An elaborate reflected tent sits on an unassuming patch of land simply throughout Rivers Lake from SoFi Stadium. With its Artwork Deco facade and shiny pink carpet, the venue billed as the arena’s greatest Belgian spiegeltent seems stunningly misplaced within the city panorama of sprawling asphalt parking quite a bit and low-slung beige structures.
Referred to as CineVita, the 15,000 square-foot double-decker tent is the brand new house of the theatrical manufacturing corporate For the File, which for the previous 15 years has staged are living musical revues of liked movie soundtracks. Its opening act at CineVita is a party of Quentin Tarantino favorites titled “Tarantino: Pulp Rock.”
The tent might conjure fantasies of seeing a efficiency 100 years in the past — with 3,000 hand-beveled mirrors, hand-cut stained glass home windows and ornate carved picket ornamentation — however the display’s content material is decidedly fashionable. Visitors on the VIP cubicles ringing the venue will discover a pack of sweet cigarettes on their desk, and there’s a Royale with cheese at the menu, a wink to the burger famously referenced through John Travolta all the way through his reverie about Europe in “Pulp Fiction.”
“We had been immersive prior to immersive was once a factor,” For the File co-founder Shane Scheel says on a contemporary afternoon within the tent. “This hybrid of tune, films and theater — multi functional — and an evening out.”
The forged of the display “Tarantino: Pulp Rock” plays at CineVita, a brand new 15,000-square-foot spiegeltent close to SoFi Stadium.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Instances)
For the File was once immersive out of necessity in its infancy, when it operated out of tiny Vermont Kitchen & Bar in Los Feliz. Scheel conceived its productions as one of those cabaret dinner theater — a spot for his proficient buddies to belt out display tunes of a cinematic selection when such alternatives had been glancingly few in L.A. Since the area was once so small, performers had been compelled to face on tables, spin on bar stools and weave in the course of the crowd. Its first actual display was once referred to as “Tarantino in Live performance,” and the director himself attended with Rosario Dawson and beloved it.
Nowadays’s incarnation of the Tarantino display is “Pulp Rock,” and lines an outstanding forged of singers, musicians and actors re-creating key scenes — and songs — from Tarantino’s respected canon, together with “Kill Invoice,” “Inglourious Basterds” and “Reservoir Canine.” Actor Tara Lee, forged whilst the display was once in London, says that For the File creates a surprisingly supportive atmosphere for performers, a rarity within the cutthroat international of display industry. Within the display, Lee embodies Uma Thurman in scenes from each “Pulp Fiction” and “Kill Invoice.” (Sure, you’ll see the twist and a infamous overdose.)
Tara Lee, who performs Mia in “Tarantino Pulp Rock,” revels within the circus-like surroundings of operating in a spiegeltent, a reflected tent.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Instances)
Operating within the spiegeltent, which has a round level in its middle and is ringed through picket tables and lush VIP banquettes, is not like acting in every other venue, Lee says. There may be a circus-like surroundings with further tents for meals services and products and loos.
“It appears like this display is what it was once actually made for,” Lee says of the tent. “It’s taken one thing and increased it 1,000 occasions over. It’s now not simply coming to a display, it’s coming to an enjoy — all the way down to the truth that the meals is themed and the servers are in uniform.”
Tara Lee, proper, performs Mia and Anika Braganza is O-Ren within the display “Tarantino: Pulp Rock” at CineVita, a fifteen,000-square-foot Belgian spiegeltent close to SoFi Stadium.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Instances)
Since For the File’s humble inception, its displays have grown exponentially. The crowd moved from Los Feliz to the bigger DBA nightclub in West Hollywood, the place Demi Moore and Bruce Willis’ daughter, Rumer Willis, joined the solid. Rumer had come to look the display at a prior venue and fell in love with it, asking how she may grow to be part of the act, Scheel says. Moore is now an investor in CineVita, which has raised $6 million so far. Each and every investor is a manufacturer and in addition owns a work of the tent — a unprecedented deal in Hollywood, notes Scheel.
Later, For the File scored a residency on the Wallis in Beverly Hills, which was once a welcome alternative however didn’t provide the similar interactive choices that outlined a real For the File enjoy. For this reason, all the way through the pandemic pause of 2020, Scheel and his co-creator, Anderson Davis, prioritized visualizing an idealized long term for his or her corporate. What they truly sought after to do, they determined, was once excursion.
“We’ve created lightning in a bottle. How do you progress the bottle?” Davis says. “It seems it’s a must to construct one thing the place all the bottle can transfer with you.”
An ornate Belgian spiegeltent may now not appear to suit the invoice in the beginning blush, however those lavish tents are certainly constructed for the street, says Peter Goossens, president of West Coast Spiegeltents, whose corporate built the tent. His corporate creates its tents in collaboration with the Rik Klessens circle of relatives, fourth-generation spiegeltent developers primarily based in Belgium.
“Spiegeltent” is Flemish for “replicate tent,” and the buildings first got here to prominence in Belgium round 1900 after they had been used as touring dance halls at the town festivals. Remarkably few of those old-world venues stay in circulate — there are just a handful in The us — even supposing they’re much respected in Europe, the place it’s a lot more commonplace to stumble throughout one.
Scheel and Davis flew to Belgium with Goossens to satisfy with the Klessens circle of relatives. There they had been over-served a potent monk-brewed beer, Goossens jokes, and presented to a global of probabilities for his or her imaginative and prescient of a touring display.
“Our screening procedure once we get other folks to Belgium is to offer them a tripel beer or two, and through the top of dinner we just about know the whole lot about them,” Goossens says with a grin.
Within Cinevita, a fifteen,000-square-foot Belgian spiegeltent close to SoFi Stadium.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Instances)
The tent that Scheel and Davis determined to fee after their travel took two years to construct, Goossens says. Contributors of the Klessens circle of relatives hand-sewed the drapes and carved the picket through hand.
Now that it’s utterly constructed, then again, Goossens says it will have to take simplest about two weeks to take down and about 3 to place again up the usage of a group of 12 from each Belgium and The us.
CineVita will stay in L.A. in the course of the finish of the yr — a John Hughes themed display referred to as “The Brat Pack” is subsequent at the calendar. In early 2026, the display — and the CineVita tent — will hit the street, preventing first in Austin, Texas, after which directly to Washington, D.C. A couple of displays might be staged in each and every town, making the venue somewhat like a film theater with rotating choices.
“You stroll in and say, ‘This can be a piece of artwork’,” Scheel says. “Part the rationale to come back out is to look this venue and the way it supplies this sort of stunning position for our displays to truly come alive.”
