Why Peacock Theater matters.
Peacock Theater is a contemporary performance hall where South Park's entertainment character meets arena-scale staging, televised ceremonies and the architectural centerpiece of the L.A. LIVE district.
Set along Chick Hearn Court near South Figueroa Street and just steps from the northern edge of the Los Angeles Convention Center, the theater occupies a prominent site on the level Los Angeles Basin where Downtown's high-rise core transitions south toward the broad institutional grounds surrounding USC and Exposition Park. The building faces an internal plaza within a dense concentration of performance, hospitality and broadcast facilities assembled west of Figueroa Street. ELS Architecture and Urban Design shaped its exterior through projecting metal forms, concrete and broad expanses of glass, giving the 235,000-square-foot building a distinct profile beside the larger arena immediately north. The transparent lobby opens toward the plaza as the auditorium rises behind it across three seating levels, concentrating a large audience inside a comparatively compact footprint. The result is a purpose-built entertainment hall whose plaza frontage, concentrated auditorium and position between Downtown's convention and arena districts place large-scale live production inside the pedestrian core of South Park.
What defines Peacock Theater.
Peacock Theater is best known for bringing a 7,100-seat auditorium and an arena-scale stage into a performance hall conceived as the centerpiece of L.A. LIVE. AEG commissioned Berkeley-based ELS Architecture and Urban Design in 2002, three years before construction began on September 15, 2005. ELS developed a three-level seating configuration that keeps all 7,100 seats within 220 feet of the stage, reconciling a capacity approaching arena scale with the tighter geometry of a theater. The stage exceeds 14,000 square feet, supporting televised productions whose scenic and technical demands extend far beyond conventional concert staging. Clark Construction served as general contractor, and John A. Martin & Associates handled structural engineering on a project costing $120 million. The venue opened in October 2007 as Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE, with the Eagles and Dixie Chicks beginning a six-concert opening engagement. Its completion supplied the emerging entertainment district with a theater specifically suited to concerts, premieres and broadcast events as the surrounding L.A. LIVE complex expanded into a four-million-square-foot development. ELS subsequently received recognition including a Los Angeles Business Council Architectural Award and Urban Land Institute honors connected with the project and surrounding Downtown redevelopment.
Televised awards rapidly became the building's defining cultural role after the opening engagement. The Primetime Emmy Awards moved there in 2008, giving the Television Academy a long-term home inside a hall whose stage and seating geometry supported a major live broadcast. The American Music Awards occupied the venue from 2007 through 2022, the ESPYs ran there from 2008 through 2019 and the BET Awards began using the theater in 2013. MTV brought the Video Music Awards to the auditorium in 2010, 2011 and 2015, as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame staged induction ceremonies there in 2013 and 2022. The building became Microsoft Theater on June 7, 2015 under a new AEG naming agreement accompanied by technology upgrades. Peacock and AEG announced another naming partnership in June 2023, and Peacock Theater became the official name on July 11. A new chapter was announced on March 26, 2026 when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and AEG selected L.A. LIVE as the home of the Oscars beginning with the 101st ceremony in 2029 and continuing through 2039. Planned theater work includes major upgrades to the stage, sound and lighting systems, lobbies, backstage spaces and production areas before the Academy Awards arrive, extending the building's role as a purpose-built home for globally televised entertainment.
How Peacock Theater fits.
Peacock Theater works as the anchor for a south-Central Downtown outing connecting a state institution devoted to Black art and history, Los Angeles's first dedicated art museum and a vast natural-history collection rooted in the city's early twentieth-century cultural ambitions.
Begin at California African American Museum, chartered by California in 1977 and placed into formal operation in temporary quarters in 1981 under founding director Aurelia Brooks. Richmond Barthé's bronze bust of Mary McLeod Bethune became the first acquisition, beginning a collection devoted to African American art, history and culture with particular attention to the American West. Jack Haywood and Vince Proby designed the permanent 44,000-square-foot Exposition Park building, which opened during the 1984 Summer Olympics with The Black Olympians 1904-1984, curated by Lonnie Bunch years before he became founding director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Continue to USC Fisher Museum of Art, created after Elizabeth Holmes Fisher gave USC funding for a museum in 1937 and dedicated on November 14, 1939. Fisher donated 74 paintings, drawings and sculptures between 1939 and 1951, building a collection strong in Hudson River School landscapes, French Barbizon painting, British portraiture and Dutch and Flemish masters. Her original mandate kept admission free, and the institution developed into Los Angeles's first museum created solely for the collection and exhibition of fine art. Conclude at Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, which opened in Exposition Park in 1913 as the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science and Art. Architects Frank Hudson and William Munsell designed its original Beaux-Arts building, whose grand rotunda became the nucleus for later expansions as scientific collections grew across paleontology, zoology, mineralogy, anthropology and regional history. Decades of collecting brought the institution tens of millions of specimens and cultural objects spanning billions of years of natural history. The progression moves from a state museum created to preserve and advance African American cultural history through Los Angeles's first purpose-built fine-art museum and culminates at a vast scientific institution whose collections reach from deep geological time to the human history of Southern California.
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