Deanne Chen

An electrifying show by tUnE-yArDs and St. Vincent. Highlight of...

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 01:53:00 -0400

St. Vincent at Oakland Fox Theater

St. Vincent crowd surfing like a pro.

An electrifying show by tUnE-yArDs and St. Vincent. Highlight of the night was St. Vincent’s gutsy turn at crowd surfing. Because she’s feather-light, she was getting tossed around and was doing somersaults at one point (all while singing Krokodil, on key!). Somehow, I ended up in the middle of this insanity. A night to remember!

See pictures of tUnE-yArDs and more pictures of St. Vincent here.

BareStage’s ‘Sweeney Todd’ entertains yet lacks technical polish

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 21:36:00 -0400

Nineteenth-century London — that grimy, Industrial Age time — is frequently dreamed up in novels and films as a place of chimney smoke and dark alleys, rogues and street urchins. In short, it’s a dog-eat-dog world. This is literalized in the BareStage Productions’ “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” which opened this past Friday on campus.

The pervasive corruption in 1846 London drives characters mad, in “Sweeney Todd.” As the titular barber (Alex Bonte with rich baritone and morose portent) declared by the end of the first act, his throat-slitting atrocities merely reflect the inhumanity of society: “It’s man devouring man, my dear, and who are we to deny it in here?”

Murder and cannibalism are dishes best served dark and dreary, and BareStage Productions, an on-campus student-run theater group, thoughtfully crafted a performance faithful to the musical’s grungy vision. It’s to the detriment of the production, however, that the show was frequently hampered by awkward staging in the spatial confines of the Cesar Chavez Student Center.

Continue reading at DailyCal.org

Deanne Chen/Staff

Derek Ramsberg/Image

Berkeley Repertory Theatre fictionalizes renowned painter

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 02:08:00 -0400

“What do you see?,” grunted an artist in paint-splattered clothing. The question, repeated several times in the first moments of Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s “Red,” was directed to his young assistant. There’s clearly an imbalance in the dynamic. The older man’s severe glasses channeled the sheer force of his personality, whereas the younger man’s face was soft and dewy. While the grizzled elder tucked his shirt in half-way, the youth was dressed in his Sunday best suit for the first day of work — embarrassingly out-of-place in the messy studio.

At the center of “Red,” a two-character play on the philosophy and creative process of the Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko, is a fraught teacher-student relationship. Rothko, played by David Chandler, is at once an egotistical bully and a master artist of towering fame and influence. His assistant Ken (John Brummer), who is fictional and has no historical counterpart, is an aspiring artist. Ken spends most of the play’s duration on the periphery, buffeted by the storms raised by Rothko’s grandiose personality.

Continue reading at DailyCal.org

Staff/Deanne Chen

Image/Courtesy of Kevin Berne

Shakespeare is Love: Impact Theatre’s artistic director on the Bard

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 13:50:48 -0400

Melissa Hillman likes to wear many hats: artistic director of Impact Theatre, teacher with a dramatic arts PhD from Cal and self-proclaimed nerd. Above all, Hillman is also a mother. Not that her responsibility to her sons overrides everything, but she approaches all roles with the maternal instinct to help others grow. On the timeline of her motherhood, Hillman mused, “Impact was my first baby, and then I had my second baby after that in 1998 … So I had Jacob, Jonah and Impact Theatre. Those are my babies.”

After spending twelve years at Impact Theatre, which performs at La Val’s Subterranean in North Berkeley, Hillman is nothing less than the small, nonprofit theater company’s matriarch. Impact Theatre began in 1996 at Au Coquelet Cafe (auspiciously, where your correspondent met with Hillman), with the group founded by Josh Costello as artistic director and Hillman as the associate. Hillman identified that at the time, there lacked a “space for emerging playwrights who weren’t getting a lot of play on the national scene, but were speaking honestly about the lives of younger Americans.” From the start, Impact’s mission was to create productions that resonate with younger audiences, insisting on low ticket prices and encouraging new artists.

