean Vigo’s supremely poetic “L’Atlante” (1934). . . . “Optical Poetry,” a presentation of the experimental work of pioneer filmmaker and artist Oskar Fischinger, will be held tonight at 7 at the Goethe Institute.

* ART: Diverse works by 13 artists challenge the parameters of drawing as “The Power of Suggestion: Narrative and Notation in Contemporary Drawing” continues through Jan. 26 at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Drawings and photo-based works by Meg Cranston, Paula Hayes, Martin Kersels, Pauline Stella Sanchez and others incorporate performance art and architectural elements, automated sculpture, photography and installation in a drawing exhibition that is anything but traditional.

* MUSIC: Russian baritone Vladimir Chernov, assisted by pianist Warren Jones, sings music by Russian composers as well as Schubert and Mahler at his Alex Theatre recital, tonight at 8 in Glendale. . . . Prizewinning American pianist Christopher Taylor plays a varied recital, including works by William Bolcom and Brahms, tonight at 8 in Marsee Auditorium at the South Bay Center for the Arts at El Camino College.

--Compiled by Calendar writers