Arts & Events

THURSDAY, JAN. 14 -more-

Gogol is for me the main author,” said Russian actor-director Oleg Liptsin. “Probably he’s been that way since third grade, when I was waiting to get a little older for two things: to start chemistry—and study Gogol!” -more-

On the verge of the 1960s, Mildred Constantine and Peter Selz produced a landmark catalog under New York MoMA’s tent: “New Images of Man.” At a cultural moment when hip formalists on the Right Coast were savoring abstraction to the exclusion of other trends, the pair created turbulence by featuring figurative images. Monstrous ones at that, according to the review by my painting and film teacher, the late Manny Farber. Now, on the brink of another new decade, Selz revisits the subject with a new collaborator, Cameron Jackson. The necessary postscript is spotlit in the exhibit’s title: “Images of Man and Woman,” now at the Alphonse Berber Gallery in Berkeley. -more-

Bus Stop, now onstage at Altarena Playhouse in Alameda, may be best-known for the 1956 film version, starring Marilyn Monroe. It’s also one of the more famous plays by William Inge (Come Back, Little Sheba; Picnic; Dark at the Top of the Stairs—and the films Splendor in the Grass and All Fall Down), once considered near the top among postwar American playwrights, often mentioned in the same breath with Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Through Feb. 6. 1409 High St., Alameda. $19–$22. 523-1553. altarena.org. -more-

THURSDAY, JAN. 14 -more-