Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Friday February 29, 2008

FRIDAY, FEB. 29 -more-


Albany Jazz Band Plays Anna’s

By Ken Bullock, Special to The Planet
Friday February 29, 2008

The Albany Jazz Band, a big band of more than 20 pieces from an Albany Unified School District adult education class, meeting and practicing Wednesday nights over the past decade in the band room at Albany High School, will make its Berkeley debut, playing two sets of swing and featuring a vocal harmony quartet, 3 p.m. Sunday at Anna’s Jazz Island. -more-


Woman’s Will Stages 10th Annual ‘24-Hour Playfest’

By Ken Bullock, Special to The Planet
Friday February 29, 2008

Woman’s Will, Oakland’s all-female Shakespeare specialists, will stage their 10th annual 24-Hour Playfest on Monday, March 3, 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater on College Ave. The night before the performance seven women playwrights, seven women directors and some 35 actors “of various persuasions” will gather at the theater to develop an overall theme, after which the playwrights write all night in an intensive creative session that results in seven new plays. The new plays are rehearsed the next morning, with tech rehearsals in the afternoon. A video highlighting the process from a past show is on the troupe’s website, www.womanswill.org -more-


The Theater: Virago Stages Voltaire’s ‘Candide’ in Alameda

By Ken Bullock, Special to The Planet
Friday February 29, 2008

Candide, Voltaire’s long, comically hair-rending parable of optimism amidst the evil in the world, occupied composer Leonard Bernstein for decades, resulting in many revisions of his intended masterwork of musical theater. Feisty Virago Theatre Company, which has taken on various theatrical challenges (including a creatively site-specific Threepenny Opera in the Alameda Oddfellows Hall), turn their greatest challenge to date into a paradox: a sprawling, three-hour show, with a six-piece chamber orchestra and cast of 13 playing over 40 roles, that is somehow intimate and refreshing, even breezy. -more-


Opera Piccola Presents ‘Mirrors of Mumbai’

By Ken Bullock, Special to The Planet
Friday February 29, 2008

Opera Piccola will present Mirrors of Mumbai, an original piece of musical theater about the changing life and attitudes of a family in India with connections to Silicon Valley. Written by playwright Sonal Acharya and well-known jazz artist George Brooks, who is in-residence with the troupe, with direction by Susannah Woods, it premieres tonight and tomorrow night at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, and a week from Saturday night at downtown Oakland’s Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts on Alice Street. -more-


About the House: What to Look For When Looking Under the House

By Matt Cantor
Friday February 29, 2008

I spend a lot of time under houses. This isn't glamorous but it's what I have to do in order to do my job. Actually I don't mind it much. -more-


Berkeley This Week

Friday February 29, 2008

FRIDAY, FEB. 29 -more-


Arts Calendar

Tuesday February 26, 2008

TUESDAY, FEB. 26 -more-


Books: Eastwind Books Provides Literary Hub for Asian Community

By Anna Mindess, Special to the Planet
Tuesday February 26, 2008
Eastwind Books on University Avenue specializes in books from various Asian cultures, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, 
                  Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodian, Hmong, Hawaiian, Indian, Tibetan, Pakistani, Malaysian, Filipino, and Indonesian.

In order to keep his favorite bookstore from being turned into a beauty shop, Harvey Dong transformed himself from customer to owner of Eastwind Books in 1996. -more-


‘Wakefield, or Hello Sophia’ at Central Works

By Ken Bullock, Special to The Planet
Tuesday February 26, 2008

Dying embers of a fire on a blustery night; a pensive woman, alone in a room ... when the door opens and a rainsoaked man steps in, greets her by name, and just stands there while she gawks. It’s her husband, who left on a two-day business trip 20 years before. -more-


La Peña Celebrates Words and Life of Paul Robeson

By Deb Schneider, Special to the Planet
Tuesday February 26, 2008
Paul Robeson leads Moore Shipyard Workers in singing “The Star Spangled Banner” in Oakland in September 1942.

Paul Robeson was something of a Renaissance man. A singer, actor, lawyer, writer, civil rights advocate, all-American athlete and political activist, Robeson was a powerful and eloquent spokesman for racial justice well before Martin Luther King, Jr., or Malcolm X, yet these successors have eclipsed him in the annals of history. -more-


Wilde Irish Stages Centennial Bash for Irish National Theatre

By Ken Bullock, Special to The Planet
Tuesday February 26, 2008

Wilde Irish, Berkeley’s resident Irish theater company, will stage a centennial celebration for Ireland’s National Theatre this Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m., with two original Abbey Theatre short comedies: Lady Gregory’s The Workhouse Ward and John Synge’s In the Shadow of the Glen. -more-


Wild Neighbors: Globetrotting Rodents: The Odyssey of the Black Rat

By Joe Eaton
Tuesday February 26, 2008

It’s the Year of the Rat again‚—but which rat? For most of us “rat” signifies Rattus norwegicus, the Norway, brown, sewer, or wharf rat, progenitor of all those rats in all those labs, whose original homeland was northern China. But a case could be made for a less-well-known relative with roots in Asia: Rattus rattus, the black, roof, house, or ship rat. -more-


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday February 26, 2008

TUESDAY, FEB. 26 -more-