The Berkeley Arts Festival Calendar is dedicated to the notion that in Berkeley every day is an arts festival. With the first month-long Arts Festival in 1997, we initiated this web site and realized that it could fill a need for information about the activities of all the Berkeley arts organizations year-round. So we expanded it and kept it going, as a guide for the arts-loving people of Berkeley and in appreciation of the City's continued support.

The Berkeley Arts Festival presents

We again have a home for the Berkeley Arts Festival this year, 2133 University Avenue right next to Ace Hardware. We have scheduled concerts with some of the most creative people in Berkeley--the musicians, composers and writers who bring vibrant talents for all to hear and see. So come along with us on an exciting journey into their domains.
Suggested donation $10-$20 unless otherwise noted. Check for changes on our website: www.berkeleyartsfestival.com

Today's Events - May 22

Ongoing Events

Mari Marks Paintings Waxing Poetic: 20 years of Encaustic Painting

Artist's Statement

My encaustic paintings reflect my deep concern with the fabric of our lives and our engagement with the environment. In 1992 I first painted with hot beeswax and pigment, my first encaustic paintings. Initially I found the textural qualities and color of encaustic painting the perfect medium for expressing feelings of loss and human engagement. Each day I asked myself “What If?” as I investigated what this new medium invited. As I worked with beeswax, pigment and natural materials my paintings increasingly reflected my personal intimate relationship with nature, the peace and healing I find in the natural world, its rhythms and cycles.

This exhibition includes work from each group of paintings done in the last 20 years 1992-2012. inclu They reflect my patient engagement with materials as I create a whole from the accumulation of repeated acts. My recent paintings are a meditation on the rhythms and music in nature, creating an experience of peace and healing.

Ms. Marks is represented by Vessel Gallery in Oakland.

Invisible City, Photographs by Ken Schles

For a decade, Ken Schles watched the passing of time from his Lower East Side neighborhood. His camera fixed the instances of his observations,and these moments become the foundation of his invisible city. Invisible City is an intimate portrayal of a world few had entrance to—or means of egress from. Twenty-five years later, Invisible City still has the ability to transfix the viewer and stands alongside Brassai’s Paris de Nuit or van der Elsken’s Love On The Left Bank as one of the century’s most penetrating depictions of nocturnal bohemian experience. UC Berkeley School of Journalism Gallery North Gate Room 105 (corner Hearst & Euclid, Berkeley) Monday-Friday 9-7 pm Saturday 9-5

Shotgun Players present Tom Stoppard’s Coast of Utopia: Voyages and Shipwreck

Shotgun Players present Tom Stoppard’s Coast of Utopia: Voyages and Shipwreck. For details check www.shotgunplayers.org through May 5, 2013

Berkeley Art Center: Elemental Forms In Contemporary Sculpture

April 6 - May 26 Co-curated by Suzanne Tan and Ann Weber, this exhibition explores the primal and evolutionary impulses of shape, form and figure as expressed through distinct works from an accomplished and diverse group of sculptors. The work selected for this exhibition hovers between figuration and abstraction and explores the limits of that enigmatic territory. Participating artists include Tor Archer, Donald Fortescue, Carrie Lederer, Nina Lyons, Gay Outlaw, Sam Perry, Eric Powell, Matt Reynoso, Yoshitomo Saito, Gordon Senior, Joe Slusky, and Esther Traugot. 1275 Walnut Street www.berkeleyartcenter.org

