Many critics consider the award-winning Berkeley Repertory Theatre (or Berkeley Rep, as it’s commonly known) to be the finest theater company in the Bay Area—some feel it’s the best outside of New York. Since 1968, the Rep has been rewarding audiences with challenging, contemporary drama, and has become possibly the largest performing arts organization in Northern California. The theater is at 2025 Addison Street in downtown Berkeley (+1 510 204 8901, http://www.berkeleyrep.org/).

Other, smaller ensembles round out the Berkeley theater scene: in North Berkeley, the Actors Ensemble Theater plays at the Live Oak Park Theater. The Aurora Theater’s polished productions regularly sell out the Aurora Theater in the dowdy Berkeley City Club—the Aurora plans to move to a new theater of their own at 2071 Addison, near the Berkeley Rep, for the 2001-2002 season; newcomer Theater First’s recent stagings of Death and the Maiden and The Ladies of the Camellias have drawn good notices at the Julia Morgan Theater in the Elmwood; and the scrappy Shotgun Players have moved their high-energy repertoire out of cramped LaVal’s Pizza and into new digs at Adeline and Alcatraz. U.C. Berkeley’s Dramatic Arts Department stages student productions every year, as well. For more information, call +1 510 601 8932.

U.C. Berkeley/Cal Performances
Cal Performances (www.calperfs.berkeley.edu) puts on a September-May calendar of world-class dance, music and theater.

The Russian National Orchestra, the Gate Theatre of Dublin, Steve Reich, David Sedaris, Sonny Rollins, Dawn Upshaw, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and Burhan Ocal & The Istanbul Oriental Ensemble were just a few of the performers gracing the stage of U.C. Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall during the 2000-2001 season. Additionally, the university offers master classes, lectures, demonstrations and symposia by these visiting artists and scholars to U.C. Berkeley students and often to the public.