Bay Area arts: 9 cool shows to see this weekend and beyond

There is a lot to see and do this weekend (and beyond) in the Bay Area. Here’s a partial rundown.

Pavement returns

Pavement, the Stockton-born band that evolved into something of an icon for a music genre that largely rejected icons and mainstream attention, has reunited for a big concert series early next week in San Francisco.

Led by singer/guitarists vocalist Stephen Malkmus and Scott Kannberg, Pavement became a pinnacle of the indie/underground rock sound of the 1990s, with its loosely-structured, low-fi, feedback-drenched songs. Though its sound got tighter and more polished as the band evolved, it remained throughout an influential part of the “slacker” rock movement, keeping its distance, and sometimes mocking, more famous alternative rock bands like Smashing Pumpkins.

The band drew considerable attention with such releases as 1994’s “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain” (and its single “Cut Your Hair”), and 1995’s “Wowee Zowee,” internal divisions led to the band’s breakup after the release of 1999’s “Terror Twilight.”

Pavement reunited in 2010 for a run of concerts and festival appearances, including Coachella. A planned second reunion in 2020 was scrapped by the COVID pandemic, but the band last year announced a European and U.S. tour that kicked off in May. The band plays The Masonic in San Francisco Sept. 12-14.

Details: All shows start at 8 p.m.; tickets start at $45; www.livenation.com.

Classical picks: Cal Symph’s big milestones; opera al fresco

Orchestral works or opera favorites? Classical music fans can have them both this weekend, at these special events by the California Symphony and San Francisco Opera.

California Symphony: Throughout the last decade as the Walnut Creek orchestra’s music director, Donato Cabrera has elevated the organization to one of the region’s most progressive and consistently interesting musical outfits. This year marks the conductor’s 10th anniversary at the helm, and Cabrera launches it this weekend in customarily wide-ranging, inclusive style. Titled “Intersections,” the program features Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2, which incorporates Ukrainian folk songs, and Ukrainian composer Myroslav Skoryk’s “Melody for Symphony Orchestra,” a work widely considered Ukraine’s second national anthem. Rounding out the program are Kodály’s colorful “Dances of Galanta,” and Anna Clyne’s “DANCE,” inspired by the writings of 13th-century poet Rumi and featuring the return of cellist Inbal Segev as soloist.

Details: 7:30 Sept. 10, 4 p.m. Sept. 11, Hofmann Theatre at Lesher Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek; $49-$79 general, $20 students; 925-943-7469; www.californiasymphony.org.

Sunday in the park with opera: There’s nothing quite like opera al fresco, and each fall, San Francisco Opera offers the region’s premier outdoor opera event. “Opera in the Park” returns to Golden Gate Park this Sunday with artists from the fall season singing a program led by company music director Eun Sun Kim. The program is bound to include some of opera’s greatest hits — and perhaps a few tantalizing tastes from the new works and revivals coming up in the company’s 22-23 season.

Details: 1:30 p.m., Robin Williams Meadow, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco; free; www.sfopera.com.

— Georgia Rowe, Correspondent

A grand Slam at Tabard

Poetry Center San Jose has a new home and the timing could not be better. The Center, which runs the popular and regularly occurring San Jose Poetry Slam, as well as the annual San Jose Poetry Festival, has just settled an arrangement with the Tabard Theatre in San Jose’s historic San Pedro Square to host its events there for the foreseeable future. That partnership starts Sept. 11, when the Tabard will host the next Poetry Slam, with special guest Tongo Eisen-Martin, San Francisco’s Poet Laureate.

The Center has been hosting poetry slams since the 1990s, and Sunday’s edition is the finale for this year’s Poetry Festival, which kicks off Wednesday and features nearly a dozen online and in-person readings, seminars and more. If you want to strut your literary stuff at the Slam, arrive by 6:30 p.m. and have at least two poems to submit. A dozen contestants will be selected, each of whom gets three minutes and 10 seconds to perform (go over and you will be penalized). And these folks are purists when it comes to valuing the power of language – props, costumes, animals and other performance-enhancing gadgets are forbidden. 

The Slam also features a performance by Eisen-Martin, the San Francisco native who has won a California Book Award and an American Book Award. His collections include “Someone’s Dead Already” (2015) and “Heaven Is All Goodbyes” (2017).

