Arts And Entertainment

TUESDAY, MARCH 11 -more-

Golden Thread Productions, the Bay Area troupe that specializes in expressions of Middle Eastern culture and identity, will present What Do The Women Say?—five pieces ranging stylistically from theater to performed poetry—at La Pena Cultural Center Friday at 8 p.m. to celebrate International Women’s Day. -more-

Chanticleer, San Francisco’s famed choral group, and the Shanghai Quartet, one of China’s original chamber music ensembles, will be featuring “From the Path of the Beautiful,” a seven-part piece written for them by composer Chen Yi in celebration of their anniversaries (30 years for Chanticleer, 25 for the Shanghai Quartet) when they perform this Friday evening at 8 p.m. at the First Congregational Church on Durant. -more-

FRIDAY, MARCH 7 -more-

How big is big? At the 58th annual Berlin Film Festival, or Berlinale, in February, 387 movies were shown in 11 days on 38 screens in 15 theaters operating from 9 a.m. to past midnight. -more-

The myth of Orson Welles has outlived its usefulness. The man has long since passed on, as have those who sought to undermine his achievements. He was jealously branded by Hollywood as the wunderkind-turned-enfant terrible of the cinema, the man who took on a media titan, and Hollywood itself, in Citizen Kane and then squandered his own career with his proclivity for self-destruction and artistic excess. The standard line on Welles was that he created just that single masterpiece before embarking on a long downward slide. -more-

“For Romeo & Juliet we're playing with no language, so we call it 'according to Shakespeare,’” said Jim Cave of his show with Deborah Gwinn, Romeo & Juliet and Other Duets, which just opened at The Marsh in San Francisco. “For The Chairs, it’s ‘after Ionesco.’ There are maybe a couple pages of text; the rest went out the window. We tell both of these stories in our own peculiar way. And as the run develops, we may add other little pieces.” -more-

Jukebox Tales: The Case of the Creamy Foam puts the team of Prince Gomovilas and Brandon Patten back together, alternating story and song on a messy set in the basement of La Val's Pizza, a bedroom strewn with the domestic wreckage of young bachelorhood. Sometimes Brandon, after capping off a tune, slips under the sheets and asks Prince for a bedtime story—a funny request before a roomful of spectators. -more-