Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Tuesday October 02, 2007

TUESDAY, OCT. 2 -more-


The Theater: ‘Turn of the Screw’ Set in Louisiana

By Jaime Robles, Special to the Planet
Tuesday October 02, 2007

The Oakland Opera Theater will present Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw this weekend as the inaugural opera in their new theater space at 630 Third St. Because of the company’s commitment to producing opera that is meaningful to the community, director Tom Dean, in concert with production manager Mia Steadman, has reworked the setting of this ghost story set in Victorian England by placing the opera’s action on a remote plantation in Louisiana. -more-


The Theater: Orinda ‘Lear’ Production Evokes 1920s

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Tuesday October 02, 2007

The crown, as conceived of in Shakespeare,” Orson Welles said, “bears a very special kind of magic ... [Shakespeare] spent years getting himself a coat of arms. He wrote mostly about kings. We can’t have a great Shakespearean theatre in America anymore, because it’s impossible for today’s American actors to comprehend what Shakespeare meant by ‘king.’ They think a king is just a gentleman who finds himself wearing a crown and sitting on a throne.” -more-


Wild Neighbors: Birds in Berkeley: Doves, Hawks, Crows and the Long View

By Joe Eaton
Tuesday October 02, 2007

A few weeks back I got a nice e-mail message from Fran Haselsteiner (and belated thanks to you), which read in part: -more-


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday October 02, 2007

TUESDAY, OCT. 2 -more-


Correction

Tuesday October 02, 2007

A Sept. 25 story about an Oakland police shooting (“Protesters Call for Prosecution of Oakland Police Sergeant”) quoted an Oakland police spokesperson as saying that a loaded revolver was found on “Gonzales,” which is the name of the police officer, not of the shooting victim, whose name was King. -more-


Arts Calendar

Friday September 28, 2007

FRIDAY, SEPT. 28 -more-


Ragged Wing Stages ‘Alice in Wonderland’

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday September 28, 2007

I think I can’t be Mabel, because I know so many things, and she so little. Besides, I’m I, and she’s she.” Whatever you know—or think you know—about Alice in Wonderland, the Rev. Dodgson’s voyage into the mind of a young girl dropped down a rabbit hole into a dream world of playing cards, mad tea parties and hookah-smoking caterpillars—you’ll be delightfully surprised and newly enlightened by Ragged Wing Ensemble’s completely kinetic staging of Andre Gregory’s (My Dinner with Andre) adaptation (with “the Manhattan Project”—a bid to add Einstein and Oppenheimer to Freud and the Surrealists as Lewis Carroll knock-offs?) at Envision Academy in the Julia Morgan-designed old YWCA building at 1515 Webster in downtown Oakland. It’s going into its last two weekends with a full head of steam, as if the revved-up cast had eaten of the caterpillar’s mushroom and obeyed the tag on the little bottle that reads “Drink Me.” -more-


‘Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits’

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday September 28, 2007

Subterranean Shakespeare’s CD, Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits (“Two years in the making!”) is something of an instant Berkeley minor classic, what with Michael Rossman (he of the Free Speech Movement) belting out “The Ballad of Tom O’Bedlam” (which Robert Graves and Edith Sitwell both credited to the Bard) or tootling flute on other numbers with The Rude Mechanicals, or funnyman Ed Holmes and poet G. P. Skratz doing up the Scottish Weird Sisters’ “Double, double, toil and trouble” with Andy Dinsmore as World Music. This 17-track wonder features a plethora of local names that have—and haven’t—trod the boards Bardic, in every musical style and sundry. And this coming Monday, Oct. 1, there’ll be a CD release party, 8 p.m. at the Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship Hall, Cedar and Bonita streets. Rossman will croon, Bob Ernst will wail on mouth harp, Tom Waits’ sidekick Mark Growden and his band rave up Will, Michael Peppe do the 129th Sonnet as Wm. Shatner, Ed Holmes get witchy. -more-


Visual Syncopation: Paintings by Robert Colescott

By Peter Selz, Special to the Planet
Friday September 28, 2007

Ten years ago Robert Colescott represented the United States at the Venice Biennale. Rarely was there a solo exhibition at the American pavilion and it was even more amazing that this honor was awarded to an African American painter. The show was very well received and after it closed at the Giardini Publici it travelled to museums in this country and was seen at the Berkeley Museum in 1999. -more-


The Berkeley-Oakland Neighborhood Name Game

By Steven Finacom, Special to the Planet
Friday September 28, 2007

Would a neighborhood by any other name still sell as sweet? An entertaining aspect of reading real estate listings in Berkeley has to do with the identification of neighborhoods. -more-


Garden Variety: Water, Water Everywhere — Or Not

By Ron Sullivan
Friday September 28, 2007

One of the limitations, frustrations, confusions, and overall learning experiences any gardener encounters here is water. Understand that I use “learning experience” as an expletive. -more-


Quake Tip of the Week

By Larry Guillot
Friday September 28, 2007

How Do I Love Thee? -more-


About the House: A Small Do-It-Yourself Job You Can Tackle

By Matt Cantor
Friday September 28, 2007

I know you’re out there: you who fear tools. Confirmed abdicators of all things mechanical. Live prey to all members of the Phylum Contractazoa. You who hide in corners until the power is brought back on again by mysterious means. I am here to help but there IS a price. Immersion therapy is not easy but it is simple and you can only change if you really want to change. -more-


Berkeley This Week

Friday September 28, 2007

FRIDAY, SEPT. 28 -more-