The Hollywood Bowl is a modern amphitheater in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles, California, United States that is used primarily for music performances. It is the largest natural amphitheater in the United States, with a seating capacity of nearly 18,000.

The Hollywood Bowl is known for its band shell, a distinctive set of concentric arches that graced the site from 1929 through 2003, before being replaced with a somewhat larger one beginning in the 2004 season. The shell is set against the backdrop of the Hollywood Hills and the famous Hollywood Sign to the Northeast.

The "bowl" refers to the shape of the concave hillside the amphitheater is carved into. The bowl is owned by the County of Los Angeles and is the home of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, the summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the host of hundreds of musical events each year.

It is located at 2301 North Highland Avenue, north of Hollywood Blvd and the Hollywood & Highland subway station and south of Route 101.

The site of the Hollywood Bowl was chosen in 1919 by William Reed and his son H. Ellis Reed, members of the newly formed Theatre Arts Alliance who were dispatched to find a suitable location for outdoor performances.

Hollywood is a district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema. Today, much of the movie industry has dispersed into surrounding areas such as the Westside neighborhood, and the San Fernando and Santa Clarita Valleys, but significant auxiliary industries, such as editing, effects, props, post-production, and lighting companies remain in Hollywood, as does the backlot of Paramount Pictures.

On February 16, 2005, California Assembly Members Jackie Goldberg and Paul Koretz introduced a bill to require California to keep specific records on Hollywood as if it were independent, although it is not the typical practice of the City of Los Angeles to establish specific boundaries for districts or neighborhoods. For this to be done, the boundaries were defined. The bill was unanimously supported by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and the Los Angeles City Council. Assembly Bill 588 was approved by the Governor of California on August 28, 2006, and now the district of Hollywood has official borders. The border can be loosely described as the area east of West Hollywood, south of Mulholland Drive, Laurel Canyon, Cahuenga Boulevard, and Barham Boulevard, and the cities of Burbank and Glendale, north of Melrose Avenue and west of the Golden State Freeway and Hyperion Avenue. This includes all of Griffith Park and Los Feliz^{[citation needed]} – two areas that were hitherto considered separate from Hollywood by most Angelenos. The population of the district, including Los Feliz, as of the 2000 census was 123,436 and the median household income was $33,409 in 1999.

Kristin Chenoweth (born July 24, 1968) is an American singer and actress, with credits in musical theatre, film and television. She is best known on Broadway for her performance as Sally Brown in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1999), for which she won a Tony Award, and for originating the role of Glinda in the musical Wicked (2003). Her best-known television role is Annabeth Schott in NBC's The West Wing. As Olive Snook on the ABC comedy-drama Pushing Daisies, she won a 2009 Emmy Award. Chenoweth stars in the ABC TV series GCB, which premiered in March 2012.

An Oklahoma native, Chenoweth sang gospel music as a child and studied opera before deciding to pursue a career in musical theatre. In 1997, she made her Broadway debut in Steel Pier. Besides You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and Wicked, Chenoweth's stage work includes five City Center Encores! productions, Broadway's The Apple Tree in 2006 and Promises, Promises in 2010, as well as Off-Broadway and regional theatre productions.

Chenoweth had her own TV series Kristin in 2001, and has guest starred on many shows, including Sesame Street and Glee, for which she was nominated for Emmy awards in 2010 and 2011. In films, she has played mostly character roles, such as in Bewitched (2005), The Pink Panther (2006) and RV (2006). She has also played roles in made-for-TV movies, done voice work in animated films and the animated TV series Sit Down, Shut Up, hosted several award shows and released several albums of songs, including A Lovely Way to Spend Christmas (2008) and Some Lessons Learned (2011). Chenoweth also penned a 2009 memoir, A Little Bit Wicked: Life, Love, and Faith in Stages.

Lea Michele Sarfati (born August 29, 1986), known professionally as Lea Michele, is an American actress and singer. Michele began working professionally as a child actress on Broadway in productions such as Ragtime and Les Misérables. She originated the role of Wendla in the musical Spring Awakening and currently plays Rachel Berry in the Fox television series Glee and made her film debut in New Year's Eve starring alongside Ashton Kutcher. Michele performs in the soprano range.

Michele was born in the Bronx, New York City. She is the only daughter of Edith, a nurse, and Marc Sarfati, a delicatessen owner. Her mother is Italian American and Roman Catholic, while her father is a Spanish Sephardic Jew. Michele was raised Catholic, and has stated that her father "gladly" attends church with her and her mother. She grew up in Tenafly, New Jersey. She attended Rockland Country Day School for elementary school in New York and then Tenafly High School. Michele was home schooled one year while working in Toronto, Ontario on Ragtime. She attended Stagedoor Manor in the Catskills, a center for performing arts training. She was then later accepted to the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, but opted instead to continue working professionally on the stage.

Gwen Renée Stefani ( /stɛˈfɑːni/; born October 3, 1969) is an American singer-songwriter and fashion designer. Stefani is the lead vocalist for the rock and ska band No Doubt. Stefani recorded Love. Angel. Music. Baby., her first solo album, in 2004. The album was inspired by music of the 1980s and was a success with sales of over seven million copies. The album's third single, "Hollaback Girl", was the first US digital download to sell one million copies. Stefani's second solo album, The Sweet Escape (2006), yielded "Wind It Up", "4 in the Morning", and the highest-selling single "The Sweet Escape". Including her work with No Doubt, Stefani has sold more than forty million albums worldwide. She won the World's Best-Selling New Female Artist at the World Music Awards 2005.

In 2003, she debuted her clothing line L.A.M.B. and expanded her collection with the 2005 Harajuku Lovers line, drawing inspiration from Japanese culture and fashion. Stefani performs and makes public appearances with four back-up dancers known as the Harajuku Girls dancers. She married British grunge musician Gavin Rossdale in 2002 and they have two sons: Kingston James McGregor Rossdale, born May 26, 2006, and Zuma Nesta Rock Rossdale, born August 20, 2008. Billboard magazine named Stefani the fifty-fourth artist and thirty-seventh Hot 100 artist of the 2000–09 decade.