\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div> \t\t\t\t\tMitski at Hollywood High School, April 2. 2026<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLexie Alley<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tMitski herself has had a couple of different explanations for why she chose Hollywood High. (Her equivalent six-night New York residency could not have been in a more different facility \u2014 the modern, nine-figure arts center the Shed. Any of these places counts as an unusually intimate space for Mitski, whose last L.A. shows, in 2024, consisted of three nights at the 6,000-seat Shrine followed by one at the 17,500-seat Hollywood Bowl.)<\/p>\n \n\tOn the first night of the residency this past Monday, Mitski told the audience that the setting brought up raw emotions about being a youthful misfit. \u201cCan I tell you something, though? When I first got here, I slightly regretted having this at a high school, because I was immediately triggered,\u201d she told the crowd. \u201cI don\u2019t know about you all, but \u2026 oh, my God. As soon as I set foot on campus, my brain immediately scanned and clocked all of my exits and places I can hide.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBy Thursday night\u2019s show, she was cheekily describing inflicting those feelings on the audience as deliberate. \u201cWe\u2019re basically bringing y\u2019all to possibly one of the most traumatizing places, to get you all in emotional turmoil, sit you down, and then unleash this music on you. Ha ha ha ha,\u201d she said, literally laughing out loud. \u201cI got you primed. You know, it\u2019s dark in here. No one can see you. You can cry! I\u2019m<\/em> crying, on the inside.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tAuditorium at Hollywood High School<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChris Willman\/Variety<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tWhile Mitski\u2019s material can be as emotion-stirring as a statement like that can promise, if there was any crying going on, it might have been from the sheer devotion and gratitude of having made it through the ticket lottery to secure a place at the shows at all. Or, in the case of the Hollywood High students on hand, having gotten tickets Mitski\u2019s management donated to the school, in a contest; 46 students were given a pair to see a show, after racking up 96% attendance rates, out of 168 who entered the competition.<\/p>\n \n\tMany of the students at Hollywood High are undoubtedly more impressed by Mitski than they are by the stars of yesteryear whose names or images are painted or peppered throughout the school. But for anyone of a certain age stepping inside the campus, which takes up a full, good-sized city block, it can be about as impressive a museum of Hollywood history as any in L.A., even before you get inside the school\u2019s actual museum, which is only open on special occasions.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tPrincipal Samuel Dovlatian with painted stars honoring Carol Burnett and James Garner in Hollywood High School\u2019s alumni hallway of fame.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChris Willman\/Variety<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tThe corridor nearest the main office sports an alumni Wall of Fame, with stars and names painted by the classes of 1991-92. Among the A-listers who merited a star at that time: Garland, Turner, Carol Burnett, John Ritter, James Garner, Mickey Rooney, Robert Carradine, Barbara Hershey, Meredith Baxter, Scott Baio, Alan Hale Jr., Gloria Grahame, Jason Robards, Mike Farrell, Ione Skye, Donovan Leitch, Rick Nelson, Stephanie Powers, Sherree North, Nanette Fabray, producer Glen Larson, L.A. Times publisher Norman Chandler and U.S. judge John Aiso (who has a street named after him downtown).<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tStar for Judge Joseph Wapner at Hollywood High School hall of fame.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tWhen Dovlatian unlocks the doors to the school museum, that\u2019s when a much deeper dive into Hollywood High alumni begins. But first, the principal points to a photo of the school as it was originally constructed in its current form, surrounded by seemingly nothing, let alone an In-n-Out. \u201cThis is what Hollywood High looked like when it was first built in 1920s. a lot of farmland, with orange groves and poinsettias,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd one of the complaints from the farmers was, why are we building such an expensive high school when we don\u2019t even have high school-aged kids around? So what we had to do was put out newspaper advertisements calling for families with high school student-aged kids to come to Hollywood, so that we could have enrollment.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tImage of Hollywood High School amid farmland in 1920, on display in the school museum.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tAnother anomaly, inside the museum door: a class picture from the 1940s that has nothing but girls\u2019 legs lined up in the front row. \u201cIf you take a look, you\u2019ll notice that the majority of the students in the picture are our girls, because of World War II. The guys were all drafted or enlisted in their own right and were ready and willing. We have a whole war memorial upstairs that is a tribute to all of our soldiers and generals.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBut as much as the school can claim major government, business and military figures, the actors are the main draw for most visitors. The museum includes individual entries that include some figures whose fame was too recent for them to have been painted onto that wall in the administration building in the early \u201890s, from Rita Wilson to Lawrence Fishburne to writer-director Frank Darabont.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tExhibit for alumnus Frank Darabont at Hollywood High School museum includes hammer and other props from \u201cThe Shawshank Redemption.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChris Willman\/Variety<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tExhibit for Carol Burnett at Hollywood High School includes her cap from \u201cThe Carol Burnett Show.