Details: Slam begins 7 p.m.; $5-$10, proof of vaccination is required; for tickets and more information, go to www.eventbrite.com and search for San Jose Poetry Fest (in the Poetry Slam listing, you’ll find a link to all the Poetry Fest events). San Jose Poetry Slams are held on the second Sunday of each month.

— Bay Area News Foundation

1960s ‘Lear’ takes Orinda

It’s not unusual for theater companies to revive hit productions from time to time. But when California Shakespeare Theater in 2017 staged Marcus Gardley’s “black odyssey” — a contemporary retelling of the “Odysseus” story set in the playwright’s native Oakland — the reaction was so favorable the company brought the show back the very next year. Now that’s unusual.

But Gardley is not your average playwright. His knack for melding historical and mythic tales with a contemporary feel and true sense of place has been seen in such Bay Area-premiered works as “The House That Will Not Stand,” which opened at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2014 and focused on four Black women in 19th-century Louisiana. Now Gardley is returning to Cal Shakes with his newest work, “Lear.” The  drama is a re-imagining of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy “King Lear,” about a ruler so blind to his arrogance and blunders that he squanders all that is precious in his life. Gardley’s take is set in San Francisco’s Fillmore district in the 1960s, when political and racial unrest were prominent and Black families were being displaced by gentrification. Some of the dialogue has been modernized as well.

Details: In previews through Sept. 13, main run is Sept. 14-Oct. 2; Bruns Amphitheater off Highway 24, Orinda; $35-$70; www.calshakes.org.

— Bay Area News Foundation

Stage .picks: ‘Patsy Cline,’ ‘Man of God,’ Killing My Lobster

Here are three productions Bay Area theater fans should know about.

“Always … Patsy Cline”: Center Repertory Company in Walnut Creek always seems to do a superlative job with musicals built around famous singers, from Bessie Smith to Woody Guthrie to Ella Fitzgerald. So it’s good news that the company is opening its new season with “Always … Patsy Cline,” a bittersweet musical that captures the bond that developed between the country music legend and one of her fans. The song includes 27 of Cline’s indelible standards, including “Crazy” and “I Fall to Pieces.”

Details: Sept. 9-25; Lesher Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek; $25-$70; 925-943-7469, www.lesherartscenter.org

“Man of God”: Shotgun Players in Berkeley is presenting Anna Ouyang Moench’s dark feminist comedy, inspired by true events, about four young Asian fighting back against abusive practices at a Christine Missionary. The 90-minute show is directed by Michelle Talgarow.

Details: Through Oct. 2; Ashby Stage, Berkeley; $8-$40; shotgunplayers.org.

Killing My Lobster: The Bay Area comedy improv troupe has brought its latest show, “My Parents Came to America and All they Got was a Kid who Does Comedy,” to Oakland for a run that concludes this weekend. As the promotional material says, “Come join us for an hour, and watch a bunch of non-doctors disappoint their parents in over 30 languages.”

Details: 8 p.m. Sept. 8-10, PianoFight Oakland, 1540 Broadway, Oakland; $16-$40; www.killingmylobster.com.

— Randy McMullen, Staff

Ivy + Bean go streaming

Fans of the popular “Ivy + Bean” kids books by Bay Area author Annie Barrows can now watch their plucky heroes on the small screen.

Netlix has just released three one-hour “Ivy + Bean” movies adapted from the popular series. The 12 books in Barrows’ series follow a pair of 7-year-old girls who live in a suburban cul-de-sac and become fast friends despite being opposites (Ivy is reserved and well-behaved, Bean is impulsive and often in trouble) and get into a series of adventures with other kids in the neighborhood.

On Sept. 2, Netflix released the movies “Ivy + Bean,” adapted from the series’ first novel (2006), as well as “The Ghost That Had to Go” (2006) and “Doomed to Dance” (2009). The series stars Jane Lynch, Nia Vardalos and Jesse Tyler Ferguson — and Keslee Blalock and Madison Skye Validum as Ivy and Bean.

Barrows grew up in San Anselmo and attended UC Berkeley. Besides the Ivy + Bean books, Barrows has published five novels, including “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society,” which she wrote with her aunt, Mary Ann Shaffer.

Details: 3 one-hour movies now available on Netflix.

— Randy McMullen, Staff