Berkeley,

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 ...
Photo: Kevin Berne/Berkeley Repertory Theatre

Imaginary Comforts

Theater Berkeley,
Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, author of the wickedly gothic children’s books, “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” is presenting his first play, the amusing “Imaginary Comforts, or The Story of the Ghost of the Dead Rabbit” in its world premiere ...
Photo:Cheshire Isaacs.

Blasted

Theater Berkeley,
Those who think that the primary purpose of theatre is to provide a light and entertaining evening out should be aware that playwright Sarah Kane’s one-act drama, “Blasted” is anything but that. Rather, it is an intense, painful experience, full ...