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChris Willman<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tThere are some non-marquee names whose place in the museum will delight Hollywood aficionados, from composer Earle Hagen Jr. to famed film noir director Edward Dmytryk. (The latter filmmaker shares a portion of one wall with his wife, actress Jean Porter; they were in the classes of 1926 and \u201939, respectively, but didn\u2019t meet and fall in love till they were on-set in 1945.) Others celebrated with their own framed photo and blurb include Linda Evans, Swoosie Kurtz, Carole Wells, Marge Champion and John Phillip Law. Brandy Norwood gets a nod, although perhaps not as big as she might\u2019ve if she were an actual graduate; a magazine article in one corner of the museum mentions her mom pulling her out when she didn\u2019t get the lead in a school play. (Brandy doesn\u2019t lack for her due, though, being one of the figures pained on the Highland Ave.-facing fa\u00e7ade of the school auditorium.)<\/p>\n \n\tNon-actors getting their due in the school museum range from famed sculptor Beatrice Wood to former attorney general Warren Christopher to one-time FCC chairman FCC chairman William E. Kennard.<\/p>\n \n\tBut when it comes to students who took an unusual path toward fame, nothing may beat the next exhibit Dovlatian points out: \u201cThe Ken doll, as you can see, was modeled after our student, Ken Handler, at the time. If you see the \u2018Barbie\u2019 movie, of course, there\u2019s reference to him in there, and here we see the variations and iterations of the Ken doll over the decades and how he changed from the original.\u201d The principal also pulls out a shink-wrapped Hollywood High board game that was somehow licensed in the 1980s.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tLibrary at Hollywood High School with 1930s mural<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChris Willman\/Variety<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tA trip to the school\u2019s historic library includes a massive horizontal mural that was commissioned in the mid-1930s as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt\u2019s Works Progress Administration (WPA), portraying the history of the arts. \u201cYou see the gentleman in the toga and the columns of the Greco-Roman era\u2019s amphitheaters, and move onto the right with the ladies and their flowing dresses and the lyre\u2026 all the way up to the flapper era and the Spanish influence of Southern California on the architects, back architecture changing to the landscape of the desert and so forth, and all the way on the right you end up with the gentleman who is looking through a viewfinder. At the time of this painting of the mural, the film reel camera system was the latest technology at that time, and so we go from the Greco Romans\u2019 oration in amphitheaters to filmmaking in the \u201830s.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHollywood High at present is trying to keep up with the technology of the \u201830s\u2026 the 2030s, assuming all keeps going to plan.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThis is the auto body shop that I\u2019ve converted into a multimillion dollar studio,\u201d says Dovlatian, stepping into a space on the western end of the campus that has students stationed at Macs in a darkened room on one side of a wall and a green-screen set and cameras on the other side. \u201cWith all the studios in town, I probably have equipment that they don\u2019t even have,\u201d the principal boasts. \u201cYou can do music videos and news broadcasts here, multi-camera with teleprompters and everything else. In the other room you have the control deck and the editing room for post-production. And we have community members, instructors from the industry, who come and support our projects.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tPrincipal Samuel Dovlatian in production facility at Hollywood High School<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChris Willman\/Variety<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tDovlation is proud of what\u2019s been accomplished during his 10-year tenture at the school, five as principal, following another five as vice principal. It\u2019s not all<\/em> about taking advantage of the interest that comes with proximity to the entertainment biz\u2026 although plenty of it is.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI run Hollywood High School much like a college, with four majors that students pick from when they initially enroll,\u201d he says. \u201cThe choices are the Teaching Career Academy, which prepares students for the child development career pathway. These students learn theory, meaning they learn Vygotsky\u2019s Zone of Proximal Development, Maslow\u2019s Hierarchy of Needs, Piaget, all the child development theorists, and they take that theory from the classroom and are big brothers and sisters to our neighboring elementary schools and see what the theories that they are learning look like on the playing field\u2026 Another major is the School for Advanced Studies, where this year we have really focused on the biotechnology career pathway. and students have an opportunity to learn the intersection between biology and technology.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cAnother, of course, is the Hollywood Performing Arts Magnet, and this is the academy that prepares students to be on stage doing acting, dancing and music, and in behind-the-scenes theater design, set lighting and sound. We partner with community members in the industry who come and advise and prepare our students. \u2026 Last but not least, we have the New Media Academy Magnet, which not only won a Fistinguished Magnet School Award for Excellence Award, but we are up for national recognition as well. We take students from zero to introducing them to the career of filmmaking where they learn on high-end professional cameras. These aren\u2019t just toy cameras, but we\u2019re talking Sony, RED, Blackmagic, the types of cameras used into industry\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOn this particular visit to the campus, many of the students are dressed formally, although that\u2019s not an indication of any sort of prep-school severe dress code. The principal explains, \u201cToday\u2019s one of the most important days of a senior\u2019s life at Hollywood High School, because you will see my seniors dressed up in their suits and formal wear because they are presenting their senior dissertation, which they have to do in order to qualify to walk on the stage at the Hollywood Bowl, where our graduation is held.