Arts & Entertainment
11th Annual Eugene O'Neill Festival, Sept. 10-26
The Eugene O'Neill Foundation and Tao House, in partnership with the National Parks Service, Town of Danville, Role Players Ensemble, Museum of the San Ramon Valley, Alamo Danville Artist's Society, Danville Library and Danville Community band presents the 11th Eugene O'Neill Festival.
More than two dozen events are scheduled in Danville during the festival from Sept. 10 to 26.
Eugene O'Neill's play "The Hairy Ape" will be the centerpiece of the three-week festival.
The production is being produced by the Eugene O'Neill Foundation and Tao House, in association with Role Players Ensemble and the Town of Danville.
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"The Hairy Ape" opens at the on September 10 and will run each Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening with Sunday matinees through September 26. Buy tickets here.
Other festival events will include performances and talks capturing the variety of the worldwide Expressionist movement of music, art and film.
Danville artist Bill Carmel has created a painting inspired by "The Hairy Ape" and prints will be available for art collectors.
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The Danville Community Band will perform on the and Vice Mayor Karen Stepper will lead walking tours of the historic downtown.
Many events are free.
For event details and ticket information call 925-820-1818.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Sept. 11: Gala Reception
Village Theatre, 7:15 p.m.
Includes wine and hors d'oeuvres, performance of "The Hairy Ape", and after-hours Kurt Weill Cabaret.
Ticket price: $100
Sept. 11: Walking tour of historic Danville
Meet at Museum of the San Ramon Valley, 205 Railroad Ave. at 10 a.m.
$3 fee
Sept. 17: Walking tour of historic Danville
Start at Village Theatre 233 Front St. at 6:15 p.m.
$3 fee
September 10, 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, 23, 24, 25: "The Hairy Ape" by Eugene O'Neill
The masterpiece was written by O'Neill at the height of the worldwide Expressionist movement. It tells the story of a brawny working man who is caught between two worlds and the crisis that is precipitated when he intrigues the pampered daughter of an industrial tycoon.
Directed by Eric Fraisher Hayes
Village Theatre, 8:00 p.m. (Sundays at 2 p.m.)
Tickets: $30
September 11, 18, 25: "Kurt Weill Cabaret"
An exciting and theatrical concert of the best of Kurt Weill, whose mastery of the Expressionist style enraged Nazi censors. In America he adapted the form and composed many popular musicals and films with the best lyricists.
Village Theatre, 9:45 p.m.
Admission included with Sept. 11 gala.
Sept. 10 to 25: Expressionism in Art exhibit
Village Theatre, 233 Front Street
Curated by Claudia W. Hess, Worthington Gallery West
On Sept. 11 there will be a presentation at 1 p.m.
Free admission
Sept. 11: Festival Theme Presentation
"Eugene O'Neill - The Experimental Years"
By Dan Cawthon
Following the success of Beyond the Horizon in 1920, O'Neill joined critic Kenneth Macgowan and designer Robert Edmond Jones (known as the "Triumvirate") to create The Experimental Theatre. They sought to penetrate the psychological, emotional, and spiritual forces that shape human behavior - to stage what lies "behind life". An exploration, through lecture and video, of the influence of expressionism on O'Neill's experimental plays.
Village Theatre, 10:30 a.m.
Free admission
Sept. 18: "Expressionism in Film"
Dan Leopard of St. Mary's College
Village Theatre, 10:30 a.m.
Film at 1:30 p.m.
This talk will survey the films and directors most commonly associated with German expressionism and will follow the style as it moves to Hollywood along with the directors who fled the rise of the Nazis.
The influence of expressionism crisscrosses the history of the cinema in genres as varied as science fiction, melodrama, crime and horror.
Free admission
Sept. 21: "O'Neill's Expansion of the American Theatre"
Danville Library, 400 Front Street
Mt. Diablo Room, 7:00 PM
Eric Fraisher Hayes, Festival Mainstage Director
Actors will demonstrate and discuss the techniques and images that were presented on the American stage in the 1920s and how O'Neill expanded our idea of theatre.
Free admission, first-come, first-seated
Sponsored by The Friends of the Danville Library
Sept. 25: "Expressionism in Music"
Village Theatre, 10:30 a.m.
Lino Rivera, St. Mary's College
Concert and Lecture
Drawing heavily on Freud's theory of the unconscious, Expressionist composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern sought to express, through dissonance and atonality, the dark, sometimes harrowing experiences that constitute their inner lives. Lino Rivera will demonstrate the movement's chief characteristics through lecture and performance of selected works.
Free admission
Sep. 25: Danville Community Band Concert
Danville town green, 1:30 p.m.
Free admission
