When viewing such a “modernized” version of Shakespeare, it’s hard not to be struck with an initial sense of incongruity. Can we really accept an actor in 21st-century street clothes speaking in early-modern English? If the play is done well, as the powerful new City Lights production of Hamlet is, then we can accept it just as readily as we can accept actors talking to themselves in soliloquy.
Attractions News - page 25
Leave it to a legendary cartoonist to collect the stories of San Jose’s historical heroes and package the whole shebang into 40 pages of wonderment. Jim Hummel, a longtime fixture at the Mercury News, has now supplied the youth of the valley with an easy-to-grasp mechanism for retaining historical tidbits.
To composer Guillermo Galindo, these are voices from the desert, Voces del Desierto, a work MACLA commissioned him to write for Quinteto Latino, a not-so-conventional wind ensemble. The piece will be debuted this weekend. Galindo, an established electro-acoustic composer based in the East Bay, drew inspiration for the project when he, along with Quinteto Latino director Armando Castellano and videographer Marvin Barrera, traveled to the U.S./Mexico border at Laredo one year ago.
The announcement that Michael Miller would be stepping down as executive director of San Jose Jazz shocked a lot of people. Neither the group itself nor the local reporting on the story gave any clear reason for Miller’s jump to the smaller Children’s Musical Theater San Jose.
Beginning Feb. 15, San Jose Stage Company takes on Sam Shepard’s Pulitzer Prize—winning Buried Child. Written during the economic slump of the 1970s, the semiautobiographical play explores the decay of the American Dream through the eyes of a struggling rural farm family.
Showcasing the work of some of the country’s premier contemporary quilters, the “Quilt National” exhibit, which opens Tuesday at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, takes the traditional image of what a quilt looks like and tosses it out the window.
Inspired by the head-shaving incident of a certain pop star, Becoming Britney is not a typical musical. Featuring original numbers that pay homage to everything from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Annie, the show is essentially what would happen if the Britney Spears E! True Hollywood Story went to Broadway.
The debut event is Feb. 11. More than 15 varieties of beer will be poured at participating Japantown restaurants and retailers from 2 to 5pm.
Susan Sandler’s charming romantic comedy Crossing Delancey first hit the stage back in 1985 and made its film debut in 1988. Now it’s Tabard Theatre Company’s turn. Under the direction of the company’s founder, Cathy Cassetta, the play provides plenty of laughs.
Celebrating the places where nature and urban life intersect, the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy presents Corridors: Exploring the Urban Woodland on January 27 at 7pm.
