Relive Theater & Dance Events

29 theater & dance events the community showed up for — relive the night, then catch the next one.

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Encinitas Oktoberfest

Sep 27, 2026 Mountain Vista Dr, Encinitas, CA 9…

Bratwurst and spilled beer and the ocean two miles west — that combination does not exist anywhere in Germany, and it is the entire reason this one works. For one Sunday in late September nearly a mile of Mountain Vista Drive closes and the whole town ends up on the same stretch of pavement. Beer gardens, pretzels the size of your head, an artisan faire, dance performances, and live oompah bleeding into indie rock by afternoon. The Chamber has thrown it for thirty years, which is long enough that it stopped being an event and became the unofficial start of a North County autumn. More than ten thousand people, free to walk into, and the dachshunds in lederhosen are not folklore. They are genuinely there. The locals who consider this their day arrive early. Go with them, and bring somebody who still thinks nothing happens up the coast.

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Mariachi USA Festival

Sep 26, 2026 $35+ The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 222…

The moment a full mariachi hits that first blast of trumpet and violin, something in the chest goes tight and warm at once. Mariachi USA is the longest-running and most revered mariachi event in the world, and its San Diego edition brings four nonstop hours of puro mariachi, ballet folklorico, and a fireworks finale to the Rady Shell on the downtown waterfront. This is culture as celebration, generations of families together on a warm September night, the bay glittering behind the stage. Saturday, September 26, 2026, the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, San Diego. Bring your parents, bring your kids, wear something that lets you dance in your seat, and come feel the goosebumps only live mariachi can raise. Whether it is in your blood or brand new to you, this one moves you.

Cruisin' Grand Escondido 2026 — Friday Night Classic Car Cruise

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Cruisin' Grand Escondido 2026 — Friday Night Classic Car Cruise

Sep 25, 2026 W Grand Ave, Escondido, CA 92025

Five hundred chrome-heavy machines line Grand Avenue every Friday evening in Escondido, and the street closes down so completely that the only traffic is foot traffic and the low rumble of engines cooling off. Cruisin' Grand is the weekly ritual that turns downtown Escondido into a living museum of pre-1974 American iron — hot rods, muscle cars, customs, vintage trucks parked bumper to bumper while their owners stand with hoods up and stories ready. The restaurants along Grand stay open late, feeding the crowd that drifts between paint jobs and patios. Nobody charges admission. Weekly awards go to five selected cars, chosen not by a panel but by the kind of authority that only comes from knowing what a numbers-matching engine sounds like. This runs every Friday through September 25, 4pm to 9pm. Street closures on Maple, Broadway, Kalmia, and Juniper from Second Ave to Valley Parkway. Park in the downtown garages and walk — the earlier you arrive, the more you see rolling in. Free.

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Disney's Beauty and the Beast

Sep 22, 2026 $45+ Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 60…

A whole generation learned what a musical could be from a dancing teapot and a candelabra, and most of them never fully recovered. Put it on a real stage with a full orchestra swelling underneath Be Our Guest, and watch those same people — grown now, frequently with kids of their own — turn into puddles in the dark. This is grand, gold-drenched, family-first Broadway with no apology for any of it: the ballroom, the enchanted castle, the yellow gown lit so it reads from the back row of the hall. The touring production has the scale to actually deliver that ballroom, which is the moment everything hinges on and the one cheap productions always get wrong. Segerstrom in Costa Mesa is an easy stop off the freeway near the mall. Make it a first big theater night for a small person, or go entirely for yourself. Some stories really are worth telling as a tale as old as time.

