{"id":2470298,"date":"2026-06-22T10:04:51","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T10:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2470298"},"modified":"2026-06-22T10:04:51","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T10:04:51","slug":"california-gothic-bus-tour-from-new-theater-hollywood-haunts-the-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/california-gothic-bus-tour-from-new-theater-hollywood-haunts-the-city\/","title":{"rendered":"California Gothic bus tour from New Theater Hollywood haunts the city"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There are few things a Los Angeles local is less likely to do than take a Hollywood sightseeing tour on a big, garish bus. Only rush-hour traffic and $20 tacos inspire the same level of dread.<\/p>\n

Yet nearly everyone aboard the open-air bus for a Tuesday night production of \u201cCalifornia Gothic: A Bus Tour\u201d was an L.A. resident. The show, which is produced by the aggressively hip New Theater Hollywood<\/u><\/a>, recently wrapped its third \u201cseason\u201d after debuting in February and returning for an April encore. Set on a moving bus, the 1.5-hour-long experience is part esoteric Tinseltown history lesson, part immersive theater. The narrative conjures meaning from the Los Angeles cityscape by fusing a hodgepodge of textbook theories about the sprawling metropolis onto the gritty reality of daily life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe originally organized this thinking there would be more people coming who aren\u2019t from here,\u201d said Oliver Misraje, the show\u2019s writer and primary tour guide, as the bus pulled away from the curb at Santa Monica and Wilcox. \u201cBut this just goes to show how much people love the city and are from here, contrary to popular belief.\u201d<\/p>\n

In lieu of celebrity-hungry tourists, \u201cCalifornia Gothic\u201d has been packing its bus twice a night with rowdy young scenesters and in-the-know locals eager to absorb its heady mix of California history, public intellectualism and performance artistry.<\/p>\n

While the show wrapped its latest run in mid-June, it will reopen its automated doors during the last week of October for a special \u201cghost tour\u201d edition co-written by Misraje and New York it girl Ruby McCollister.<\/p>\n

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The bus arrives for New Theater Hollywood\u2019s \u201cCalifornia Gothic: A Bus Tour.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

My tour was far less steeped in irony than I feared. As the bus wound its way through the streets of Hollywood, starting at the New Theater\u2019s doorstep before eventually circling the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Misraje led the audience through his take on the death of the \u201cCalifornia dream\u201d and the rotting carcasses of empty buildings and broken promises left in its wake. Along the way, we encountered a haunted-eyed Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Brooks Ginnan), a masked Hollywood legend known as the Duchess of Argyle (Shauna Frente) and a singing, swaggering \u201cRat Czar\u201d with a lot to say about real estate developers (Loren Kramar).<\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s whimsical, and yes, it references Mike Davis\u2019 \u201cCity of Quartz\u201d<\/u><\/a> more than any of the TMZ-type excursions it gently parodies, but it\u2019s still, at its heart, a bus tour.<\/p>\n

In a nod to classic Hollywood tour advertisements, the show\u2019s winkingly all-caps poster declares, \u201cYou Will See: The Hollywood Sign, Marilyn Monroe, the Schizo City State.\u201d There is also a stash of BuzzBallz ready-to-drink cocktails for trivia winners, but Misraje and his cast do not deliver their performances with smirks or smarm. They commit full-throatedly to playing out Misraje\u2019s vision of a Hollywood haunted by the dreamers it\u2019s wronged and the secrets it\u2019s plastered over. <\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, we are trying to pay homage to the bus tour format, which is intrinsically \u2018carny,\u2019\u201d Misraje said, likening himself to a carnival barker espousing aesthetic philosophy aboard an ever-changing \u201cShip of Theseus.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before the performers infiltrate the ship, \u201cI\u2019m trying to intentionally set up audience expectations to think they\u2019re going to get this run-of-the-mill Hollywood death tour,\u201d he explained. \u201cI consider myself a kind of impish person, but still fundamentally sincere.\u201d<\/p>\n

