Arts & Events

Meet David Bacon Tomorrow

Wednesday May 11, 2011 - 06:29:00 PM

street encuentro / meet artist David Bacon

Thursday, May 12, 6-8 PM, at the Windows -more-


Theater Review: Sarah Ruhl Twice Over: Passion Play at Actors Ensemble, Three Sisters at The Rep

By Ken Bullock
Wednesday May 11, 2011 - 08:37:00 AM

"The martyr-drama was born from the death of Socrates as a parody of tragedy ... [and] at the end of The Symposium, ... the dialogue contains pure dramatic language, unfragmented by its dialectic of tragic and comic. This purely dramatic quality restores the mystery which had gradually become secularized in the forms of Greek drama."

Walter Benjamin, in his book on Baroque tragic drama, pinpoints the remote origins of the medieval Passion, Morality and Mystery plays--the beginnings of our theater, as they played on until the Restoration or later, influencing Shakespeare and the other great playwrights of England and Europe in the Renaissance and Baroque periods--in the dialogues of Plato, who reportedly burnt his tetralogy of tragedies and began the trend towards dialogue that could embrace both the comic and tragic, which classical theater kept absolutely apart. -more-


Theater Review: "Cripple" at Zellerbach

By Ken Bullock
Tuesday May 10, 2011 - 08:26:00 PM

"They all want to come to Ireland--Germans, dentists, everybody ... why?"

"Because the people in Ireland are so friendly!"

From the first glimpse of the lit stage--a tableau of a spartan country store, a woman behind the counter frowning over a can of peas she's holding--the Druid production of Martin McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan, presented by Cal Performances at Zellerbach Playhouse on the UC campus, unimposingly announces itself as humorous theater ... theater and humor of the first water. -more-


Around and About the Performing Arts: Ragged Wing's "Open"

By Ken Bullock
Wednesday May 11, 2011 - 10:34:00 AM

Plucky Ragged Wing Ensemble is opening Open, a new play by co-founder Amy Sass (who also directs), with live actors and puppets, based on the Bluebeard legend--and the key to the one door the bride can't enter. Preview this Thursday, opening Friday, running Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 8 through June 11, at Central Stage, 5221 Central Avenue (near Costco), Richmond Annex. $20-$35 sliding scale. $15 students. (800) 838-3006; raggedwing.org. Also, Ragged Wing Youth Ensemble present "In Between," staged stories the Youth Ensemble has written and acted. -more-