San Diego Symphony — Summer Pops at The Rady Shell 2026

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San Diego Symphony — Summer Pops at The Rady Shell 2026

Jun 5 – Sep 19, 2026 The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 222…

The San Diego Symphony's Summer Pops season at The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park brings world-class orchestral music to the San Diego waterfront for a series of outdoor concerts running June through September 2026. The Rady Shell — an acoustically engineered open-air performance venue on the waterfront at Jacobs Park — provides a stunning setting for the Symphony's summer season with San Diego Bay visible beyond the audience. The Summer Pops programming spans the full range from classical masterworks to pops concerts featuring Broadway music, film scores, jazz, and popular artists performing with orchestral accompaniment. The variety makes the summer season accessible to audiences who aren't regular classical concertgoers while delivering the full orchestral experience that the Symphony's musician quality supports. The Rady Shell's outdoor format is distinctly family-friendly — picnic blankets, lawn chairs, and the relaxed atmosphere of the waterfront park contrast with the formality of indoor concert halls. The adjacent Jacobs Park lawn allows families to spread out while the children remain within range of the music. Food and wine are available from vendors on-site. The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park is located at 222 Park Blvd in downtown San Diego, walkable from the Embarcadero and accessible via MTS Trolley (Convention Center station). Parking in the downtown convention center structures. Individual concert tickets and season subscriptions available through the San Diego Symphony website.

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Capital of Craft Beer Fest

Sep 19, 2026 Broadway Pier, 1000 N Harbor Dr, S…

Nobody stumbled into making this one of the great beer cities on earth. A whole generation of brewers argued and experimented and out-hopped each other into it, and the people who drink here wear that history like a hometown jersey. This is that scene's yearly reunion. Sixty-plus beers poured on the pier with the bay sitting right there, unlimited tasters, a commemorative cup, and local bands instead of a hired DJ. It is the kind of afternoon where you fall into conversation with the brewer who actually made the thing in your glass, because in this town they show up and pour it themselves. The early VIP hour is the insider move, before the general crowd floods in. 21+. Broadway Pier, 1000 N Harbor Dr. September 19. The faithful here treat Capital of Craft as a point of civic pride. This is the day they get to prove it.

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Little Shop of Horrors

Sep 18, 2026 $40+ La Mirada Theatre for the Performi…

A man-eating plant from outer space, a doo-wop trio narrating doom, and a lovesick flower-shop clerk named Seymour who will do anything for the girl and the fame: Little Shop of Horrors is the perfect cult musical, equal parts campy horror, sweet romance, and Alan Menken earworms you cannot shake. Feed me, Seymour has been rattling around America's brain for forty years, and McCoy Rigby's productions at La Mirada Theatre are famous for doing this stuff with real Broadway polish. It runs September 18 through October 11, 2026, at La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts. Come for the giant singing plant and the belly laughs, stay for a surprisingly poignant little fable about ambition and the price of getting what you want. Bring the friend who loves a good scare with their showtunes. This one is pure, gleeful fun.

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Begin Again, A New Musical

Sep 18, 2026 The Old Globe, 1363 Old Globe Way,…

The belief that a song can still save you does not show up when things are going well. It arrives after everything else has already fallen apart, which is the whole heart of this one. Adapted from the John Carney film, with an original score by Pat Monahan, it follows two people who meet at the bottom and rebuild themselves one recording at a time. The Old Globe cast part of the onstage band with actual San Diego musicians who answered an open call, which means some of the sound coming off that stage belongs to this city specifically. Watching a pre-Broadway world premiere is watching a show decide what it will become, in the room, before critics and cast albums fix it in place forever. Bring the person who still has an unfinished song sitting on their phone. Do not say anything about it afterward.

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Goodnight, Oscar

Sep 16, 2026 $40+ North Coast Repertory Theatre, 987…

Oscar Levant was the funniest, most tortured man in mid-century America: a concert pianist, a bottomless wit, a fixture of late-night TV who turned his own breakdowns into the sharpest comedy on air. The Broadway play that won Sean Hayes a Tony brings one impossible night of Levant's life to the stage, and North Coast Repertory Theatre's intimate house in Solana Beach is the perfect room to feel every laugh and every crack in the mask up close. This is theater for people who love a brilliant, wounded mind and a joke that costs something. Goodnight, Oscar runs September 16 through October 11, 2026, at North Coast Rep. Come for a portrait of genius on the edge, stay for one of the best-written plays of the last few years, performed close enough to see the sweat. Bring the friend who quotes old talk shows.

