Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Tuesday July 10, 2007

TUESDAY, JULY 10 -more-


Arts and Entertainment Around the East Bay

Tuesday July 10, 2007

ARIEL STRING QUARTET AT GIORGI GALLERY -more-


The Theater: Crowded Fire Theater Presents ‘Anna Bella Eema’

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Tuesday July 10, 2007

On a platform, three women sit, facing the audience. They don’t budge from their chairs until practically the end of the show, yet there’s a choreography, in Lisa D’Amour’s Anna Bella Eema, as directed by Rebecca Novick for Crowded Fire Theater Company at the Ashby Stage, and the three actors (Cassie Beck, Danielle Levin and Julie Kurtz) provide a rhythmic soundscape as well, with voice, simple musical instruments (a finger piano) and various ordinary objects as noisemakers. -more-


Moving Pictures: Silent Film Festival a Portal To the Picturesque Past

By Justin DeFreitas
Tuesday July 10, 2007

In today’s fully wired world of digital video and handheld viewing devices, it may be difficult to fathom a time when the moving picture was itself a revolutionary technology. In the first few decades of the 20th century, as the new medium was developed and perfected, it brought with it a radical cultural shift, bringing images from all over the world to neighborhood theaters. -more-


Green Neighbors: What’s in a Name? History and Big Trees

By Ron Sullivan
Tuesday July 10, 2007

It isn’t always easy to keep a giant sequoia / Big Tree / Sequoiadendron giganteum thriving down here near sea level. (It isn’t always easy even to talk about the species without someone’s caviling about whatever common name is current.) I’ve known at least two that were cut down locally, and one that just doesn’t look happy. There’s a nice row of them along the main road through Tilden Park, though, just past the regional Parks Botanic Garden, for easy viewing as you pass. You can get up close and personal with the species in the Bot Garden too, and reassure yourself about identification—they’re labeled—and compare them with coast redwood, Sequoia sempervirens. -more-


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday July 10, 2007

TUESDAY, JULY 10 -more-


Arts Calendar

Friday July 06, 2007

FRIDAY, JULY 6 -more-


Moving Pictures: PFA Celebrates a Tough Old Broad’s 100th

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday July 06, 2007

You’d think a beautiful young woman with a name like Ruby Stevens would have had it made in 1930s Hollywood. And she very well might have; the name conjures images of a bright-eyed ingenue, lovely, ambitious and 100 percent red-blooded American. -more-


The Theater: Contra Costa Civic Theatre Stages ‘Meet Me in St. Louis’

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday July 06, 2007

“Clang, clang, clang went the trolley ...”—which around these parts gets confounded with cable car bells and tourist-ridden summers, just as Meet Me in St. Louis’ other big hit, “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” has led some to think of (or to list) the 1944 Vincente Minelli movie musical as a Christmas film. -more-


Midsummer Mozart Sneak Preview at El Cerrito Benefit

By Ira Steingroot, Special to the Planet
Friday July 06, 2007

In an encore of last year’s idyllic kick off event, this year’s 33rd Midsummer Mozart Festival, under the direction of Maestro George Cleve, again begins early with a sneak preview of the destival at a benefit party set in a lovely garden in the El Cerrito hills this Sunday, July 8, from 4 p.m to 6 p.m. -more-


Open Home in Focus: Berkeley Architect Dakin’s Work on View at 2828 Hillegass

By Steven Finacom
Friday July 06, 2007

THE four-bedroom home at 2828 Hillegass Ave., built in 1909 in what is now Berkeley’s Willard neighborhood, is one of the notable residential works of Clarence Casebolt Dakin a little-remembered, but very intriguing, Berkeley architect. -more-


Garden Variety: The Conscience of a Conservator

By Ron Sullivan
Friday July 06, 2007

Who would have known that something as simple and harmless as buying plants for our gardens would turn out to be such a fraught moral choice? Knowledge and scruples can drive you nuts. -more-


About the House: The Amazing Simpson Universal Foundation Plate

By Matt Cantor
Friday July 06, 2007

Now, this has happened to everybody at some point. You think of this cool thing that would make something work better and then one day, you’re walking (or in my case crawling) along and lo and behold, there it is! Well I have to admit that when I saw the one that Simpson company (of our own beloved San Leandro) had come up with, I realized that the one in my mind wasn’t as good. Nevertheless, It’s still amazing when something institutional, large-scale and corporate turns out to be clever and just the right size and price. -more-


Berkeley This Week

Friday July 06, 2007

FRIDAY, JULY 6 -more-