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHe stops a girl, Farah, on campus to ask about her dissertation. It happens to be a presentation having to do with show business, but not in any aspirational way. \u201cMy research question is, how does abuse in the entertainment industry affect potential child entertainers?\u201d she explains. \u201cAs y\u2019all know, in Hollywood there\u2019s a lot of exploitation and physical, psychological, emotional and mental abuse. So, I\u2019m touching on that topic and getting you guys to understand the child\u2019s POV of how glamorous Hollywood looks, versus the dark side that really comes with it. \u2026 Definitely when I was younger, I used to want to be a Disney child actor, but my mom always rejected it, and I never understood why until I got older and really got to do my own research. So really that\u2019s what made me pick this topic for my senior project. I\u2019m very excited, and very nervous too.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tEntrance to auditorium at Hollywood High School<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChris WIllman\/Variety<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tOn stage in the auditorium where Mitski will soon perform, the cast for a student production of \u201cInto the Woods\u201d is rehearsing as student crew members work on the set design. This will all disappear at the beginning of spring break so that Mitski\u2019s crew can come in and replace the Sondheim with the production needed to stage \u201cWhere\u2019s My Phone?\u201d and other hits.<\/p>\n \n\tThis is an unusually high-level residency for Hollywood High, the last major one being Morrissey\u2019s 13 years ago, which was shot for a DVD. (Costello\u2019s show in 1978, meanwhile, was the basis of an EP that was included along with the \u201979 studio album \u201cArmed Forces,\u201d finally released in full more than three decades later, in 2010.)<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\u201cA big name like Morrissey is gonna draw attention and media, but we have also other lesser-known artists throughout the years, independent artists and just people who are looking to rent a venue and put together a show,\u201d Dovlation says. \u201cI\u2019ve had many cultural programs and shows, from Far East\/Indian to children\u2019s ballet shows, dance shows. The venue is flexible, available on the weekends, when it doesn\u2019t conflict with our own productions. And I\u2019m happy to rent that out to concerts, shows, performances, theater. I even have a church group in there on Sundays. So, we are community-friendly and want to support the entertainment industry.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSources say all the sound and lighting had to be brought in from scratch for Mitski, at her team\u2019s considerable expense. Goldenvoice, the promoter, even taped seat numbers onto every seat in the auditorum, which usually doesn\u2019t require such niceties. Will it be worth it, when an artist of her magnitude could easily go into a venue that is more ready-made for this high-tech a production?<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tMitski performs with a backdrop of footage of Ann Sheridan in the 1940s film noir \u2018Woman on the Run\u2019 at Hollywood High School.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChris Willman\/Variety<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tMitski tends to be press-shy, and wasn\u2019t up for doing any interviews about the Hollywood High residency. But in a recent interview with the public radio program World Caf\u00e9 (the only one she\u2019s done in the U.S. about her new album), the artist explained why, even before a school was picked, she honed in on doing something outside the norm.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt goes back to my very first intentions for this album,\u201d she said. \u201cEven though we ended up adding a whole bunch of orchestra and other instruments, at its core, the intention was, I want to get back to the feeling that I had 10 years ago \u2014 or earlier, 15 years ago \u2014 where I felt like I was in a room with a few people and we were really connecting\u2026 (where) it felt more raw and right down to basics, both in terms of performance and gear and everything, but also the basics of human interaction\u2026<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI wanted it to feel like an experience I wanted to recreate\u2026 the feeling that I had going to going to DIY shows, punk shows,\u201d where \u201cI would think I\u2019m experiencing something that is not like anything else, that I\u2019m going to remember. You know, like going to an abandoned firehouse and watching a band. Obviously the scale is different, but I wanted to recreate that feeling of, I feel like I\u2019m having an experience<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tMitski at Hollywood High School<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChris Willman\/Variety<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tWhen the \u201cWorld Caf\u00e9\u201d host asked about the logistics of bringing all that audio and video gear into a high school, Mitski responded, \u201cI think you should ask my managers that, because it seemed terrible. I feel really bad, actually. God bless them.\u201d Not mentioned was having to slot the concert dates into the school\u2019s spring break, the only time something this elaborate could have been staged in a public school. (The school\u2019s downstairs cafeteria, meanwhile, was converted into a combination merch booth and highly stylized photo-op space.)<\/p>\n \n\tBut, as Mitski well recognizes \u2014 and was obviously able to convince management and booking \u2014 the 8,000 or so mostly young people who were able to attend over the course of a week won\u2019t likely ever forget being this thoroughly schooled.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/variety.com\/wp-content\/themes\/pmc-variety-2020\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
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