Theater and Art

Luke and Adam are in a long-term relationship and have a lot in common except for one thing: Luke believes in God and Adam is an atheist.

Idris Goodwin's savvy new play "How We Got On," premiering on the West Coast at the B Street Theatre, is full of affecting surprises. Though the story is set in 1988 suburban Midwest America using the birth of hip-hop music and culture as its backdrop, Goodwin tells a resonant coming-of-age story for a new generation.

Galt residents are taking on the road an effort to keep their school libraries open.

Stephanie Gularte, founding artistic director of Capital Stage, has announced the theater troupe's 2013-14 season, a mix of contemporary and classic works from playwrights including Bruce Norris, David Lindsay-Abaire and William Shakespeare.

May is clay month in the Sacramento Valley. Long recognized as a hotbed of ceramic activity, the region has an extensive history of prominent ceramic sculptors, many of whom studied with the late Robert Arneson at the University of California, Davis

The new Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis will be architecturally notable for a 50,000-square-foot steel canopy that seemingly floats atop and beyond a series of interconnected interior and exterior spaces.

The Sacramento area's first 24-hour online giving drive for arts groups raised more than $400,000.

In the Sacramento Theatre Company's ambitious world premiere musical "A Little Princess," young Sara Crewe has been raised like royalty but must comport herself like a soldier.

Richard Montoya's new poetic elegy of a play, "The River," flows like an unruly natural watercourse, rushing through rapids and twisting around curves before eventually finding peace.

When "A Little Princess" opens Saturday night at the Sacramento Theatre Company, an arduous – though typical – journey ends for the world premiere musical.

"The Last Collaborations of Laureen Landau" at Archival Gallery is something of a contradiction in terms. Because Landau died in 2009, she couldn't participate in a process defined as two or more people working together.

City Theatre at Sacramento City College goes for it in a big way with its new production of the classic musical comedy "Guys and Dolls." With a cast of 32, a seven-piece live orchestra, and more than 100 costumes, director Christine Nicholson helms the most ambitious show they've ever done.

Geometric abstraction and narrative figuration vie in Roland Petersen's masterful paintings at the Elliott Fouts Gallery. A mini-retrospective, the show moves from nonobjective abstractions from the 1950s to fresh-off-the-easel works from his renowned Picnic Series.

The sketch comedy and improv troupe from the B Street Theatre has started picking up momentum at its new Assembly digs.

Children make up one of the most open and attentive audience groups. They will happily and willingly suspend disbelief for all kinds of entertainment.

George Bernard Shaw's first staged play, "Widowers' Houses," premiered Dec. 9, 1892, at the Royalty Theatre in London. Since it was produced by the Independent Theatre Society, a private subscription club, the play and its critique of the wealthy wasn't subjected to censorship by Lord Chamberlain's Office.

"Billy Elliot the Musical" has two of the most important elements going for it: creative storytelling and engaging subject matter.

Broadway Sacramento has announced its 2013-14 season with a six-show package that includes five regional premieres.

"Kind of Like a Sound," a bouquet of trumpetlike flowers, greets you on the first wall of Robert Ortbal's exciting show at Jay Jay. It's quirky yet beautiful, an elegant comedian made of unexpected materials.

TODAY-THURSDAY - The River Cats, the hometown AAA baseball team, extend opening weekend into next week, first against the Las Vegas 51s and then against Tacoma's Rainiers.

In yet another sign of Downtown Plaza's changing landscape, Tapigami, the local masking-tape art group, is moving into a 7,300-square-foot space that until recently was a gleaming Hyundai dealership.

Athol Fugard's slowly simmering 1982 drama "Master Harold … and the boys" encapsulates the tragic complexities of apartheid-era South Africa in one dismal rainy afternoon. The fine new production of the classic at the Sacramento Theatre Company's Pollock Stage benefits from a strong trio ensemble and careful, sensitive staging from director Buddy Butler.

Photographers Jay Spooner and Allyson Seconds wrap up their joint "Retrospectives" show with a fun-for-all closing night shindig Saturday at midtown's Little Relics Galleria.

Abstraction was a staple of art in the 20th century until it was rudely displaced by Pop Art in the 1960s. While abstraction took a secondary role for a time, it is once again popular with artists in the 21st century.

