All Day Photography

all day Photography

For photographer Nick Ut there is no escaping the legacy of his 1972 photograph of 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc, who ran naked and screaming down a Vietnamese road after being burned by napalm. The image still haunts. A new exhibition opening today looks at Ut’s career beyond that Pulitzer Prize-winning image, however, as “From Hell to Hollywood by Nick Ut” surveys Ut’s 35-year career as a photojournalist.

“From Hell to Hollywood by Nick Ut,” the Perfect Exposure Gallery, 3513 W. 6th St., L.A. Tuesdays to Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Ends April 12. Free. (213) 381-1137.

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8pm Theater

Using a fusion of video, theater and puppetry and a haunting score by Laurie Anderson, Quebec’s Robert Lepage and his Ex Machina company’s “the far side of the moon” explores the vastness of outer and inner space. The U.S.-USSR space race serves as a metaphor in the tale of two competitive brothers and the struggle between ambition and idleness and the ordinary and other-

worldly. Yves Jacques per-

forms the multimedia epic.

“the far side of the moon,” Freud Playhouse, 405 Hilgard Ave., Westwood, today to Sunday, 8 p.m. $35. (310) 825-2101.

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8pm Performance

Meredith Monk is a maker of music and movement, a unique poly-artist whose music theater is a spiritual journey though elemental emotions. Ann Hamilton is a maker of profoundly ornate installation art that produces its own spiritual energy, flowing, say, across a floor covered in honey with 750,000 pennies stuck to it or along a sea of horsehair. Together these intense and powerfully engaging artists have come up with a new work for Monk’s interdisciplinary company: “mercy,” a mediation on a news clip about a Palestinian boy caught in the cross-fire on Israel’s West Bank. They examine human nature through what they describe as “a mosaic of gestures, music and visuals,” which includes miniature video cameras positioned in the singers’ mouths and on the dancers’ fingertips projecting the images onto large screens.

“mercy,” Royce Hall, UCLA, Westwood. 8 p.m. $14 to $40. (310) 825-2101.

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8pm Comedy

When comedian, actor and raconteur Billy Connolly performs at the Wilshire Ebell Theater, the Scottish performer will give L.A. audiences a rare but healthy sampling of his off-the-cuff one-man shows, which he has toured for many years in Britain, Scotland and Australia.

Billy Connolly, tonight and Friday, 8 p.m., Wilshire Ebell Theater, 4401 W. 8th St. $45, $35. (323) 939-1128 or Ticketmaster, (213) 480-3232.

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8pm Pop Music

The doldrums-bound country music field is casting about for a savior, and many have pegged Brad Paisley as the white knight who can kick-start the genre commercially while upholding its classic traditions. The West Virginian, impressive at the House of Blues in December, makes a quick return to town.

Brad Paisley, El Rey Theatre, 5515 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., 8 p.m. Sold out. (323) 936-4790.