Photo by Jeremy Farmer
Suspense is key to a well-told story. So it should have come as no surprise that Ira Glass, host and executive producer of This American Life, began his performance at Zellerbach Hall in a way at once surprising and amusing. Reproducing the invisibility of the radio, he started speaking in the dark.
Eventually the lights went up and Glass wove together stories from his life with clips from the show to present a funny and moving picture of some of what goes on behind the scenes at This American Life. While the audience learned about fact checking and creating the show’s themes, stories were Glass’s real subject. He has spent his professional life honing the craft of telling a good story. Though the stories on This American Life often address serious issues, the show’s staff seek out stories that at their core contain humor, surprise, a sense of discovery, and hopefully joy. Ultimately, Glass hopes stories will build empathy and awaken the listener’s sense of curiosity about the world in which we live. Not only did Glass’s performance leave me thinking about how to tell better stories, but in a time of often gloomy economic news, I also found it inspiring to hear someone speak so passionately about his career.
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Cal Performances offers many other entertaining shows, although not all are as uplifting as an evening with Ira Glass. Earlier this fall, I had the opportunity to see Druid Ireland’s production of The Walworth Farce. Not being a theater buff, I picked this play because the name suggested a comedy. Dark comedy, with an emphasis on the dark, was closer to the truth. As the performance progressed, I realized that the farce was the play (within a play) that the three main characters enacted daily. While the folly of the story they rehearsed became apparent early on, it wasn’t until the final moments that the full extent of its tragic power was revealed. Although nothing like what I expected – owing to my failure to do my homework – The Walworth Farce demanded my full attention and was an engaging and challenging experience as a result. I also enjoyed the novelty of watching a performance in the Zellerbach Playhouse, a campus space that was previously unknown to me.
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Early this summer, I sent out an email soliciting advice for incoming graduate students to be published in the Orientation Issue of The Berkeley Graduate. The first response I received was from a graduate student (Hi, Sarah!) who wrote that she wished she would have known years ago that UCB students and graduate students get 50% off tickets to Cal Performances events. As the campus center for the performing arts, Cal Performances features dance, music, theater, and the occasional speaker, a wide enough variety to offer something for most tastes. If you haven’t been yet, there’s still time to sneak in a performance before the semester ends. The Hard Nut, Mark Morris’s reinterpretation of the Nutcracker, is playing this weekend.
Winter showers bring full creeks and green hillsides, making this the perfect season to strap on your hiking boots and visit Bay Area waterfalls at their most spectacular.
