The CineVita is host for an immersive live music experience inside a Belgian spiegeltent, a mirrored traveling tent tradition from turn-of-the-century Europe, rebuilt here as a 15,000-square-foot, red-carpet movie-palace fantasy with thousands of mirrors, stained glass and circular staging.
Zac Cassar
The other night, I was heading to see The Devil Wears Prada 2 in Inglewood when I noticed a woman in Madonna-grade fishnet tights and a guy in double-popped neon polo shirts moving with purpose toward a massive round tent glowing next to SoFi Stadium. I followed the scent of the 1980s all the way to The CineVita, the world's largest Belgian spiegeltent, installed at Hollywood Park since January 2025. It’s now under a marquee that reads “Teen Beat Live: 80s Movie Mixtape.”
Had I fallen into a Ferris Bueller-esque reverie? I’m still not sure but it looked fascinating.
Built over two and a half years by fourth-generation Belgian craftsmen, the 15,000-square-foot round mega-tent holds more than 3,000 hand-beveled mirrors, over 200 handmade stained-glass windows and ornate carved woodwork on every surface. Stepping inside feels less like attending a show than being absorbed into a trippy MTV dream sequence.
The CineVita is the permanent home base of For The Record, the theatrical production company founded by Shane Scheel and Anderson Davis, who got their start more than a decade ago throwing Tarantino-themed concerts in Hollywood bars (Quentin Tarantino himself reportedly saw and approved an early Tarantino show). The concept was to bring the cinematic experience to life by stripping the film away and letting the movie soundtrack take the room. It worked in bars, on cruise ships, at festivals. And so, they built a glam-yurt for it. Its debut production in 2025 was, true to the brand, “Tarantino: Pulp Rock.”
Teen Beat Live, which runs through May 31, pays homage to the movie soundtracks of the 1980s, from Say Anything to Purple Rain.
Zak Cassar
“Teen Beat Live,” which recently extended its run through May 31 and will likely extend again into June, is their third production and by most accounts the most ‘80s fun you can have without a DeLorean. It's a two-hour immersive concert drawn from the soundtracks of more than 25 iconic 1980s films: Footloose, Dirty Dancing, Say Anything, Purple Rain, Top Gun, The Breakfast Club. Nineteen singers, dancers, and musicians perform all around you (and also above you, beside you and occasionally uncomfortably close to you) as the greatest songs of a generation (the Debbie Gibson generation, that is) fill the spielgel’ed air.
Teen Beat Live taps into the teen magazine culture of the 1980s, when acts like Duran Duran and Debbie Gibson filled the pages of cherished glossies.
Zak Cassar
Such spectacles are part of a broader wave. I wrote recently about the Masquerade experience in NYC, which shows how hungry audiences are for entertainment that asks them to participate rather than simply observe. The CineVita is like another extension of that wave in which the fourth wall between performer and audience has somehow become beside the point.
Jesse Vargas is the person responsible for making “Teen Beat Live” sound right. As the show's arranger and orchestrator, he wants to honor the original ‘80s songs without embalming them.
“You don't want to lose the things that we know about the '80s,” he told me by videochat this week, “but the synth-pop aesthetic is very contemporary. So there's a way to have this modern pop feel as well as the vintage sounds.”
His arrangements carry the familiar melodic architecture — the big choruses, the gleaming keyboards, the drums that sound recorded inside a sports arena — but they breathe differently. Think: less preservation than conversation.
The process for “Teen Beat Live” began with a shared Google Doc. Vargas and director Anderson Davis moved through candidate songs, figured out what the crowd pleasers might be, and then set about staging them. Vargas arranged the songs until they were fully realized tracks, then turned it over to the performers.
Reviewers and audiences have been loving it. Ty Taylor, frontman for Vintage Trouble and a For The Record regular, delivers a “Purple Rain” that's been drawing standing ovations. Dionne Gipson, a founding company member, does a powerhouse version of “Holding Out for a Hero.” Brian Justin Crum, fresh from the Hollywood Bowl's Jesus Christ Superstar, channels Billy Idol on “Rebel Yell.”
“The show ends, more or less, with a prom,” Vargas says, which sounds cornier than it is. The show at heart is about connection, emotion, memory and, with all those mirrors, literal reflection. “You don’t get that from most entertainment experiences right now, so I think there’s a craving,” Vargas says.
The CineVita is designed to travel, so it will be moving on after the Inglewood run. The plan is to raise the tent in other parts of Los Angeles and to cities beyond. The company is considering other ideas, including a tribute to Saturday Night Fever and an homage to the iconic gospel soundtracks of Hollywood.
Teen Beat Live: 80s Movie Mixtape runs through May 31 at The CineVita, 1248 S. District Drive, Inglewood, CA 90303. Tickets from $29. teenbeatlive.com
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