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& Juliet

Sep 9, 2026 $45+ Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 60…

What if Juliet didn't die for Romeo? & Juliet takes that gleeful what-if and runs it straight through a jukebox of Max Martin's biggest pop hits (Britney, Backstreet Boys, Katy Perry, Pink), turning Shakespeare's tragedy into a joyous, glitter-cannon night about a young woman writing her own ending. It is one of the most purely fun musicals touring right now, the kind that has the whole house on its feet screaming lyrics they didn't know they had memorized. & Juliet plays Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa September 9 through 21, 2026, an easy stop off the 405 near South Coast Plaza. Come for the pop bangers, stay for a surprisingly big-hearted story about second chances and choosing yourself. Bring the friends who still know every word to every 2000s radio hit. This one is a party.

Kraken Karaoke at Harvelle's — Long Beach Tuesday Night

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Kraken Karaoke at Harvelle's — Long Beach Tuesday Night

Every Tuesday · Next Oct 6 Harvelle's Long Beach, 201 E Broad…

Somewhere between the second drink and the third song on the list, the performance stops and the meaning starts. The strangers at the bar who were ignoring you a minute ago are screaming the chorus back, and for three minutes nothing in your life needs fixing. Kraken Karaoke runs every Tuesday night at Harvelle's on East Broadway — one of the last real music venues in Long Beach, the kind of room where sound bounces off exposed brick and the bartenders have seen better singers and worse singers and none of it matters. Doors at 8 PM, karaoke at 9. The song list is deep. The regulars are generous with applause. Nobody is here to judge your Fleetwood Mac or your Selena. Harvelle's is not a karaoke bar. It is a live music venue that hands the mic to the audience one night a week, and the difference is everything — the sound system is real, the stage is real, and the room that has hosted actual headliners now belongs to whoever signs up first. Every Tuesday, doors at 8 PM. 201 East Broadway, Long Beach. Bring your courage and your worst song choice — the room will carry you.

Water for Elephants — Broadway in Hollywood

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Water for Elephants — Broadway in Hollywood

Sep 8, 2026 Hollywood Pantages Theatre, 6233 H…

We keep telling stories about running away with the circus because some part of us never entirely stopped wanting to. This one takes that ache and puts real acrobats in the air above it. A young man loses everything, jumps a moving train in the dark, and lands inside a Depression-era traveling show full of danger and wonder and one impossible love. The touring production folds genuine aerialists and hand-balancers into the storytelling, so the spectacle is not a metaphor for anything — it is physically happening over the actors' heads while they sing. Seven Tony nominations, adapted from the novel everybody's mother read the same year. Under the gilded ceiling on Hollywood Boulevard, one night in September, and fine for kids around eight and up. The people who still look twice at a passing train will feel every minute of it. Take the one you know does that.

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Orange International Street Fair 2026

Sep 4 – Sep 6, 2026 Old Towne Orange Plaza, Chapman Av…

Fourteen countries set up kitchens on the same four blocks, and for three days the whole town smells like something your grandmother would have made if your grandmother had been from everywhere at once. It runs on a principle most food festivals abandoned decades ago: no entrance fee, no VIP section, and no sponsor telling you which direction to walk. You show up. You eat Brazilian food beside a stage playing Irish music beside a booth selling Greek pastries. The line for the gyros touches the line for the lumpia touches the line for the schnitzel. You lose a child in the kids' street and find them covered in face paint holding a stick of something fried. Old Towne Orange, the historic plaza at the center of it, eight stages running continuously, crafts booths down every street. Bring cash — plenty of vendors take nothing else. Come hungry, and bring the person who claims they have already tried everything. Watch that hold up for about ten minutes.

