jan. 26
Theater
The Birthday Party
Five years before Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’s George and Martha deluded themselves into a drunken frenzy and then stupor, the characters of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party revealed that humankind’s potential for self-deception is just about endless. The award-laden Aurora Theatre has a strong and long relationship with Pinter – while The Birthday Party is his first play, it’s far from the company’s first Pinter production. (Johnny Ray Huston)
8 p.m., $28-$38
Through March 4
2081 Addison, Berk.
(510) 843-4822
www.auroratheatre.org
Music/event
Activating the Medium Festival
At the 10th annual Activating the Medium Festival, enthusiasts of aural pleasure will have the opportunity to ponder the musical value of a wide range of sounds. Focusing on the ambiguous periphery between the natural and the mechanical world – using field recordings from sources as diverse as a Vietnamese rain shower and an Australian industrial site – several world-class sound artists present their unique sonic perspectives at the Exploratorium and Recombinant Media Labs. Among the featured performers are B.J. Nilsen (a.k.a. Hazard) from Sweden and the Bay Area’s Keith Evans, who premieres his multimedia evocation of Mt. Tamalpais. (Nicole Gluckstern)
Fri/26-Sat/27, 7 p.m., free with museum admission
Exploratorium, Palace of Fine Arts
3301 Lyon, SF
(415) 561-0308
Also Sun/28, 8 p.m., $15
Recombinant Media Labs
763 Brannan, SF
www.23five.org