Arts & Events

Three East Bay women artist-designers, longtime associates as artists and teachers, are featured in an exhibition closing this weekend at the San Francisco Center for the Book: Sas Colby of Berkeley, Betsy Davids (who teaches at California College of the Arts in Rockridge) and Jaime Robles of San Leandro (longtime contributor to the Planet) present a very dense show of books and ephemera, showing a remarkable range of invention indeed, including innovative techniques of bookmaking craft and combinations of literary and visual art that also document much of the experimentation and innovative styles of the past half century in this very contemporary art form. -more-

Marion Fay's unusual, highly participatory adult education classes in music and theater are starting up again this month. The 9-week Music Appreciation class, 10 a.m till noon every Thursday, will start January 14th. No previous classes or experience in music required. Concerts and classical music events will be attended, with discounted tickets and post-performance discussions, and composers, conductors and musicians from the Berkeley, San Francisco and Oakland Symphonies will come to the classes, which will also feature special events such as a St. Patrick's Day performance by a piano-cello duo, a program on the Habanera and a performance by two professional French Horn players. $90, not including discounted concert tickets. Register at the first class. -more-

"I'm interrupting your 'Law & Order' ... "

In Christopher Shinn's play 'Dying City,' a Bay Area premiere of a Pulitzer finalist script by Anton's Well Theater Company, the twin brother of a soldier who died in Iraq shows up unannounced, ringing the doorbell to see his brother's widow, almost a year after the tragedy. He's an actor, who'd been appearing onstage in a NYC production of 'Long Day's Journey Into Night'--though as he puts it, "It was not true" and "It turned out more like 'Long Day's Journey Into the Hamptons' "--and has just walked offstage and out of the production in the middle of a show, in part because of being hazed for his very open gayness.

The wife is a therapist who's dropped out of her practice after her husband's death, watching TV all day on the couch, hugging a pillow. As the conversation with her brother-in-law develops, culminating in him reading aloud from emails sent from Iraq, a Family Romance of sorts begins to appear, the kind of ghostly menage that's hinted at when the younger brother of a combat victim marries his brother's fiancee. And there's also the constant play of theater, personal drama and the theater of war--including as much absence of truth in war reports as in stage productions, though the stage is the only theater in this case easily walked out on. -more-