Arts & Events
‘Belefagor’ Opera at San Francisco’s Thick House
Belefagor, aka “The Devil Takes a Wife,” Machiavelli’s only novella, about an unfortunate devil who returns to earth and is “suffocated by the sheer social force to conform and consume,” adapted to opera by Lisa Scola Prosek; and an aria from Peter Josheff and Jaime Robles’ work-in-progress based on Dante’s Divine Comedy, will be presented this weekend at the Thick House Theater, 1695 18th St. on San Francisco’s Potrero Hill. -more-
Books: A Deserter’s Tale of War
Joshua Key had enlisted in the Army and boot camp was in Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. His trainers told him that “Muslims were responsible for the September 11, 200l, attacks and that the people of Afghanistan were “pieces of shit that all deserved to die.” At different training camps he learned to take orders or be punished, and he learned to beat up fellow soldiers his superiors had decided to discipline. -more-
Wild Neighbors: Getting to Know Your Local Butterflies
I don’t usually devote this space to book reviews, but I’m making an exception for the latest in UC Press’s California Natural History Guides series: Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions, by Arthur M. Shapiro and Timothy D. Manolis. I know there are a bunch of good butterfly guidebooks out there already: Jeffrey Glassberg’s Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, Jim Brock and Kenn Kaufman’s Butterflies of North America, Paul Opler’s Field Guide to Western Butterflies. Well, make shelf room for the new one. -more-
Arts and Entertainment Around the East Bay
BERKELEY ARTS FESTIVAL PRESENTS ‘LOVE’ -more-
Moving Pictures: PFA Presents ‘Shohei Imamura’s Japan’
Think of Japanese cinema and one of two things probably comes to mind: either the robust, action-filled, western-influenced samurai movies of Akira Kurosawa, or the more refined, restrained and elegant films of directors such as Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, or Mikio Naruse. -more-
The Theater: Shotgun Players Stage Mamet’s ‘Cryptogram’
The night fears and mania of a boy are juxtaposed with two adults’ uncomfortable discoveries of ambiguity, betrayal, abandonment and the unreliability of memory in the brilliant, tortuously overlapping dialogue that powers David Mamet’s semi-autobiographical Cryptogram at the Ashby Stage in a Shotgun Players production. -more-
Garden Variety: Try Not to Poison Your Neighbor’s Baby Food
It’s bug time! The plants in the garden are just starting to thrive and get real leaves; the flowers are midway in their annual sequential display; what was mud is starting to look like future meals. -more-
About the House: How to Handle a Condo at Forty
Woody Allen says “When you're forty, half of you belongs to the past—and when you’re seventy, nearly all of you.” -more-
Correction
Due to an edited error, in the May 22 story “Chronicle Newsroom Slashed, East Bay Express Goes Indie” the new ownership of the East Bay Express was incorrectly reported. -more-