Over time, with Hillman’s cultivation, Impact has fostered a reputation for revamping Shakepeare plays with bold interpretations targeting the “under 40, ethnically diverse, GLBT” Bay Area audience. While most non-English lit and theater majors probably regard Shakespeare as obscure high-culture, Hillman makes her adaptations accessible: “We love Shakespeare. It’s done in a boring way a lot, and we wanted people to see that it’s not boring — that it’s awesome.”

Berkeley Rep’s A Doctor in Spite of Himself

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:13:00 -0500

(Image source: courtesy of Kevin Berne)

Berkeley Repertory Theatre went topsy-turvy last Wednesday for the opening night of “A Doctor in Spite of Himself,” an adaptation of Moliere’s buoyant comedy co-produced by Yale Repertory Theatre. Colorful lights and a live tuba and accordion set a carnival atmosphere. The curtain rose, and a Punch-and-Judy puppet show seamlessly transitioned into a real-life squabbling husband and wife. The husband’s oversized pants and too-small blazer would have made Charlie Chaplin proud. But the real scene-stealer was the wife’s oversized breasts, lewdly wobbling around like giant bean bags.

The production’s frothy blend of screwball absurdity and raunchiness is a sugary delight, a confection that avoids being too sweet or silly, with pitch-perfect attention to comic rhythm. Based on the commedia dell’arte style, the 16th-century Italian tradition of stock characters, the adaptation was also a modern update on the anarchic slapstick found in Marx Brothers films.

designdesk: “GOP Super Bowl 2012”Editorial Cartoon: Deanne...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:06:00 -0500

designdesk:

“GOP Super Bowl 2012”
Editorial Cartoon: Deanne Chen/Staff

Air: Le Voyage Dans la Lune

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:48:00 -0500

A trip to the moon is nothing new for Air, the French electronica duo. For over a decade, Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel have immersed their music in retro Moog synthesizers and galactic themes (prior singles include “Kelly Watch the Stars” and “Surfing on a Rocket”) like a pair of dreamy astronomy enthusiasts. It’s perfect, then, that Air was commissioned to compose a modern soundtrack for the full-color restoration of Georges Melies’ “Le Voyage Dans la Lune” (1902), a pioneering artwork widely considered to be the first science fiction movie.

The crowning attraction of Air’s seventh album, titled after Melies’ film, is inevitably its connection to a work of incredible historical importance (see Martin Scorsese’s recent film, “Hugo”, for full emotional nostalgia), rather than its independent merits. In general, the best film soundtracks must both complimentary and absorbing: lifting a film’s mood without overriding its storyline. Luckily, Air is up to the challenge, as revealed by their mastery of featherlight ambiance of captivating beauty in past film soundtracks for “The Virgin Suicides” and “Lost in Translation.”

The album’s single, “Seven Stars,” builds the anticipation of a rocket launch with rumbling drums and Victoria Legrand’s (of Beach House) swooning vocals — surely an ode to Melies’ famous still of the Moon’s face with a rocket crashed in its eye. The same breathless exploration permeates through “Cosmic Trip,” a meteor shower of crystalline blips. However, aside from other bright stars like these, half of the album is dimmed by lackluster transitions better for cinematic portent than compelling listening.

At best, Air’s symphonic space-pop is a fascinating alliance with Melies’ 110-year-old vision, a mind-bending alignment of past and present with futuristic imagination. But it’s slightly disappointing that it’s all the album will ever be: A specialty curio that supports, not transcends, Melies’ greater masterwork.

Image: Courtesy of EMI

Staff/Deanne Chen

designdesk: Editorial Cartoon: Deanne Chen/Staff “Occupy...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:01:10 -0500

designdesk:

Editorial Cartoon: Deanne Chen/Staff

“Occupy Oakland clashes with police. Again. Nobody wins.”

Gabrielle Giffords unifies the House...