Mark Jackson’s The Arsonists at Aurora Theater

April 11-May 12 What is the great evil we are failing to face up to today? Award-winning Bay Area auteur Mark Jackson (Salomania, Metamorphosis, Salome, Miss Julie) returns to Aurora Theatre Company to direct British playwright Alistair Beaton’s elegant new translation of THE ARSONISTS, Max Frisch’s classic comic parable about appeasement (sometimes known as Beidermann and the Firebugs or Fire Raisers), featuring Dan Hiatt, Tim Kniffin, and Michael Ray Wisely, along with Kevin Clarke, Tristan Cunningham, Gwen Loeb, Dina Percia, and Michael Uy Kelly. Fires are becoming something of a problem, popping up all over town. But Mr. Biedermann has it all under control. In his business life and in the domestic arena, he tries to live a life of blameless middle-class decency. He’s a respected member of the community with a loving wife and a booming business, so surely nothing can get to him. It is this sense of bourgeois propriety that renders Biedermann defenseless when two arsonists turn up at his house. Far from kicking them out, he helps them light the fuse in the hopes that appeasement will prevent catastrophe. Inspired by the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948, this absurdist allegory satirizes the way that people can be manipulated into accommodating the very thing that will destroy them. For more information: auroratheatre.org.

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley: Tom Stoppard’s "Rock N’ Roll"

April 12 through May 4 " Rock N’ Roll" concerns the travails of Jan, a student from Czechoslovakia studying in London under his mentor, Max. Jan becomes infatuated with the music of the late 1960's and the freedom and creativity it embodies. In contrast, Max believes rock 'n' roll is just another opiate for the masses. As the events of the 1968 Prague Spring unfold, Jan finds himself irrevocably drawn back home, ultimately to become a key element of the resistance which finally flowered in the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Back in England,Back in England, Max struggles to reconcile his belief in communism with unfolding events, his wife Eleanor struggles against the ravages of cancer and daughter Esme struggles against the long shadow both her parents cast on her. Finally, Jan, Max, and the menagerie which has developed around both all gather once more to review the changes in their lives over the previous 20+ years. Friday and Saturday 8 pm, matinees Sundays April 21 and 28 at 2 pm $15 general, $12 for students and seniors Live Oak Theater 1301 Shattuck Avenue 510-649-5999 www.aeofberkeley.org

ACCI Gallery’s 6th Annual Printmaking Exhibition

Cathy Coe, Deborah Harris, Lisah Horner, Elly Simmons, and Dobee Snowber April 12 - May 5, 2013 1652 Shattuck Avenue www.accigallery.com

The Medea Hypothesis
a new play by Marian Berges
directed by Gary Graves

May 18-June 23 The Medea Hypothesis
Featuring Cory Cenosoprano, Joe Estlack & Jan Zvaifler. In modernizing an ancient Greek play about a woman who seeks revenge on her estranged husband by poisoning his new wife and murdering her own children, playwright Marian Berges has found a story that is at times touching, encouraging, and even a little funny.
Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 8 p.m. & Sunday at 5 p.m.,
Tickets: $28 online at or $28-$15 sliding scale at the door
Thursdays are pay what you can at the door
Reservations/Info: 510.558.1381 or centralworks.org

By & By at The Ashby Stage. A New Play by Lauren Gunderson, directed by Mina Morita

Science has only begun to reveal the extraordinary possibilities of cloning, and the ethical arguments surrounding it have never been more tumultuous. In the midst of the controversy is Steven, a leading scientist in the arcane world of human cloning. Then there’s his best-kept secret: his daughter Denise. This World Premiere by one of America’s most exciting young writers is a true sci-fi thriller, full of moral conundrums.
Imagine that you’re a newlywed and madly in love. Suddenly your partner is killed in a tragic accident. Now imagine you are the leading doctor in the science of human cloning. What might you do? Lauren Gunderson’s story is surprising but factually sound— it's sci-fi but soon it will just be science. “Cloning is going to happen” says the playwright, “and I was most interested not in the global ramifications but in the personal ones.” The play speaks to our innate fear and curiosity around such science, while the basic chemistry of a father and daughter’s relationship hangs in the balance.
Runs Wednesday and Thursday at 7PM, Friday and Saturday at 8PM, Sunday at 5PM through June 23rd.
May 22 – 30th are Pay-What-You-Can. Regular performance nights $20 - $30
www.shotgunplayers.org or call 510.841.6500
1901 Ashby Avenue