The Palo Alto Festival of the Arts on Saturday and Sunday has an awful lot to offer, and admission doesn’t cost a thing. The event, now in its 43rd year, will feature works by some 250 artists from throughout the West Coast, touching on sculpture, glassworks, wood, ceramics and more.
In an attraction coordinated with the Pacific Art League, several booths showing artists in the process of creating will be available. And the always-popular Italian Street Painting Expo will be back; look for it on Tasso Street. Music is also a big component, with 10 bands on two stages each day, with tribute bands, jazz, folk, blues and more in the lineup. There will also be a variety of pianists performing through the grounds, as well as a “Play Me” piano for those who want to try tickling the keys. Booths operated by food and drink vendors also will be on hand.
Festivities run from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday along University Avenue in Palo Alto. More information is at www.paloaltochamber.com/festival-of-the-arts-about.
‘Wreckage’ galore: There’s still time to catch the beloved San Francisco Mime Troupe this summer. This weekend, “Wreckage: A Musical Tragicomedy,” comes to parks in Berkeley. Local News Matters/Bay City News reviewer Jean Schiffman, who has seen many of the troupe’s satirical political comedies through the years, says of “Wreckage”: The play’s multiple threads — poverty, greed, artificial intelligence, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Christianity run amok, American rights threatened, all packed into 11 scenes and six songs — come together “impressively” and “cohesively” at the show’s end. It also may prompt a lump in viewers’ throats as well as laughs.
Performances are at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday in Willard Park in Berkeley, as well as 2 p.m. Aug. 29-30 in Cedar Rose Park in Berkeley. Music begins at 1:30 p.m. As always, admission is free, but $20 donations are encouraged. For more information, visit sfmt.org.
Operatic Western: There are numerous versions of “The Girl of the Golden West,” a Gold Rush-set tale of one woman’s loves, trials and tribulations in a California mining town in 1849. It began as a 1905 play by David Belasco and has been adapted into several films. Perhaps its most famous form is Giacomo Puccini’s 1910 three-act opera “La fanciulla del West,” sung in Italian — not as famous as “Madama Butterfly” or “La bohème,” but never out of the repertoire, either.
San Francisco Opera staged an excellent production, billed as “the original spaghetti Western,” in 2010 with Deborah Voigt in the title role. Now, there’s a new English translation by Thomas Clark onstage in Pacifica this weekend and next, and in Santa Cruz in September. Promoters say it “promises to bring contemporary audiences even closer to the essence of the opera, the themes of which involve deception, desire, love, forgiveness, and ultimately redemption.” The full-length presentation features Jordan Best as Minnie, owner of the Polka Saloon; Xavier Prado as the bandit Dick Johnson, alternating with John Kun Park and Robert Balonek as Sheriff Jack Rance. Umberto Barisciano conducts; Gary L. Stanford, Jr. is the stage director.
Performances are at 7 p.m. Friday and Aug. 28 and 2 p.m. Sunday and Aug. 30 at Terra Nova Theater, 1450 Terra Nova Blvd., in Pacifica and 7 p.m. Sept. 4 and Sept.11 and 2 p.m. Sept. 6 and Sept. 13 in Colligan Theater at the Tannery Arts Center, 1010 River St., Santa Cruz. Tickets are $51.75 general, $20 seniors and students at thomasclarktenor.com.
Author alert: Chang-rae Lee, acclaimed author of seven novels, is garnering praise for his newly released eighth, which, by his own admission, is his most autobiographical to date. The period referred to in “A Tender Age” (Riverhead Books, $30, 355 pages) is Korean-American immigrant Jeon-Gi’s volatile 10th year, and while it is framed by the middle-aged man’s recollections of it, the narrative mostly spins out, quite convincingly, in the voice of the preteen.
A professor of creative writing at Stanford University, the author first gained widespread fame with his debut novel “Native Speaker” in 1995. He has two appearances in conversation with noted Bay Area writers about the new book coming up in the Bay Area. On Friday at 6:30 p.m. at Kepler’s in Menlo Park, he will be in conversation with “America Is Not the Heart” novelist Elaine Castillo at a ticketed event priced between $12-$45. Details are at keplers.org.
A version of this post appeared first on Local News Matters.