Delia MacDougall News

In her 13 years as artistic director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Sharon Ott led the company to new artistic heights, national prestige, and a well-deserved Tony Award. Now, after a 12-year absence, she returns with a gripping production of Fyodor Dostoevsky's classic Crime and Punishment. The scene of this Crime is Berkeley Rep's intimate Thrust Stage, where Ott earned her reputation as a dazzling director. The show begins previews on February 27, opens March 4, and closes March 29. Its executive producers are John and Helen Meyer and Richard H. Rubin and H. Marcia Smolens, with production sponsorship from the Bernard Osher Foundation. BART and Wells Fargo are the season sponsors for Berkeley Rep's 41st year of fearless theatre.

Intellectualism gives way to emotion in Tom Stoppard's complex chronicle of the impact of Cold War politics and social revolution on life, love, and rock and roll

American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) launches its 2008-09 Season with Tom Stoppard's critically acclaimed Rock 'n' Roll in a West Coast premiere directed by Artistic Director Carey Perloff, who has had a celebrated artistic partnership with Stoppard for over a decade. A rapturous, decades-spanning tale of Prague's rock revolution, Rock 'n' Roll follows the passions and politics of a Marxist professor in Cambridge and his Rolling Stones-obsessed protege fighting for freedom in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia.

Due to overwhelming popular demand, Berkeley's Aurora Theatre Company announces a two week extension of its critically acclaimed production of screen siren Mae West's first full-length play, SEX through December 23

The world premiere of Philip Kan Gotanda's 'After the War' at ACT is more a sappy 1940s San Francisco soap-opera than a nod to Japanese-American history.

California Shakespeare Theater closes its season with 'As You Like It,' beginning September 13 through October 15 at the Bruns Amphitheater in Orinda.