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1 <\/p>\n\"A <\/picture> <\/div>\n

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2 <\/p>\n\"A <\/picture> <\/div>\n

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3 <\/p>\n\"Passengers <\/picture> <\/div>\n

1.<\/strong> Tour guide Oliver Misraje begins the show.<\/span> 2.<\/strong> Rat Czar, portrayed by Loren Kramar, performs during the bus tour.<\/span> 3.<\/strong> Guests board the bus.<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n

Given the show\u2019s monologue-heavy format and bevy of literary references, it\u2019s no surprise that the concept began as an essay. Misraje, a 27-year-old writer and self-described \u201cHollywood hustler\u201d raised primarily in the Inland Empire, was inspired after the 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires to stage a piece he had written bridging his love of Gothic literature with his \u201cwelfare class\u201d upbringing in a family of seven raised by a single mother, which he considered gothic in its own right. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe were in the Inland Empire and it was the 2008 financial crisis,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was all this imagery of things famously California-coded, like the suburban house, the pool, the strip mall, and when we were there, it was just, like, destroyed. There were abandoned housing subdivisions rotting in the sun.\u201d <\/p>\n

The perfect setting, he explained, for the kind of \u201cliterature that emerges after the failure of a historical project.\u201d<\/p>\n

After reaching out to New Theater co-owner Calla Henkel and conceiving the project, Misraje and his producers elected to turn the funhouse mirror onto Hollywood, framing the neighborhood with historical context and Freudian theory but ultimately letting it speak for itself.<\/p>\n

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The bus passes the TCL Chinese Theatre.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

The highly mutable nature of street life and the participatory character of the show means its tone can shift drastically from tour to tour, even within the same night. Sometimes, the streets appear glittering; other times, seedy and dangerous. Once, there was a showdown with another tour bus \u2014 one presumably not carrying theatergoers. At a different show, a drunk pedestrian tried to board the bus during faux-Monroe\u2019s speech. One particularly harrowing night, someone circled the bus on an electric scooter, shouting homophobic slurs at the all-queer cast.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s almost like surfing,\u201d Misraje said. \u201cThere\u2019s so much chaos you\u2019re confronting, and you have to find a way to ride it and let it be a part of the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

The show\u2019s high production costs make bringing in a profit difficult, but Misraje said he and the New Theater Hollywood team plan to revive it periodically, with an evolving story and cast of characters.<\/p>\n

On my tour, no performer better represented the blurred line between theater and street life than the Duchess of Argyle, a.k.a. the Mysterious Masked Lady of Hollywoodland, a.k.a. Shauna Frente, a busty Blanche DuBois figure in an eyeless flapper mask and gartered stockings. Just three days before, she had been evicted from a home on Argyle Avenue that once allegedly belonged to Cecil B. DeMille. This happened after a lengthy legal battle, during which the show helped raise money for temporary housing.<\/p>\n

As the Duchess spilled neighborhood secrets, our bus repeatedly passed an Extra Space Storage facility painted with images of old Hollywood behemoths: Lucille Ball, Groucho Marx and the like. The intermingling smells of sizzling hot dogs, urine and marijuana wafted through the open windows.<\/p>\n

Hollywood may be ghostly, the Duchess told us, but it was hers to haunt.<\/p>\n

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\"A <\/picture>\n
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Duchess of Argyle (Shauna Frente) tells Hollywood stories during the tour.<\/p>\n

(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are few things a Los Angeles local is less likely to do than take a Hollywood sightseeing tour on a big, garish bus. Only rush-hour traffic and $20 tacos inspire the same level of dread. Yet nearly everyone aboard the open-air bus for a Tuesday night production of \u201cCalifornia Gothic: A Bus Tour\u201d was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2470299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2470298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/California-Gothic-bus-tour-from-New-Theater-Hollywood-haunts-the.com2F982F7d2F1899930f4a27a194b45d55bd.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2470298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2470298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2470298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2470300,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2470298\/revisions\/2470300"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2470299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2470298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2470298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2470298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}