SEATTLE SYMPHONY Cal Performances hosts the Bay Area debut of the Seattle Symphony (it only took them 115 years since their founding) this weekend with two nature-inflected programs. Saturday’s concert opens with the Bay Area premiere of John Luther Adams’ Become Desert, which had an acclaimed world premiere last week in Seattle. Become Desert is Adams’ follow-up to his Grammy and Pulitzer winning Become Ocean, which the orchestra will perform on Sunday night (also a Bay Area premiere). (Check out this fascinating account of the Seattle Symphony rehearsing Become Desert in The Stranger.) Saturday’s program also includes Jean Sibelius’ Second Symphony, and Sunday’s is all ocean, all the time with Sibelius’ rarely performed The Oceanides and Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia from Peter Grimes as well as the Adams work. Both concerts will be conducted by Ludovic Morlot, who is on his final tour with the orchestra. Saturday, April 7, 8 p.m. and Sunday, April 8, 3 p.m., Zellerbach Hall.
SHIFTING SPACES It’s the final weekend to see Those Women Productions’ trio of new one-act plays about individuals “fighting to claim their full human identities.” TWP selected the three plays for Shifting Spaces from an open international call for scripts. The program opens with the world premiere of vessels by Kim Yaged, which reveals the little-known stories of lesbians in Germany, before, during and after Nazism’s rise to power. It’s followed by the West Coast premiere of Revelation, by Canadian playwright Shirley Barrie. Revelation takes place in a cemetery on Judgement Day, and is a “darkly comic tour” through changing gender roles. The program concludes with the world premiere of They/Them by Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko, a drama about a transgender teen fighting for their mother’s love. All shows are “choose your own price.” Friday, April 6, 8 p.m., Saturday, April 7, 8 p.m., and Sunday, April 8, 2 p.m., Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave.
THE MUSHROOM CURE The Marsh is bringing back its 2017 Off-Broadway hit The Mushroom Cure by Adam Strauss, opening on Friday. Inspired by a scientific study suggesting that hallucinogenic mushrooms could cure obsessive-compulsive disorder, Strauss went on a program of “vigilante” psychopharmacology. The Mushroom Cure is his tale of his quest to cure his OCD. The one-man show runs throughout April. Friday, 8 p.m., Saturday, 8:30 p.m., The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way.
NATIVE TEACHINGS Malcolm Margolin, founder of Heyday Books, has taken his passion for California history and culture and created the California Institute for Community, Art & Nature (ICAN). ICAN’s first event is Native Teachings on Saturday at the Brower Center. “Native artists and cultural leaders will share personal reflections on the value of the lessons they learned, how knowledge is conveyed, and the wisdom embedded in a variety of Native institutions, beliefs, and practices. To what degree is this knowledge transferable to mainstream America?” The event is a benefit for the West Berkeley Shellmound Campaign, with tickets on a sliding scale from $10-30. Native Teachings will be followed by a public viewing of works from the Bay Area shellmounds at the Berkeley Art Museum at 2-5 p.m. Some of the works have not been shown publicly in many decades. Saturday, April 7, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way.
HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE Berkeley’s 16th annual Holocaust Remembrance Day will be observed on Sunday, honoring survivors and remembering those who were murdered in the Holocaust. This year’s theme is “The Power of Words: To Teach, To Resist, To Record and To Remember.” Hana Berger Moran, who was born in the Freiberg concentration/slave labor camp after her pregnant mother survived selection and slave labor at Auschwitz, will be honored. Others on the program include storyteller Joel ben Izzy and musicians Mike Perlmutter, Gerry and Leslie Tenney, Dmitri Gaskin, and Dusan Ristic. Sunday, April 8, 11:30 a.m., Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, 2121 Alston Way.
Don’t miss other events covered on Berkeleyside:
Big Screen Berkeley: 61st San Francisco International Film Festival
