.Arts Feature

Two dragon-like creatures with flashy fangs and silver sparkly fringe hang from utility posts on 41st St., in Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood. At first, Jen Apodaca, founder of Mother Tongue Cafe & Bar, did not think much of the...

Drink in hand, standing in front of her collection of film stills for sale, photographer Ginger Fierstein posed a question: “What if we brought back patrons?” We were talking about the ever-present demands of capitalism and the squeeze...

Award-winning Oakland-born playwright Marcus Gardley never knows where his writing is going. In an interview a week prior to the world premiere of his newest play, A Thousand Ships, Gardley said, “These characters reveal themselves to me...

When Komal Shah was a little girl growing up in India in the home of her textile merchant father, she and her sister did not have a lot of toys. “We used fabric samples to make costumes...

Ghanaian-American playwright and actor Jocelyn Bioh grew up in New York City. Although by no means impoverished, her family didn’t have a lot of money. With Broadway and live theater largely off the table, Bioh says in...

Drago Nesa, entrepreneur, international circus performer and longest-body-burn-while-hanging-from-their-teeth world record holder, teaches aerial silks at SkyHigh Odditorium, a Richmond-based aerial arts and acrobatics school where strength training and choreography fuse in midair. “When you do aerial,” she...

Richmond-based artist Daniel “Attaboy” Seifert is fascinated by transition and transience. Both of these fascinations are expressed in his solo show, “Portal,” on view at San Francisco’s 111 Minna Gallery through December. “If you look up at the...