Memorial Day 2012: Five things to do this weekend

Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer and a three-day reprieve in a long list of five-day (or more) workweeks. Here, we round up five suggestions for a Southern California holiday of art, theater and music.

24HR Chance-A-Thon

Chance Theater presents 24 hours of nonstop performances starting Friday at 7 p.m., including theater, music, magic and tap-dance to benefit the company. The rotating series of shows includes a mini cabaret, a new one-act based on tales from cubicles, cover bands performing classic songs from the 1950s to the ‘80s, tales of Craigslist missed connections and a coming-of-age story told via musical journal entries set to go on at 4 a.m.

Chance Theater, 5552 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim Hills. $10 for each hour.

Walk the Talk

Los Angeles Poverty Department presents three days of parades and traveling brass band performances through skid row, starting at 1 p.m. Saturday. Highlights along the way include history-focused lectures by community neighborhood activists and 36 portraits paying tribute to community visionaries created by street artist Mr. Brainwash.

Click here for parade route.

Degenerate Prom & WTF Art Show

Channel your inner outcast and relive the glittery gowns and crowns of prom, with a slightly wicked twist. Presented by the Department Against Degenerate Art, the event begins Saturday at 8 p.m. at the downtown Mezz Bar -- expect eats, corsages and “weird” works of art from 50 artists on display. Costumes encouraged.

The Mezz Bar, 501 S. Spring St., L.A. $5

Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974

The show opening Sunday at the Museum of Contemporary Art marks the first large-scale, historical-thematic exhibition to deal broadly with land art. The show spans the 1960s during early years of untested artistic experiments and concludes in the mid-1970s, before the art form became a fully institutionalized category. The exhibit is an international affair with photography, film and television from 80 artists and projects from Japan, Israel, Iceland, as well as North and South America.

The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, 152 N. Central Ave., L.A.

Playboy’s Jazz Concert

Grammy-nominated jazz-fusion pioneer Jeff Lorber performs his signature mix of jazz, funk and Latin rhythms at Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza. The free show at 2 p.m. on Sunday is a prelude to Playboy’s upcoming Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl starting June 16.

Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, 3650 W.Martin Luther King Jr.Blvd., L.A.