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Rozz Williams: Romeo’s Distress — Documentary Screening + Live Performance

Aug 29, 2026 Fox Theater Pomona, 301 South Gare…

Some artists leave songs behind. He left a wound that never closed, and this scene has been carrying it for more than two decades. The documentary screens first — Nico B's film on Rozz Williams, taking its Southern California premiere. Then comes the part that is hard to explain to anyone outside it: Rikk Agnew, James McGearty, and David Glass, the original Christian Death lineup, playing material from Only Theatre of Pain, Catastrophe Ballet, and Ashes, with Eva O, Gitane Demone, Patrik Mata, William Faith, and Kenton Holmes taking vocals. This is not a tribute band. These are the people who were in the room when the music was made. The Fox Theater in Pomona, all art deco grandeur, is the right building for something this heavy. Tickets through AXS. If you know someone who wore out their copy of Only Theatre of Pain, they need to hear about this tonight.

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Chinatown Summer Nights LA 2026

Aug 21, 2026 Free 727 N Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90…

The marine layer rolls in over North Broadway around dusk and does something unfair to the lanterns — makes them glow softer than they have any right to, turns a block that was quiet all week into somewhere you want to stand still. This is Chinatown running its own summer evenings, and the people who grew up on these streets are the audience, not the backdrop. Food stalls set up in the plaza, music comes from more than one corner at once, and the cooking leans toward Southern and Southeast Asia — the traditions that actually shaped these blocks — alongside regional Chinese dishes that rarely surface outside the community. Free, outdoors, Friday and Saturday evenings through the summer, 7–10 PM at 727 N Broadway. Bring the friend who insists this city has no street life after dark. Let them stand under the lanterns and try to keep saying it.

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Much Ado About Nothing — The Old Globe Summer Shakespeare Festival 2026

Aug 2, 2026 1363 Old Globe Way, San Diego, CA …

August nights in Balboa Park carry a specific weight — the eucalyptus smell thickens after sunset, the air cools just enough to make sitting outside feel like a privilege, and the stage at the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre disappears into the trees behind it. The Old Globe’s Summer Shakespeare Festival closes its 2026 season with Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Barry Edelstein, running August 2 through August 30 on that outdoor stage. This is the production that regulars circle on their calendars every year: the one where the comedy lands differently because the breeze carries it, because the laughter of strangers sitting on blankets becomes part of the performance. If you have never seen Shakespeare outdoors at the Globe, this is the invitation you did not know you were waiting for. If you have, you already know — nothing else in San Diego feels quite like this. Single tickets go on sale July 24 at 1:00 p.m. An open-caption performance is available August 23.

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Party Plus Ultra — Anime Party at Parq Nightclub (SDCC 2026)

Jul 23 – Jul 24, 2026 $30-$125 Parq Nightclub, 615 Broadway, San …

You spend all day on the convention floor, and by night you need a room that matches the energy. Party Plus Ultra is the one the anime community circles on the SDCC schedule before badges even ship -- XLE Productions turning Parq Nightclub, one of the Gaslamp's premier venues, into a full anime experience: cosplay, themed activations, and photo ops for a crowd that earned the night out. Live anime cover band Isekai Stage opens with fan-favorite openings and anthems before DJs Chuck None, DJ Overkill, and Kahn Artest take over until 1:30 AM. XLE has been running SDCC after-parties for years, and this is their signature one. Thursday night of SDCC week at Parq Nightclub, 615 Broadway, San Diego, CA 92101. General admission starts at $30 early bird; VIP available. 21+.

Ready Party One: The Final Level — 2026 SDCC Kick-Off Party

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Ready Party One: The Final Level — 2026 SDCC Kick-Off Party

Jul 22 – Jul 23, 2026 Parq Nightclub, 615 Broadway, San …

The week of San Diego Comic-Con starts before you ever enter the convention center. Ready Party One: The Final Level is how it begins right. Parq Nightclub hosts the SDCC Kick-Off Party on Wednesday July 22 — the night before badge pickup begins, when the city is already filling with fans who flew in from everywhere. Neon-lit gaming and arcade atmosphere, DJs across two floors, a live cosplay showcase, and a set from The Flux Capacitors, one of the most committed Back to the Future tribute acts in the country. No SDCC badge required. Parq is a short walk from the convention center on Broadway. VIP tables and elevated tiers available. Price: $33.85-$321.96. Organized by Experience Level Entertainment. July 22, 2026 | 8 PM - 2 AM.

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