Emily S. Mendel, a writer and photographer, has been a regular contributor to culturevulture.net since 2006, where she reviews theater, art, film, television and destinations. Ending her 30-year law practice has given Ms. Mendel the time to indulge in her love of travel and the arts, and to serve as the theater reviewer for berkeleyside.com.
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Writes in: Art & Architecture, Dance, Destinations, Etc, Features, Film, Television, and Theater.
TheaterSan Francisco,
How many works of literature can you name that have given rise to a regularly used English adjective? Not many? Me neither. But the word, “quixotic,” defined as “foolishly impractical, especially in the pursuit of ideals; especially marked by rash ...
Art & ArchitectureSan Francisco,
In a rare combination of beauty and scholarship, San Francisco’s Legion of Honor Museum is presenting “Truth and Beauty: The Pre-Raphaelites and the Old Masters,” an exhibition that compares the rich, idealist artwork of the mid-19th century English Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood ...
TheaterSan Francisco,
Just when I was bemoaning the dearth of newly minted original musicals, along comes “Soft Power,” a wonderfully innovative, exciting, intelligent and tuneful show, created by Tony-winning playwright David Henry Hwang ("M. Butterfly") and Tony-winning composer Jeanine Tesori ("Fun Home").
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TheaterSan Francisco,
It seems that there are very few newly minted original musicals these days. They are either revivals or are based on existing books or movies, which provides producers and audiences with familiarity and confidence. With the ...
TheaterBerkeley,
Two teen-aged girls on a Florida high school swim team navigate the precarious path to female adulthood and friendship in Ruby Rae Spiegel’s honest, meaningful and intense 90-minute drama, “Dry Land.” It premiered in New York City when Spiegel was ...
Art & ArchitectureSan Francisco,
When most of us think about the brilliant and influential Belgian artist, René Magritte, we imagine his two most iconic surreal paintings — “La trahison des images” (The Treachery of Images) the 1929 painting of a pipe with the ...
TheaterBerkeley,
Heidi Schreck, talented award-winning playwright (“Grand Concourse”) TV writer (“Billions”), and Obie award-winning actress (“Drum Of The Waves Of Horikawa”) returns to Berkeley with an appealing extemporization that wafts between a recitation of her scholarship-winning high school speech about the ...
TheaterBerkeley,
It’s difficult to see Berkeley Rep’s impressive and astute new production of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning two-part epic, “Angels in America: a Gay Fantasia on National Themes,” without revisiting the early days of AIDS in the San Francisco Area, ...
TheaterBerkeley,
Talented playwright Jonathan Spector has achieved the almost impossible. He’s created an exceptional play that is laugh-out-loud funny, yet with an intelligent and introspective perspective. On an external level, “Eureka Day” is a hilarious send-up ...
Art & ArchitectureSan Francisco,
“Artists always want to see something. They don’t make the work so they can sell it, they make it so they can see it, or I do.” Julian Schnabel
At the recent press preview of ...
