LAFAYETTE
For this year’s International Women’s Day, officials at Lafayette’s Town Hall Theatre plan a screening of the film “100 Years from Mississippi” at 7 p.m. March 8.
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The screening will feature the film’s director, Tarabu Betserai Kirkland, and author and actor Nobuko Miyamoto, who appears in the film and will sign copies of her book “Not Yo’ Butterfly: My Long Song of Relocation, Race, Love and Revolution” before the film from 6 to 7 p.m.
Kirkland’s film centers around the life of his mother, Mamie, who at the age of 108 travels back in time and space to Mississippi, the place she fled at the age of 8 due to the threat of lynchings.
Kirkland weaves together the threads of Mamie’s life as a woman who, after being widowed at a young age, provided for her children as an Avon lady, and the lived history that seeps back into the ugliest part of American history that includes. Kirkland says this is an important film to watch while celebrating International Women’s Day.
“There are countless ‘sheroes’ in towns and villages around the world whose lives and everyday legacies form the backbone of powerful movements through their extraordinary commitment and vision of how the world should exist and walk that reality every single day,” Kirkland said. “It is an honor to celebrate the life of one of those sheroes (my mother).”
Miyamoto also will read an excerpt from her book dedicated to Mamie Lang Kirkland before the film and Tarabu Betserai Kirkland will engage in a question-and-answer session after the film. The screening will feature a no-host bar and time to mingle with guests. For more information visit townhalltheatre.com/100-years online or call 935-283-1557.
— Town Hall Theatre
PLEASANT HILL
California Writers Club branch workshop set for March 9
From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. March 9 at Zio Fraedo’s Restaurant in Pleasant Hill, Amanda McTigue, who has spent her life writing for the page and the stage, will lead a California Writers Club, Mount Diablo Branch (CWDMDB), workshop to help writers make their work come alive.
Check-in begins at 9:30 a.m. in the restaurant at 611 Gregory Lane, and guests are welcome. The cost for the meeting, including lunch, is $45 for members and $50 for nonmembers. To register for the meeting online, visit cwcmtdiablo.org/meetings-and-workshops or the CWC branch at cwcmtdiablo.org/join.
— CWCMDB
PITTSBURG
‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ runs on stage through March 3
There’s still time to see the Pittsburg Theatre Company’s (PTC) rendition of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” the classic Tennessee Williams drama drenched in decay, sensuality, violence and insanity.
Often regarded as among the finest plays of the 20th century and the winner of 1948’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama, “Streetcar” is considered by many to be Williams’ greatest work. The play is about the death of the aristocratic Old South and the rise of the working class, with its poverty and brutality — the destruction of one way of life and the ascent of another. Directed by Michael Wilson, it runs through March 3.
The play tells the story of fading southern belle Blanche DuBois (Michele Morgen), who visits her sister Stella (Mary Katherine Patterson) in New Orleans. Blanche’s yearning for the once-romantic, magical South is in stark contrast to the simplistic, working-class lifestyle represented by Stella’s husband, Stanley Kowalski (Sam Leeper). The clash between Blanche’s escapist fantasies and Stanley’s often brutish demeanor begins to boil.
Performances are at 8 p.m. March 1 and 2 p.m. March 2-3 in the California Theatre at 351 Railroad Ave. in Pittsburg. For tickets, visit pittsburgcommunitytheatre.org online.
— PTC
CONCORD
Hotel hosting three-day bead, design show March 15-17
Beads, gems, jewelry and clothing will be on display March 15-17 at the Walnut Creek Bead & Design Show (next-door in Concord). Shop at more than 150 exhibits and find everything from jewelry and artwear to beads, gems, antiquities and handcrafts. Take workshops in design, beadwork and soldering!
This three-day event will fill the ballrooms and meeting space at Concord Plaza Hotel with exhibits and workshops. Makers and designers will find high-quality bead merchants and suppliers, with seed beads, gems, cabs, unusual components and more.
Workshops in jewelry making techniques and skills are offered throughout the show. Participants can try their hand at mixed media and techniques such as beadwork, pearl knotting, soldering, kumihimo and peyote beading.
The event will be from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. March 15-16 and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 17 in the Concord Plaza Hotel at 45 John Glenn Drive. Tickets are $8 online or $10 at the door and will be good for all three days. Visit beadanddesign.com online for more details.
— Garan-Beadagio LLC
MARTINEZ
Main Street Arts Gallery’s new exhibit to open Friday
The Main Street Arts Gallery in Martinez will host an intimate look into the world of fine arts, local-style, from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday in the gallery at 613 Main St. The gallery’s members, 11 artists from around the Bay Area, will display a collection of their new work every two months at the gallery starting with their March 1 opening.
