BY ALEXIA UNDERWOOD //

In a time of economic strife and hardship, laughter appears to be prevailing.

The house was packed at the Contra Costa Civic Theater in El Cerrito for Saturday night’s performance of Greater Tuna, a “comedy with Tex Appeal.”

Theater-goers laughed and guffawed the night away at Jaston Williams, Joe Sears and Ed Howard’s comedic play about small-town life in Texas. Directed by Mark Manske, the comedy showcased two actors – Joe Fitzgerald and Kyle Nash – who each play 10 characters, contrasting an impressive variety of costumes, voices and physical mannerisms.

The crowd was mostly middle-aged, and seemed more than willing to put their woes aside for an evening of outlandish accents and caricatures. “Wow, that was really funny,” an audience member commented to her partner as they walked out the doors at the end of the show.

The performing arts, traditionally an under-funded and vulnerable member of the entertainment sector, have not yet experienced the funding cuts that other industries have, according to several East Bay performing arts venues.

“Our season ticket sales have held pretty steady this year,” said Alex Ray, house manager on Saturday evening as audience members streamed around him to purchase snacks and drinks during the 15-minute intermission. “Attendance is actually up a bit from last year.”

Brit Johnson, the theater’s general manager, agreed. When asked if the down-turn in the economy had affected attendance, he responded, “It hasn’t. We actually think it may be a boon. They talk about ‘staycations’ – I call it ‘stayculture,’” Johnson said, referring to the national trend of people opting to stay home and save money rather than travel for the holidays.

Another reason could be timing. “Season tickets were sold in July and August – before things got horrible,” Johnson said. Season ticket sales actually went up this year, from about 9,004 to 9,036 – a slight increase, but still an increase – in a time when few organizations or businesses are seeing any hope at all.

Theaters don’t appear to be scaling back their production schedules, either. Nine, a musical, will open in the first week of February. Johnson also said that the theater was planning a 50th anniversary kick-off event on April 25.

“We’re actually experiencing record ticket sales right now,” said Terence Keane, director of public relations for the Berkeley Repertory Theater. Several recent shows have been extended by a week or two, and Yellowjackets, a recent production, exceeded its ticket goal.

“In terms of ticket sales, we are building on a very successful several years of increased sales,” he said. “It’s kind of bucking a national trend.”

The national trend is one of cutting back, as Americans prepare for an uncertain economic future.

Keane attributed the increase in ticket sales to the quality of the productions as well as the local appeal of certain production choices, such as Yellowjackets, a play set at Berkeley High and written by a Berkeley High graduate, Iatamar Moses. However, half of the theater’s budget comes from endowments and donations – other sources that may still be affected by the economy.

“Naturally, in this economic climate, we‘re very anxious about how this will come together,” he said. “We’re holding our breath here…to see what happens.”

Mark Gilbert, director of the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts which hosts performing arts groups said that they were in the process of transforming into a performing arts center for children and youth.

“Historically, activities for kids and youth tend to be a little more recession proof than adult’s activities,” Gilbert said. He thought that parents would rather sacrifice their own entertainment than their children’s, when money is tighter than usual.

“I would expect we would be less affected,” Gilbert said, “but we’ll see.”

San Pablo Avenue is a major economic force in El Cerrito, supplying the community with everything from nail salons to novelty shops. Now, a new plan to regulate future development along this major thoroughfare is nearing completion.

Watch the slideshow below to learn more.

BY ALEXIA UNDERWOOD //

The olive oil shipment is late.

At 10 a.m., a single volunteer, Henry Norr, arrives on a beat-up red bicycle and waits outside the headquarters of the International Solidarity Movement Support Group (ISM) in Berkeley.   A sign identifying the building as “The Grassroots House” hangs outside.  There is some trash strewn about the yard.

Norr wears a bright magenta shirt and suspenders. A former San Francisco Chronicle business reporter, Norr has visited Palestine three times with ISM. After he returned in 2002, he attended anti-war rallies and gave an informal talk on his experiences in the Middle East.  “I’d had this regular weekly column for four years by then,” he says.“I wrote about the Intel plant in Israel, and the pro-Israel lobby had a fit about it. I checked it multiple times, and they never found a syllable that was inaccurate.”

While Norr talks, he stares into the distance. After all of this, he says, he was given the cold shoulder and eventually fired from the Chronicle for taking a day off of work to attend the anti-war demonstrations in San Francisco in 2002.  He still receives a pension from the company.

Slowly, volunteers’ cars arrive, each transporting boxes of soap, olive oil bottles and zaatar – a Middle Eastern spice mixture. The unmistakable earthy smell of extra-virgin olive oil wafts out of trunks and minivans – a thick, clean fragrance from the other side of the world. The olive oil will be stored in the basement until ISM’s next bottling party, planned for December. Then it will be sold at events, and to individual purchasers in the Bay Area.

