As Old Person 2024 gets ready to high five New Year’s Baby 2025, let us do as many others do and recount the best of the past 12 months, specifically the Five Most Magnificent Alameda Art Events of 2024. For my friend Jerry, no I’m not going to herald the theatrical works of my theater company, The Foodbank Players, nor recount the poetic offerings I offer on the now four trees in my neighborhood. Instead, let me display astounding selflessness and show aesthetic sensitivity by celebrating these five fantastic feats of artistic accomplishment. Imagine a lovely assistant standing near me wearing a fancy frock while holding the handsome envelopes…
The Addams Family musical
Performed by the Alameda High School Drama Department, March 2024
As was said in our review back in March, there was “something pure and beautiful and honest” about Alameda High School’s production of The Addams Family musical. It was also lots and lots of fun. Halloween was still seven months away when we got to see a stage filled with cutely creepy kids wearing wacky hair and face paint, costumed in so many shades of black, and singing! They sang about longing and love and family friction—and they even tangoed. Tangoing, in little Alameda! Plus there was the remarkable handiwork of the actor playing the hand (Thing, brought to you by Jay Boarman). For their efforts I hereby declare The Addams Family as the Best Musical of 2024, the year of the rabbit.
Doubt
Produced by Altarena Playhouse, May/June 2024
There was so much good theater to see in town this past year—another outstanding performance of Words That Made the Difference – Brown vs the Board of Education, As You Like It by the Foodbank Players, and the long running hit of Baby the Cat at Julie’s Coffee and Tea. But it was the story of suspected abuse by a Catholic priest, Doubt, directed by Shannon Nicholson and starring Katina Psihos Letheule as Sister Aloysius, that earned our praise as Best Play of 2024, and Best Performance by an Actor. On the small stage of the Altarena, with only four actors, in just 90 minutes, the horrible crimes committed by the clergy were explored with incredible sensitivity. The show was both heartbreaking and breathtaking, truthful and vital, and a palpable demonstration of the bravery that theater can display.
Katie Bruun Art Exhibit
Gruber’s Bazaar, June 2024
While the power and beauty of the Rising Seas Art Exhibit at Rhythmix Cultural Works that opened in June is deeply worthy of praise, there is something adorable about a display of quirky art taking place in a wee little wonderful retail shop on Central Avenue in the middle of Alameda that won my heart. Therefore I proclaim “The Collage Art of Katie Bruun” as the Best Art Show of 2024. Katie’s pieces have a whimsical complexity about them—the pretty collision of people and critters in a pastoral setting, with many of her works showcasing pinup people from days of yore. Skulls, mermaids, and insects can be seen roaming her collages in ways that make perfect sense while making no sense. Serious grinning took place for the many visitors to the Gruber gallery seeing Katie’s creations.
Somewhere to Land: Dances for Sea and Low Sky
Featuring BANDALOOP, September 2024
Not to minimize the creative movements that took place on the middle and high schools dance floors here in Alameda, but did any of those kids hang from wires dancing on the side of a building under the lights at night? They did not, but boy oh boy, BANDALOOP surely did. As the center of a phenomenal collaborative project combining art and environmental science—including the Rising Seas Art Exhibit, a concert, an interactive dance and an original play at Rhythmix in August—Somewhere to Land, directed by Melecio Estrella and produced by Tara Pilbrow, was the Best Dance Performance of 2024. Musicians performed, singers sang, and actors acted, but normally earthbound human beings attached cables to themselves and pranced and swayed and flew at Hangar 25. And so many of us lucky observers, with our heads slightly tilted upward, were gleefully awestruck by what we saw.
Julia Park Tracey reading from Silence
Books, Inc., October 2024
The fact that literary events still take place is a remarkable thing, the fact that bookstores are still here is pretty nifty, and the fact that writers are still writing stories that move us is nearly a holy miracle. (Take that TikTok!) And in this small city there are multiple examples of this, from the weekly meetings of writers at Julie’s Coffee and Tea under the leadership of Bronwyn Emery to the monthly gathering of the Island Poets at the Frank Bette Center headed up by former Alameda Poet Laureate Cathy Dana. But when Julia Park Tracey—Alameda’s renowned author, former poet laureate, and journalist—read from her new book, Silence at Books Inc. in October, that became the Best Literary Event of 2024. Julia’s personal story is in itself an incredible tale, but it is her telling the story of Silence, the book’s main character, that I sing about here and now. A young Puritan woman, overwhelmed by personal loss, is punished for speaking her truth by not being allowed to speak for a year. What she endures, how she triumphs, is a demonstration of strength and heroism, and to hear the author read her own writing was doubly moving and profound.
Thank you and congratulations to every artist who shared their creativity and efforts this past year. From sandcastles to murals, from karaoke singers to the guy who plays his string instrument in front of Peet’s, to borrow from David Byrne, “we live in a city of dreams” that manifests in fantastic art in all its formats. Take a bow 2024. 2025, what you got for us?
Gene Kahane is the founder of the Foodbank Players, a lifelong teacher, and former Poet Laureate for the City of Alameda. Reach him at [email protected]. His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Gene-Kahane.
