Arts & Events

THURSDAY, MAY 7 -more-

I have a confession to make,” confided English-born actress-director Sue Trigg, whose staging of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire opens Friday at Alameda’s Altarena Playhouse. “I’m not a Shakespeare fan! People get mad when I tell them. In school when I was 8, I wanted to do Malvolio, not the women’s parts. I will do Bottom in my old age!” -more-

Food For Thought: Laughing All the Way to the (Food) Bank,” a benefit for the Alameda County Community Food Bank, will be held at 8 p. m. this Saturday at the Julia Morgan Center. The performance will feature “homegrown” comedians Johnny Steel, W. Kamau Bell, Richard Stockton and David Pokorney; a guest speaker panel entitled, “If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Get in the Kitchen! A Discussion of Food and Climate Change”; a clip from host Clark Taylor’s forthcoming documentary Deep Green, and a raffle, -more-

The question of who killed a cat on a lonely road in the remote Aran Islands becomes an overheated matter of life and death in Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore, now onstage at Berkeley Rep. -more-

As Impact Theatre recently turned 13, the company is celebrating the awkward coming of age with Puberty, a compendium of original dreams and nightmares in sketch form. Wet dreams and scatological nightmares, to some extent. But they call it Puberty; you’re forewarned. More refined forms of crudity, like the burlesk flavor—and dances—of previous editions of Impact Briefs, have been removed like facial hair. But they’ll probably grow back. -more-

Young People’s Symphony Orchestra, founded 74 years ago in Berkeley, will perform its spring concert this Saturday at First Congregational Church. The orchestra, celebrating conductor David Ramadanoff’s 20th season at the helm, will perform Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo, Indiana composer Jim Beckel’s Musica Mobilis for Brass Choir, and selections from Prokofiev’s Rome and Juliet Suites I and II. -more-

As part of their Shakespeare Super Intensive—the whole canon in staged readings over the next months—Subterranean Shakespeare is presenting Hamlet, directed by Stanley Spenger and featuring Patrick Alparone as the Melancholy Prince, for one night only. 7 p.m. Monday, May 11, at the Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, 1924 Cedar St. $8. Tickets at the door, open at 6:30 p.m. Next up: The Merchant of Venice, May 18. -more-

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is an excerpt from ‘Audacity of Hope,” chapter seven of Ayelet Waldman’s Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace. For a profile of Waldman, see the Daily Planet’s April 30 edition. -more-

Berkeley Symphony concertmaster Franklyn D’Antonio, a student of Jascha Heifetz, formerly with both the Chicago Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic, has founded a new chamber group, the Eidolon String Quartet. D’Antonio is first violin; Noah Strick, Berkeley Symphony’s assistant concertmaster, second violin; Clare Twohy, who teaches at Crowden School, on viola; and Gianna Abandolo, who teaches at UC Berkeley and Mills, cello. On Saturday night, the group will perform their inaugural concert, playing the music of local composers, including pieces by Crowden School teachers Twohy, Alexis Alrich, Clark Suprynowicz (whose work has also been played by Berkeley Symphony and Berkeley Opera), and Michael Kaulkin of the San Francisco Conservatory. 8 p.m. Saturday, May 9, in the Dalby Room at Crowden Music Center, 1475 Rose St. $15. -more-

If you missed Mark Arax’s appearance at Black Oak Books Wednesday, you have a few more chances to catch him at other venues around the Bay Area. Arax has traveled up and down California, and his recent work, West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders and Killers in the Golden State, portrays the personalities and communities he discovers. His essays cover the inner-city strife in the south, to the immigrant families living on the edge in central California, to the hidden marijuana fields in the north—even an essay on Berkeley. -more-

Risk aversion varies from person to person. Some are comfortable on motorcycles while others prefer to walk. Some skydive or walk tightropes between buildings and still others, inexplicably, choose to remodel the only bath in their house. -more-

THURSDAY, MAY 7 -more-