April 4, 1968, Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn.. The date and place are famous as the setting of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination.

Ballet and humor aren't the most common dance partners, yet the Sacramento Ballet has found comic charm in its new program at the Community Center Theater.

Though they are worlds apart, two shows at midtown galleries share a common thread.

Stephanie Gularte's imminent resignation as artistic director at Capital Stage, the professional theater company she co-founded, closes a remarkable and inspiring chapter in the region's arts life. This isn't by any means the end of the road for either Gularte or Cap Stage, but a corner has been turned. Gularte leaves a legacy of gutsy forward-thinking arts management and a model organization built to last.

David Pierini's new play "Finding Our Voice: Susan B. and the Women's Suffrage Movement" places the historical elements of the story in an accessible personal context. Pierini tells the story of Susan B. Anthony's nearly lifelong battle to gain for women the right to vote through his central character, a young woman named Mary Foster.

"FLASH," a new dance piece at UC Davis, was created by choreographer and director Qudus Onikeku out of his upbringing in violent Lagos, Nigeria.

Water, wood and earth are the three elements the Zhang sisters explore in their joint show at CSU Sacramento's Library Gallery. The sisters – Ling, Bo and Hong – were born and raised in the northeast China in the city of Shenyang, often referred to as the Detroit of China. Each has found a new home: Ling in Atlanta, Bo in Beijing and Hong in Lawrence, Kan.

New Helvetia Theatre's sparkling production of Adam Gwon's satisfying "Ordinary Days" has so many charms it's hard to know where to begin. Set in contemporary New York, the funny and dramatic sung-through chamber musical has a bright, unaffected grasp of modern life, which for its characters is vibrantly comic, sad and hopeful.

Who knows how many kids and parents have the songs from "Disney's Beauty and the Beast" etched in their brains from repeated listening? That number is surely astronomical, as the 1991 film has generated close to $425 million in revenue from its numerous releases.

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has made an art of retooling its leadership.

Capital Stage founding artistic director Stephanie Gularte announced Friday that she will leave the theater after its 2013-2014 season. Capital Stage board President Cliff McFarland said the professional nonprofit theater company will immediately begin a national search for her replacement.

Alex Bult Gallery- "Waterworks" is a show of transcendent images of water, seen up close so that the image becomes abstract on first viewing

As young Lysander doggedly pursues an uneven romance in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," he sagely observes, "The course of true love never did run smooth."

Playwright Michael Elyanow's tumultuous world-premiere comedy-drama "Robyn Is Happy" at B Street Theatre veers across wide swaths of dramatic territory.

Sacramento theater reboots this weekend with four new shows opening, including two Shakespearean comedies and two world premieres.

Like ancient Greek sculptures of gods and goddesses, China's terra-cotta warriors, on view at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, would have been brightly painted.

THURSDAY - Historical-fiction writer Melanie Benjamin's new novel, "The Aviator's Wife," tells the story of the marriage of Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, who emerged from his shadow to become a writer and advocate for women's rights.

Museums – much like libraries – are places where voices are hushed and noise minimal.

Ben Moroski still can't say why he used to cut himself. Even though the Davis native has written and performed a one-person play based on his self-mutilation, he can't reduce his reasons to a simple sentence, and in "This Vicious Minute" he doesn't try to.

As he approaches his 90th birthday, Sacramento painter Gregory Kondos walks with a cane and has a constant ache in his shoulder from holding up a paintbrush. But he insists he is doing his best work yet, and he is ready to tackle an 8-foot-tall canvas.

There are some stories that sound much better in short-form synopsis than they play on stage (yes, Neil LaBute, I'm looking right at you). The description tells you everything, the execution not so much.

On the surface, the works of Irving Marcus and Peter Stegall would seem to have little in common.

Looking to tap into the city's burgeoning mural scene, downtown officials are seeking entries from artists willing to provide a cosmetic upgrade to a blighted corner of K Street.

He's an everyman schlub with a brilliant streak, an incisive observer whose devoted self-skewering softens his edge.

Tens of thousands of visitors made their way to area museums – admission free – on Saturday for Sacramento Museum Day.

Shpritz Anthony, a beloved member of the Sacramento theater community, passed away unexpectedly Jan. 5 at his Sacramento home at the age of 47. The cause of death has not been determined.