Arts & Events
The Battle for Good Modern Design on Campus
The splendid early buildings of UC Berkeley’s campus are more radical than first appears. California Hall from 1905, the first unit of John Galen Howard’s Beaux Arts ensemble, looks solidly traditional, yet one of its main features is an enormous skylight that illuminates not only the big attic, but, via a glass floor, an elegant atrium below. There was nothing more truly modern than this until the galleries-hanging-in-space of Mario Campi’s 1970 art museum. -more-
The Theater: Impact Theatre Stages ‘Jukebox Stories’ at La Val’s
Never has there been a more perfect show, site-specific in fact, for La Val’s Subterranean than Impact Theatre’s current production of Jukebox Stories, Prince Gomilvilas’ performance of his own prose alongside Brandon Patton singing songs and the interaction between the two—as well as with the audience. -more-
Moving Pictures: New to DVD: Doppelgangers and Femme Fatales
The holiday season is the time of year when the big Hollywood studios roll out their best films, the logic being that the Academy Award voters have short memories. But it is also the time when the studios and the smaller DVD companies bring out many of their most prestigious titles, often in special editions. -more-
Garden Variety: In the Garden and the Wild, Ends Are Also Beginnings
I suppose it’s the season that’s pulling my thoughts toward the organisms and processes of decay: molds, mildews, earthworms, compost in general. Certainly I’m encountering them a lot lately, in the garden and in the wilds. We’ve had just enough rain to encourage little brown mushrooms to pop up, and the more annoying fungi and their companions on plants and walls and books and shower curtains are getting bolder too. Our winter companions, fungi are often such agents of destruction that we can just plain hate them. -more-
Ask Matt: Questions About Insurance and Shingles
Dear Matt, -more-
Property Perspectives: What’s Really Happening in The Local Real Estate Market?
The news headlines resound of doom and gloom for the real estate market; but what is the back story? Most of these articles refer to the national scene, and to certain parts of the country that are the hardest hit. “18 percent drop here, 16 percent drop there, no relief in sight.” -more-
Arts and Entertainment: Around the East Bay
MATINEE SCREENINGS TO BENEFIT SCHOOLS -more-
The Theater: Berkeley Native Eisa Davis Returns Home
Eisa Davis—actor, playwright, singer and songwriter—has returned to her hometown, performing at Berkeley Rep as The Mother in rock singer Stew’s play, Passing Strange. Her own play, Bulrushers, about a visitor from Montgomery, Ala., to the Mendocino County town of Boonville on the eve of the Civil Rights Movement, will be produced next year by the Shotgun Players. -more-
The Theater: Two East Bay Troupes Join ‘365 days / 365 Plays’
As part of an extraordinary daily regimen for the theatrical palate, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks’ 365 Days/365 Plays national theater project, which will run the 365 plays Parks wrote in 2002 over the coming year all around the country, was inaugurated in San Francisco last week—and will be continued throughout the year in the Bay Area, Weeks Two and Four produced by East Bay companies Woman’s Will and Ten Red Hen. -more-
Do Woodpeckers Get Headaches? If Not, Why Not?
You may have noticed last month that the Ig Nobel laureates for 2006 included Ivan Schwab, a professor of ophthalmology at UC Davis, recognized for his explanation of why woodpeckers don’t get headaches. -more-