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.
TheaterBerkeley,
I didn’t sleep well the night I saw “Office Hour,” and to my mind that’s a good thing, because my restlessness meant that I was deeply affected by playwright Julia Cho’s tension-ridden, creative exploration of the complex natures of mass ...
TheaterSan Francisco,
”Vietgone,” an unusual blend of broad comedy with ending touches of sentiment and insight, focuses on the travails of a South Vietnamese man and woman who separately immigrate to the U.S. during the 1975 fall of Saigon, and meet ...
Art & ArchitectureSan Francisco,
Yes, there was an actual person named Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) from whence the epithet originated. The Venetian libertine and adventurer, author of his "Histoire de ma vie," a gaudy and glamorous 12-volume account of his sexual adventures in the ...
TheaterOakland,
The vital, welcoming, multicultural Ubuntu Theater Project, founded in Oakland in 2012, is currently performing one of Tennessee William's best written and most iconic plays, "Streetcar Named Desire." It's the drama set in 1947 New Orleans in which the ...
TheaterBerkeley,
It's a pleasure to see a fine production of any play by George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), but especially one of his infrequently produced first three "Plays Unpleasant," as Shaw called them. He explained that he called the theatricals unpleasant because, ...
Art & ArchitectureBerkeley,
Curators of The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) explored their storage facilities and put together the first half of a fascinating exposition of diverse works of Bay Area art, film and poetry spanning ...
TheaterBerkeley,
Lillian Hellman (1905 –1984), celebrated author and left-wing political activist, would be both pleased and saddened that her 1940 play is being applauded across the country 77 years after it was written — pleased, of course, that her ...
TheaterBerkeley,
TheatreFirst has commissioned 12 enlivening and exhilarating short plays by outstanding playwrights that are designed to provoke thought, discussion and action. All the pieces in “Participants” share the didactic theme of exploring society’s reaction to our current social and political ...
TheaterBerkeley,
While many theatre companies put on undemanding feel-good musical shows for the holidays, leave it to Shotgun Players to produce the lauded “Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets,” an avant-garde expressionist take on a German folktale ...
TheaterBerkeley,
Although it’s over 100 years since the first African-American boxer, Jack Johnson, won the world heavyweight boxing championship in a fight with James L. Jeffries, the white retired champion, the repercussions continue to be heard. The race riots, injuries and ...
