Arts & Events

FRIDAY, NOV. 23 -more-

There’s a magical time in childhood when the fiction of film is nearly indistinguishable from the reality of life, a time when a child still has a willingness and an ability to believe that magic is possible, and that maybe, just maybe, he can be its agent. -more-

Down under at La Val’s Subterranean, the Impact theater company has already geared up for the season with their brand-new Very Special Money & Run Winter Season Holiday Special, complete with Xmas lights and a lit-up “Season’s Greetings” sign in red and green on the usual set, resembling a basement rec room. -more-

I was hoping to pass along a wholehearted endorsement of one of my favorites in the odd category of “stores where I pretty much can’t afford anything but it’s all nice to look at”—I think of such a place as a museum if the staff is welcoming enough. -more-

I’m learning the guitar at the advanced age of 49 (don’t laugh, it feels old to me) and it’s mighty slow going. My friend and teacher, Scott, plays like the Almighty and it’s unimaginable to me that I’ll ever be able to play well enough to be heard in public. It seems an awfully steep slope between the novice and the expert, filled with layers of past experience and the gradual honing of our senses and practices. Further, there seem to be inherent advantages that some have over others. Gifts, we might call them, and it’s damn sure that the gift of guitar isn’t in me. Oh well, I’m having a good time and it’s an excuse to belt out a song. -more-

FRIDAY, NOV. 23 -more-

TUESDAY, NOV. 20 -more-

“Appropriate for children—enchanting for adults”: It’s rare that such a formula pans out for both parties. But Wilde Irish’s staging of The Children of Lir, going into its second and final weekend this Friday through Sunday at the Gaia Arts Center, off Shattuck on Allston, fulfills that pledge on the cover of their program, the proof being the presence of so many kids, as rapt as the adults at last Sunday’s matinee. -more-

The solo show has become a staple of the theater scene, overlapping into film and TV, ever since Emlyn Williams, Hal Holbrook, James Whitmore and Julie Harris took the stage in the ’50s and ‘60s to play Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Will Rogers (et al!) and Emily Dickinson. -more-

My previous column about the birds Joseph Grinnell observed on the UC Berkeley campus drew a response from Allison Shultz, a recent graduate who is now the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology’s Centennial Coordinator (more about that below.) Shultz said that for her senior thesis, she replicated surveys done on campus by Margaret Wythe between 1913 and 1927, and by Charles Sibley and Thomas Rodgers in 1938-39. Her results reveal significant changes among those data points. “I saw that the number of species didn’t change much over the years—it actually went up a little—but the community composition changed,” she explains. -more-

TUESDAY, NOV. 20 -more-