Productions

On Saturday, the Berkeley Dance Project staged the third performance of its annual showcase of Bay Area dance talent. The showcase, which took on the theme of community, pulled from a variety of sources, from student dance groups — such as Maya at Cal and the Fei Tian dancers — to campus theater, dance and performance studies, or TDPS, students, alumni and faculty.

Ensconced in the center of the Zellerbach Playhouse is a vertiginous stage, stained in aquamarine, licorice red and pale salmon. Floating around the arena are knee-high tables, an assortment of chairs and a monumental amount of tapestries, ranging from the typical pillow sham to the ones draped across a college student’s window. To the side is a nook resembling a backyard concert. It’s an array of set dressing which magnetizes in service of the story. At the convergence of the UC Berkeley Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies, or TDPS, program...

Set in Nueva, New York in the late 23rd century, Dustin Chinn’s Radio Play, featuring CAL students under the direction of Mina Morita, imagines a world where Caucasians, nearing extinction, survive under federal protection. They live on preservation farms and perform their “caucasity” for a curious public.

In this near white-less future world, Chinn wittily shows two arrogant Caucasians who disrupt the prevailing ethnic diversity. Even in a world where Caucasians are critically endangered, their white voices carry weight.