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 15:07:00 -0500

Gabrielle Giffords unifies the House ….temporarily

Staff/Deanne Chen

Erotic content disturbs in ‘Sleeping Beauty’

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 02:57:00 -0500

You won’t see a bewitched princess, rosy-cheeked and slumbering away in a castle to await her prince in Julia Leigh’s “Sleeping Beauty.” Instead, Leigh’s chilling arthouse film presents the heroine as Lucy (Emily Browning), a college student strapped for cash. Lucy works a variety of odd jobs, one of which requires — slightly like the fable — that she be put to sleep. Except that Lucy is willingly drugged for a private erotic club, and those wealthy, geriatric men aren’t climbing into her bed to give her true love’s kiss.

In her debut film, Australian novelist/director Julia Leigh delivers an original, cryptic vision that’s far removed from fairy tales told by the likes of the Brothers Grimm or Disney. Shot in a gorgeous palette of sea greens and blues awash in cold light, the film is pervasively clinical as it follows Lucy around her random occupations. There is little background explanation as Lucy works at a cafe, makes copies at an office, subjects herself to invasive medical experiments and does some freelance prostitution at a bar. She is mostly alone and detached, apart from when she visits a depressed recluse named Birdmann (Ewen Leslie), who enjoys his cereal doused in vodka. Such odd details sometimes come across as black comedy, but are brief respites from the largely bleak and opaque events of Lucy’s life.

There are lots of enigmas to pick apart in this story, and one of the most intriguing is Lucy herself. Emily Browning, endowed with alabaster skin and thick, strawberry blonde locks, is an ethereal presence who holds together the film’s exceedingly slow pacing. While Browning starred in the recent action film “Sucker Punch,” one only needs to see the children’s film “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events” to see that she was luminous onscreen even as a teenager. In “Sleeping Beauty,” Browning’s blank-faced passivity breaks into raw emotion in rare moments, giving the film’s almost too cryptic plot an absorbing center.

Go to The Daily Cal to read more.

Image: San Francisco Film Society/Courtesy

Deanne Chen/Staff Writer

Second Chances: San Francisco recycling center hosts sustainable art exhibit

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 23:28:07 -0500

A garbage facility may sound like a terribly unattractive place to visit — let alone as a subject of artistic scrutiny. Yet this past Friday at a recycling and disposal center, Recology San Francisco, the unique Artist in Residence exhibition turned the notion of waste as useless or ugly on its head. Like the circular movement of the recycling services at Recology SF, local artists the program supports are given priority to sift through the vast piles of junk and reclaim trash into works of art.

The exhibitions of artwork by Donna Anderson Kam, Terry Berlier and student artist Ethan Estess were a diverse range from the surreal (Estess’s mannequin with a backpack overflowing with coffee lid tentacles) to the delicately beautiful (Kam’s rainbow pastel drawings). Overall, the exhibitions were thought-provoking examinations on the environmental impact of waste from a microcosmic level.

While dialogue on green sustainability is nothing new — we all hear from scientists and news op-eds on how reckless human consumption ravages Earth’s ecosystems — what’s striking about the Recology SF art exhibit is its intimate approach to garbage. Formed by everyday knick-knacks, the art highlights the disposable nature of all that we own. The result is a rare feat of connecting individual actions to larger social responsibility without feeling forced — an aesthetic reminder that the mountains of trash in dumps are simply made of objects left by each and every one of us.

Read more at The Daily Cal, or see our original video coverage of the exhibition.

Deanne Chen/Arts Staff Writer

Image: Carlie Baker/Staff

First Aid Kit: The Lion’s Roar

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:38:57 -0500

by Deanne Chen/Arts Staff Writer

Out of the Scandinavian woodlands comes a true-blue American country album from Swedish sister singer-songwriters First Aid Kit. The young Johanna and Klara Soderberg hail from Stockholm, but recorded their sophomore effort, The Lion’s Roar, in Omaha, Nebraska. The change of scenery marks not a stylistic departure, but a richer exploration of the duo’s roots in American folk music.