Dave Kwinter will be celebrated as the guest artist in the gallery. Longtime Bay Area resident Kwinter is a retired attorney with a varied background. After years of painting, he says he found that, “3-D art is more fun than being confined to two (dimensions)” and hence started making “assemblage” pieces. He finds the various components for his works in thrift stores, on the street, flea markets … just about everywhere.
Kwinter says combines his “treasures” to assemble sculptures that keep the viewer wondering about the complexity and the story of each creation (“The job of an artist is to deepen the mystery,” he says). For more information, visit mainstreetarts.net online.
— Main Street Arts Gallery
LAFAYETTE
Public invited to free season announcement party Saturday
Town Hall Theatre officials invite the public to celebrate with them at their season announcement party from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday at 3535 School St. in Lafayette. The theater company will unveil its highly anticipated 80th season with a theme that delves into the heart of humanity: “Family: Born into and Chosen.”
Participants can enjoy cocktails and live music in the lobby from the Contra Costa Performing Arts Society at 2 p.m. Then at 3 p.m. attendees will go upstairs, where Artistic Director Richard Perez and Education Director Erika March wil unveil the engaging selections for the 80th Main Stage Season as well as Town Hall Theatre’s first Youth Stage Season.
This free program will feature sneak peek scenes from the theater company’s upcoming main stage season’s plays, information about how to participate in the Youth Stage Season and will be capped off with live performances from Town Hall Theatre’s friends at Front Porch Presents. To confirm attendance for the free event, visit townhalltheatre.com/2024-2025-season online.
— Town Hall Theatre
WALNUT CREEK
Lesher Center to present Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’ Sunday
The Diablo Symphony Orchestra (DSO) will bring Igor Stravinsky’s groundbreaking “Rite of Spring” to Walnut Creek at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Lesher Center for the Arts.
Expanded to accommodate Stravinsky’s score calling for nearly 100 musicians, the orchestra will include multiple flutes and clarinets in different ranges; four oboes; two English horns; four bassoons, two contrabassoons; eight French horns; five trumpets, three trombones, two tubas, a full complement of violins, violas, and cellos; and eight string basses.
New sounds and energetic polyrhythms are created in the percussion section by six timpani (including a piccolo timpano) shared by two timpanists, a tam-tam, a bass drum, crash cymbals, antique cymbals, a tambourine and a stroked washboard.
The program also features a new commissioned work, “Many Hues of Green,” by San Francisco composer Jean Ahn and Edward Elgar’s cello “Concerto in E Minor,” featuring Starla Breshears, this season’s winner of the DSO’s Yen Liang Young Artist Competition.
Breshears, 16, is a precollege student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, studying cello with Jean-Michel Fonteneau. Advance Tickets are available at the Lesher Center for the Arts box office (925-943-7469) or online at diablosymphony.org. Tickets are $40 for adults and $10 for ages 13 to 17.
Admission is free for children 12 or younger, but they still need tickets, and a discounted ticket price of $30 each is available for groups of 10 or more seniors ages 62 or older. Tickets will also be sold at the door.
— Diablo Symphony Orchestra
ORINDA
Italy’s Oscar film submission, ‘Io Capitano’ opens March 8
The International Film Showcase will show the Italian film “Io Capitano” for at least a week starting March 8 at the Orinda Theatre. The film, Italy’s Oscar submission for this year, will also be screened March 16 at Napa’s Jarvis Conservatory. The film has won 11 international awards thus far.
In this acclaimed film, director Matteo Garrone presents the immigration experience while unfurling an epic, cinematically magnificent odyssey from West Africa to Italy. The story is told through the mind’s eye and experiences of two Senegalese teenagers living in Dakar who yearn for a brighter future in Europe.
Between their dreams and reality, though, lies a treacherous journey through a labyrinth of checkpoints, the scorched Saharan desert, a fetid North African prison and the vast waters of the Mediterranean, where thousands have died packed inside vessels barely fit for passage. Visit internationalshowcase.org for more details online.
— International Film Showcase
LIVERMORE
‘Best of San Francisco Comedy Competition’ on March 29
Livermore’s Bankhead Theater will present the “Best of San Francisco Comedy Competition,” starting at 8 p.m. March 29. The show will be hosted by Stuart Thompson, a stand-up comedian, actor, voiceover actor and writer.
The featured comedian will be Dana Gould, who has six solo stand-up comedy specials to his credit. As an actor, Gould has had memorable turns on the “Seinfeld” and “Parks and Rec” television shows and is one of the few actors to play his live-action self on “Family Guy.” Tickets are available online at livermorearts.org.
— Livermore Valley Arts
Submit area arts-and-entertainment On Tap items to Judith Prieve at jprieve@bayareanewsgroup.com.