Arts And Entertainment

FRIDAY, OCT. 5 -more-

TURN OF THE SCREW -more-

I’m fascinated by why some succeed, and why some struggle with life,” said Alameda County Deputy Public Defender and Berkeley resident Mark McGoldrick, “why similarly situated people do differently, even from the same family. Why do some make it and some have a harder time? It’s one of the mysteries of life. Why does one kid from East Oakland make it to Julliard and others never get out of the ‘hood? How do you describe it? Is it luck? The will to live? It’s unquantifiable.” -more-

The Berkeley Film and Video Festivals marks its 16th year this weekend with another vast and varied program of independent productions. If there’s a theme to the annual festival, the theme is that there is no theme; it simply showcases independent film in all its unruly diversity, from the brilliant to the silly, from mainstream to left field, from documentaries and drama to comedy and cutting-edge avant garde. -more-

TUESDAY, OCT. 2 -more-

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 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-