It began three years ago, when the Soderbergs — then teenage fans of Fleet Foxes — uploaded their cover of “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” to YouTube. What began as a fan video became a hit and the start of a career, due to the Soderbergs’ emotionally-arresting vocals.

On The Lion’s Roar, First Aid Kit’s strength continues to be their remarkably self-assured voices in close harmony. Whereas their debut, The Big Black & the Blue, was charming in its own humble way, First Aid Kit blossoms into a more lush sound by focusing on the deep traditions of ’60s and ’70’s country music on the new album.

Read full text (and Podcast review) at The Daily Cal

Mitt Romney’s skeletons-in-the-closet.

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:58:36 -0500

Mitt Romney’s skeletons-in-the-closet.

Obama for America: “No one built this country on their own. This nation is great because...

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:48:54 -0500

Obama for America: “No one built this country on their own. This nation is great because...:

barackobama:

“No one built this country on their own. This nation is great because we built it together. This nation is great because we worked as a team. This nation is great because we get each other’s backs. And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great; no…

Drawn for the Daily Cal Puzzles special...

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 23:17:05 -0500

Drawn for the Daily Cal Puzzles special issue.

designdesk:

Cartoon: Deanne Chen/Staff

Published in the 2011 Puzzles Special Issue

designdesk: theeconomist: KAL’s cartoon: this week, the super...

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:27:36 -0500

designdesk:

theeconomist:

KAL’s cartoon: this week, the super committee.

Interesting cartoon from The Economist!

Hahaha KAL does it again!

“This was more than a protest, it was an artistic colony...

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 21:46:38 -0500

“This was more than a protest, it was an artistic colony where the best of Berkeley — its rich diversity, its ardent activism and its creative prowess — connected through the enduring agency of art.”

Check out the Daily Cal Arts blog post to read more about the relationship between art and the Occupy protests at UC Berkeley.

Image credit: Ashley Villanueva/Staff

A cartoon for how the police handled student protesters on Nov...

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 21:24:00 -0500

A cartoon for how the police handled student protesters on Nov 9.

For more info, read the Daily Cal Editorial article on the issue.

thedailycal:

Editorial Cartoon

designdesk:

Deanne Chen/Staff

“Through the eyes of UCPD”

Audio slideshow reporting on Swedish indie pop artist, Lykke Li,...

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:38:55 -0500

Audio slideshow reporting on Swedish indie pop artist, Lykke Li, who performed last Wed at Oakland Fox Theater.

To read concert review, check out DailyCal.org

Lykke Li evokes heartbreak at Oakland Fox

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 23:59:00 -0500

(Image credit: Danielle Lee/Staff)

From a thick haze of smoke, Lykke Li swooped into the Fox Theater last Wednesday like a vehement specter. The Swedish songstress was swathed in billowing, all-black robes, gliding her way across the stage. As the night began with the haunting “Jerome,” Lykke Li’s voice soared and wailed, but the song’s desperation was equally expressed by her intense eyeliner and pleading, outstretched hands. Ferocious physicality set the tone of the show: Lykke Li was out to reclaim love with a vengeance.

While Lykke Li channeled dark passions onstage, the concert underscored a recent major change in her musical persona. A petite singer with Bambi eyes, Lykke Li first broke into the indie pop scene peddling cutesy electro-chic with her debut album, Youth Novels. Her distinct voice, a startling combination of child-like and sultry, has since then shifted from whispered sweetness to a rougher, smokier sound for her sophomore effort, Wounded Rhymes. If the first album was innocent first love, then the second album is heartbreak, exploring a richer, more expansive terrain of moodiness.

Given the new, gritty approach, Lykke Li held impressive command over the oft-contradictory emotional arc of heartache. Backsliding into obsession, Lykke Li took on a sinister edge in her newer single, “I Follow Rivers.” Amidst her band’s thumping percussions, her voice smoldered in a song that blurs the boundaries between romantic fidelity and stalking. By contrast, songs like “Sadness is a Blessing” uplifted the atmosphere, as she bellowed achy longing with cathartic joy.