Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Friday October 19, 2007

FRIDAY, OCT. 19 -more-


The Theater: Murakami’s ‘After the Quake’ at Berkeley Rep

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday October 19, 2007

Beneath a massive red crossbeam spanning two posts like an arch, a young Asian man is telling a bright little girl a story—it could be a bedtime story—about “the all-time number one honeybear” in the mountains of Japan, as low music from a koto player and a cellist flows around and through their words. -more-


The Theater: Woman’s Will Presents Wellman’s ‘Antigone’

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday October 19, 2007

“It’s kind of Antigone In Wonderland,” said Erin Merritt, founder of Woman’s Will, the Oakland-based all-female Shakespeare and classics troupe (who nonetheless have staged Brecht-Weill’s Happy End and Oscar Wilde’s The Important of Being Earnest), about its Bay Area premiere of contemporary playwright Mac Wellman’s Antigone, opening this week at the Temescal Arts Center on Tele-graph in North Oak-land. -more-


The Good, the Bad and the Brilliant

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday October 19, 2007

Sergio Leone is often thought of as an ironic and humorous filmmaker, a mischievous genre deconstructionist. But though his films have plenty of humor and wit and mischief, they also contain great beauty and depth and insight. Though he may have worked most famously in a genre largely considered pulp—the Western—but Leone was one of the great cinematic artists. -more-


East Bay: Then and Now: The Shattuck Hotel: Berkeley’s Once and Future Jewel?

By Daniella Thompson
Friday October 19, 2007

If Berkeley has a heart, it must be located on the 2200 block of Shattuck Avenue between Kittredge St. and Allston Way. This is the site that Berkeley’s founder, Francis Kittredge Shattuck, chose as his homestead. -more-


The Dilemma of a Pink Bathroom

By Jane Powell
Friday October 19, 2007

By Jane Powell -more-


Garden Variety: A Cultural Oasis in Southwest Berkeley

By Ron Sullivan
Friday October 19, 2007

I took it as a Sign when the postcard came to the surface last week as I was attempting to get the paper stack on the office floor into order: a postcard appeared on the surface. I’d probably picked it up at the big fat garden show in the Cow Palace last month. “Gardensia: Archipelago Designs” with a southwest Berkeley address. -more-


Quake Tip of the Week: A Big Quake and Your Phone

By Larry Guillot
Friday October 19, 2007

After the next big quake, if your phones work, use the phone and not your car! A few tips: -more-


About the House: The Integral Urban House Book

By Matt Cantor
Friday October 19, 2007

Well, it’s happened! I’ve started a garden. Put up those slam-dancing shoes, shelved all the accouterments of an angry youth; frayed journal full of bad poetry (so bad), conga drums and King Crimson albums (in vinyl, yet!). I’m growing lettuce! -more-


Berkeley This Week

Friday October 19, 2007

FRIDAY, OCT. 19 -more-


Arts Calendar

Tuesday October 16, 2007

TUESDAY, OCT. 16 -more-


Around the East Bay: Central Works Reprises Graves' "every Inch A King"

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Tuesday October 16, 2007

“What do you do with an old king?” queries Central Works Theater Ensemble with their current revival of co-founder Gary Graves’ comedy Every Inch a King, which takes the primal scene, the family tragedy from King Lear, updates it, takes a peek at the three sisters conferring with the old man in the other room and makes it dark, offbeat and too funny. -more-


Bar-Lev Turns Lens on Child Artist Controversy

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Tuesday October 16, 2007

Child prodigy or fake? Naive genius or instrument of an adult Svengali? A controversy that erupts over the growing success of a child painter, a kind of modernist primitive, becomes a welter of questions about art, perception and authorship for a local community outside New York City and for the national media, and became a problem of integrity and presentation for Berkeley-raised documentary filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev, whose remarkable movie My Kid Could Paint That opened locally this past weekend. -more-


San Francisco Jazz Festival Celebrates 25th Year

By Ira Steingroot, Special to the Planet
Tuesday October 16, 2007

This preview of the 2007 SF Jazz Festival, the 25th running of our inspired local jazz derby, must needs begin in medias res since the first two events of the season, author Ben Ratliff and guitarist John McLaughlin, have already come and gone. Not to worry. You still have a chance to catch 37 more performances before the festival closes on Jan. 25 with a concert by Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares at Grace Cathedral. -more-


Traveling Way Up North to Crescent City Is Worth the Trip

By Carole Terwilliger Meyers, Special to the Planet
Tuesday October 16, 2007

Now is the perfect time of year to head up north to Crescent City. It makes a great refueling stop while exploring expansive Redwood National Park, and is just a hop, skip, and jump from the Oregon border and the dramatic Oregon coast. -more-


Wild Neighbors: Birds in Winter: Charles Keeler and the Summer Warbler

By Joe Eaton
Tuesday October 16, 2007

If you want to look back at changes in Berkeley’s bird life over the last century, the work of Charles Augustus Keeler provides a convenient benchmark. I have a battered library-discard copy of his Bird Notes Afield, the second edition, published in 1907. Keeler notes in a preface that the bird collection of the California Academy of Sciences, where he did his research, had been a casualty of the San Francisco quake and fire the year before. -more-


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday October 16, 2007

TUESDAY, OCT. 16 -more-