Norr and the other volunteers are members of ISM, a human rights group dedicated to helping Palestinians by dispatching volunteers to Palestine for months or years at a time. The volunteers serve as international human rights observers, walking children to and from school and staying in homes slated for demolition. The chapter in El Cerrito, among other things, sells and bottles Palestinian olive oil from farmers to help finance their volunteers.

As Katie, another ISM volunteer, carries her fourth box to the porch, she talks about her last three years in Palestine and the time she spent living in a Jewish Kibbutz. “I was burned out on the violence,” she says of her years in Palestine. She is still active with the organization, but has plans now to attend graduate school in graphic design in San Francisco.

The Northern California Chapter of ISM officially operates out of Paul Larudee’s home in the hills above El Cerrito, “for mailing purposes,” he tells me, even though the meetings take place in Berkeley.

Crammed inside his small apartment is a large piano covered with stacks of papers and boxes. Larudee hands me three cards, one of which reads “Sharpe and Flatte Piano Service” – he is a local piano technician as well as a human rights activist. Larudee’s living room walls display framed pictures of Arabic calligraphy. The script is ornate and mesmerizing. A nativity scene with a baby doll sits amidst the clutter on the hearth.

Betty, Larudee’s Lebanese wife, trails after their small black dog as he darts between boxes and tables. Betty Larudee and her husband met at a beach while he was living in Lebanon several years ago. She offers me jasmine tea or Turkish coffee. “Come on,” says Larudee, his eyes merry. “When’s the last time you had a cup of real Turkish coffee?”

Larudee’s connection to the Middle East runs deeper than coffee or pictures on a wall, I soon find out. The son of an Iranian Presbyterian minister, Larudee received his Ph.D in linguistics from Georgetown University and has worked as a contracted U.S. government advisor and Fulbright lecturer, and has spent 14 years in Arab countries. He became involved with Palestinian human rights issues “43 or 44 years ago,” but co-founded the Northern California chapter of ISM in 2002, after traveling to Palestine with four other Bay Area natives.

Larudee speaks carefully, pronouncing each syllable in a way that brings to mind his linguistic background.

He describes ISM as a human rights group, but also “kind of like a civil rights movement.” ISM was originally formed back in 2001. Before that, he says, “there was…a Palestinian non-violent resistance movement, but it wasn’t getting any press and it was being suppressed very heavily by Israeli forces.”

People connected with the movement suggested adding foreigners to the non-violent resistance movement, hoping that “it might have the same effect in Palestine that the white freedom riders had in the segregated south. It might be less subject to oppression.”

This suggestion turned into ISM, which has several chapters around the world, including one in Palestine. The Northern California chapter raises funds by selling and bottling Palestinian olive oil, like the recent shipment that arrived in Berkeley.

“One of the big activities that we’re known for is olive oil bottling,” Larudee says. “We set up assembly lines and you have the smell of the olive oil just permeating the place and we have food and music. It’s a real party atmosphere but it’s also very efficient. In the space of four hours we’ll bottle 60 cases of oil.”

ISM also organizes local speaking engagements and shows films. Once a year they hold a Rachel Corrie memorial event, to commemorate the memory of an American ISM activist killed in Israel.

The meetings are usually attended by people from all over the Bay Area, including business people, real-estate agents and students.

While Larudee, an El Cerrito resident since 1976, spends much of his time working for ISM and Free Gaza, another non-profit he co-founded in 2006, he describes his piano technician business as relaxing. “It’s almost like therapy,” he says. Despite a few negative reactions from clients, Larudee’s strong yen towards activism has appealed to others. Some have even requested to buy the olive oil that his organization produces, and donated to ISM.

Back at the Grassroots House, the volunteers take a break from unloading their precious cargo. Inside the large, sprawling house the rooms are decorated with posters representing the other non-profits that share this space, like the Prisoners Literature Project and Berkeley Copwatch.

The boxes, some leaking oil onto scraps of newspaper, will be stored in the basement under the house until next month’s bottling party. The brand name ISM has chosen – “Houriya” – means freedom in Arabic.

A non-profit organization working for Palestinian human rights with local headquarters in El Cerrito reported that three of its human rights observers were abducted early Tuesday morning by the Israeli Navy. Paul Larudee, a human rights activist with the northern California chapter of the International Solidarity Movement, said that one of the international observers was from San Jose.“The unusual part about this is that this is the first time anyone has been abducted at sea,” he said.

Larudee is co-founder of the northern California chapter of the ISM and a part-time piano technician from El Cerrito.

The three observers, who were volunteers with ISM, as well as fifteen Palestinian fishermen were reportedly taken from their fishing boats in Gaza waters, seven miles off the coast of Deir Al Balah, Gaza Strip. Some news organizations are reporting this as illegal action by the Israeli Navy.

Larudee said that the international observers (from San Jose, Scotland and Italy) were being held in a detention center within Israel, and that their embassies had been in touch with them. “As far as I know, they have not been charged with anything,” he said.

You can read more about this at:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=184931
http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/news/news.php?article=15158