Berkeley,

L) Paul Vincent O'Connor as Salter and (R) Joseph Patrick O'Malley. Photo: David Allen.

A Number

Theater Berkeley,
“We’ve got thirty per cent the same [genes] as a lettuce…” The successful birth of Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, was a startling event in 1996. Now the news of Barbra Streisand’s cloned puppies has shown ...
Daniel Chung (Dennis). Photo: Kevin Berne

Office Hour

Theater Berkeley,
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 ...
Photo: Frank Szafinski

Company Wang Ramirez

Dance Berkeley,
Company Wang Ramirez leaped across Berkeley Saturday evening with their in-the-buzz style of dance and livewire troupe. Its choreographers, Honji Wang and Sébastien Ramirez have risen to prominence for their unique approach to dance theater and because ...
Photo by David Allen

Widowers’ Houses

Theater Berkeley,
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, ...
Photo: Kevin Berne

Watch on the Rhine

Theater Berkeley,
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 ...
Dezi Solèy in PARTICIPANTS. Photo: Cheshire Isaacs

Participants

Theater Berkeley,
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 ...
Photo: Cheshire Isaacs.

Black Rider

Theater Berkeley,
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 ...

The Joffrey Ballet

Dance Berkeley,
Choreographer Justin Peck’s minimalistic “In Creases” started off this weekend’s Joffrey Ballet performance at Zellerbach Hall with a piano work by Philip Glass, “Four Movements For Two Pianos.” With two pianos facing each other mirror-like, the black pianos dressed ...
Photo: David Allen.

The Royale

Theater Berkeley,
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 ...