It’s only the start of April, but Mitski has already taken the crown for the most unique residency of 2026, as the indie singer-songwriter kicked off a five-night stand in the auditorium at Hollywood High this week.
“When I first got here, I slightly regretted having this out of a high school because I was immediately triggered,” Mitski joked before a sold-out crowd of 1,900 fans sitting on thin, old foldout wooden chairs in the school’s auditorium for the first show Monday evening. “As soon as I set foot on campus, my brain immediately did this thing and clocked all the exits and places I can hide. Oh no one’s laughing. That’s cool, I guess no one else had a terrible time in high school.”
Maybe it was just a bit too relatable.
It’s hard not to chuckle a bit at the sheer novelty of seeing one of the most lauded performers of a generation play her only Los Angeles shows of the year on the same stage that will host a high school production of Into The Woods next month. But to be fair, this isn’t your typical high school.
Hollywood High has served as a shooting location for several films and TV shows in the past, including The Optimist, Nancy Drew, Made, and Penn & Teller: Bullshit. Among its famous alumni and former students are Carol Burnett, Sarah Jessica Parker, Judy Garland and Cher. Mitski isn’t the first artist to have played at the famed high school either; Elvis Costello played in the auditorium back in 1978, and he released a live album of that performance in 2010. Morrissey played much more recently, back in 2013, in a performance documented in the concert film Morrissey: 25 Live.
That history was what drew Mitski here in the first place. She was looking for more intimate, unconventional shows for this tour. For her New York shows, Mitski played at The Shed, an arts center more synonymous with theater than with music.
“I want to get back to the feeling I had playing DIY shows, punk shows,” the singer told NPR’s World Cafe last month. “And I was just trying to channel that.”
With that mandate in mind, her team started planning the L.A shows last year in the ramp up to her latest album Nothing’s About to Happen To Me. Wilson Zheng, Mitski’s booking agent at High Road Touring, tells THR that her manager Dalton Sim had brought up Hollywood High, recalling the Morrissey and Costello shows. Hollywood High was the only school they had in mind, Zheng says, with other potential venues including Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
The school quickly became the top choice. Along with the history, its auditorium is also far more equipped for a concert than one may expect. It can seat a couple thousand people, has an expansive ceiling, and a stage that can easily fit a full band. The cafeteria below served as Mitski’s pop-up “Tansy House,” where fans could take pictures and buy merchandise.
“It’s really hard to find a unique spot in Los Angeles,” Zheng says. “There’s a lot of different high-level artists looking for spaces. The concept of playing at a high school itself isn’t brand new, but it’s been a really long time since we’ve seen anyone really do it… It’s a fantastic little theater there. It’s maybe not as embellished as the old Ace Hotel, but it’s a great listening experience for the fans.”
And so, Mitski’s team left it to concert promoter Goldenvoice to coordinate, getting in touch with Hollywood High School principal Samual Dovlatian. After a couple months of discussions, Zheng says, the school was on board. Getting the go-ahead for this sort of show seems even more improbable today than in decades past given all the security guardrails at schools now. In this case, the shows were only possible because Hollywood High School and the rest of LAUSD is on spring break this week, leaving the premises vacant. From the beginning, Zheng says, they targeted this week knowing it was the only time they can pull it off.
Mitski’s own reputation may have contributed as well, as a rowdier, more chaotic artist and audience probably wouldn’t have gotten the green light. “Mitski’s fan base is so sweet and understanding,” Zheng says. “That probably helped too. These aren’t shows where they’re going to mess up the school in any way. These are polite, easy-going folks.”
To give back a bit, Mitski also decided to earmark $2 of every ticket sale to In the Band, an L.A.-based after school music program.
The logistics of the shows weren’t too complicated after getting a go-ahead. The biggest issue was that the auditorium seats weren’t originally numbered, but Goldenvoice labeled them. Beyond that, Mitski brought her own PA, and looking to be good tenants for the week, they cleaned before the shows and plan on cleaning again at the end of the week.
Mitski waisted little time in her set when her residency finally started Monday, going 35 minutes before she even addressed the crowd as she plowed through tracks including “In a Lake,” “I Bet on Losing Dogs,” “Where’s My Phone” and “Heaven.”
That distinct old California school room vibe and smell benefited the DIY aesthetic Mitski was going after, though after a few songs, it was easy to forget where the show was taking place after getting entranced into the concert itself. The visuals were strong, between the projections behind her and the haze of the fog machines that drenched the stage. The only other time the school locale seemed to be acknowledged other than from Mitski’s first remarks was during her performance of “Two Slow Dancers,” which had the audience cheering as she sang the opening lyrics “does it smell like a school gymnasium in here?”
The few thousand fans who managed to snag tickets for the show weren’t the only winners here. Mitski’s team gave some tickets to Hollywood High for students and staff as well. As LAist reported this week, the school established an attendance contest, where students who showed up every day for two weeks could try for a pair of tickets. 168 students entered, and those students’ attendance had risen from 89 percent to 96 percent. 46 students were given tickets overall, per the news outlet.
Then of course, there was the school’s rental fee for the shows overall. Zheng declined to give specifics on how much they paid to rent the auditorium, but as Mitski announced during her show, Principal Dovlatian decided that’s going back for the students too, for their graduation.
“All the caps and gowns and everything, that’s paid for by the rental fee,” she said, shouting out Dovlatian while introducing the rest of her band as well as the crowd cheered. “I wish I could take credit for that but I can’t. That’s Principal D, so thank you.”
Mitski wraps up her residency on Saturday. Then, school’s back in session.
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