This month welcomes the arrival of the third installment of “Jukebox Stories,” cleverly titled “The Secrets of Forking,” which premiered on the Impact stage this past weekend. Unlike the previous two, this version incorporates the audience through fortune-telling rather than audience-interactive games. This time around, Gomolvilas and Patton are not merely performers but tarot-card-slash-mind-reading extraordinaires.

Tucked beneath the modern-day pizzeria is a theatrical space decorated with Chinese calligraphy wall art, Maneki-neko cat figurines and Asian lanterns — they evoke a feng shui ambiance as if one has just set foot into a dingy fortune-teller’s cave in Chinatown.

Throughout the course of the performance, Gomolvilas and Patton allow audience members to draw tarot cards from a deck. Each of these corresponds to a particular song or story, as well as an audience member, all of whom are given tarot cards when they first enter the theatre. Not only do these cards dictate the content of the show, they also allow for audience members to be entered in prize drawings. All in all, “Jukebox Stories” is entirely audience-based, creating a theatrical experience like no other.

Gomolvilas performs soliloquies of sorts that tell stories based on the events and interactions he’s experienced throughout his life. These stories range from the time he spent mistaken as an expert in Eastern European cinema to his first and last semi-professional ghost-hunting experience. While some stories resonate in humor and cleverness more so than others, Gomolvilas executes each with character and charm.

One of Gomolvilas’s most memorable rants chosen for the opening night performance was one in which he narrates and provides commentary on (in a hilarious Rifftrax fashion) a music video titled “Get Down” by ’90s Canadian boy band B44. ’90s. Canadian. Boy. Band. Enough said.

In between the spoken stories, Patton plays the guitar and sings songs he wrote himself, also based on his past experiences. Think Flight of the Conchords with a more personal touch. The musical repertoire ranges as extensively in topical variety as Prince’s monologues. One song tells of Patton’s tumultuous upbringing with cheating parents and even touches briefly on his grandmother’s vagina (“Mixed Up Modern Family”). Another, titled “The List: 5 Celebs You’d Sleep With,” is an online forum thread set to music. The list goes on.

Rarely is there a dull moment in the show, as there’s simply too much variety. If you grow tired of Gomolvilas’ voice, no worries, because a musical serenade from Patton is sure to follow. The two differ completely in character and bring separate forms of performance art to the table but manage to balance each other out perfectly. It is this harmonized dichotomy that gives “Jukebox Stories” its individuality and makes the show one of such high caliber. So hats off to both of you, Prince Gomolvilas and Brandon Patton, for crafting a fantastically sublime theatrical experience.

“Jukebox Stories: The Secrets of Forking” will be playing at Berkeley’s very own Impact Theater from Thursdays to Sundays every week up until June 9. Songs will be sung, stories will be told and fortunes will be read.

Contact Michelle Lin at mlin@dailycal.org.

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Yes, you read that correctly. Tentacle rape, in the vein of that infamous painting (“The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife”) by Japanese artist Hokusai, plays a crucial role in this slightly deranged, madcap comedy. Husband and wife Cooper (Maro Guevara) and Vanessa (Eliza Leoni) Minnow are at their wits’ end. He’s a scrawny, neurotic fisherman. She’s a spiteful housewife hell-bent on destroying every last shred of his fragile self-esteem. Their sex life? “Basically imaginary.”

What happens next is quite possibly too strange to describe. Like a hare-brained fever dream from the combined minds of Lewis Carroll and Woody Allen, a cast of increasingly bizarre characters take the stage. There’s the door-to-door salesman/seducer, Thomas Bell (Adrian Anchondo) who acts as a type of Greek chorus, if Greek choruses wore nautical-themed underroos. Then, there’s the squid and the octopus who speak in unison, wear old-fashioned bathing costumes and lure victims into their perverse sexual predilections. Ergo, the tentacle rape.

Now, this all might sound perhaps too frivolous, too wild, too much like the result of a playwright’s drunken stab at Mad Libs. In any other theatrical setting, this might’ve been the case. But, the intimate setting of the Impact (only a few square feet, cramped beneath La Val’s Pizza) lends an improvisational atmosphere to the show. There’s a freedom on the stage, helped by the minimal set dressings, multiple prop gags and intensely kinetic chemistry of the actors.

Scene after scene, rapid-fire deliveries of delightful phrases like “sticky beast juice” or inventive stagings of puppet-show flashbacks make “The Fisherman’s Wife” utterly engrossing instead of, as it easily could’ve been, utterly off-putting. The actors’ commitment to the play’s absurdity adds to this absorbing effect, as the two deviant cephalopods, Sarah Coykendall and Roy Landaverde play off each other like a tentacled Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Meanwhile, Anchondo’s curious charm as Thomas Bell necessitates the use of the term “sexuberance.”

So, it’s all good and fun. The Impact Theatre is noted for their presentation of particularly camp, and often ostentatiously light-hearted material. “The Fisherman’s Wife” does not differ in this regard. However, the criticism could be levied that the “sex farce with sea creatures” is an empty play — a superfluous romp in the basement of a pizza restaurant that masks true tragedy. And there is some legitimacy to that. There are some truly horrific dealings in this show. These characters are selfish, vicious and quite possibly deserving of the pain (both emotional and physical) they incur. And yet, that somehow doesn’t matter.

For all the heavier, provocative shows about the economic crisis, the breakdown of traditional families or the pet word of every freshman philosophy student (“existentialism”), to say the entertainment of a play like this is empty is to misunderstand the dual purpose of entertainment — the pain of reason and the pleasure of sin. Given the instance of tentacle rape, “The Fisherman’s Wife” offers both in spades.

Jessica Pena is the lead theater critic. Contact Jessica at jpena@dailycal.org.

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Anya Schultz produced this video.

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Readers know I have talked about “Melancholia” ad nauseum, but this Thursday, Feb. 23 at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco could be your last chance to see Lars von Trier’s spectacular film on the big screen.

It’s kind of a trek, but witnessing “Melancholia” — which stars Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg and is an epic drama of the end of the world on modestly scaled terms — in all its enormity is worth it.

Thanks to the Danish director’s anti-Semitic remarks at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, “Melancholia” never got the audience it deserved. It was ignored throughout the awards season but has become a darling of critics and cult audiences alike. Other upcoming showings of note at the Castro include an all-weekend marathon of “Fantasia,” a “Planet of the Apes” double bill and John Cassavetes’s rarely seen “Love Streams.”

Ryan Lattanzio is the lead film critic.

Music

Have you always wanted to go to an event that exposed you to as much underground and local arts as possible, but been unable to find it? Enter Noise Pop, now in its 20th year as one of SF’s largest indie music, art and film festivals. The festival has featured popular acts such as The White Stripes and The Shins but has also been known for hosting bands before they hit fame such as Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.

This year’s headliners include The Flaming Lips, Sleigh Bells and Built to Spill. The main feature, however, is getting to see all the local acts. While many , like Release the Sunbird and Imperial Teen, are unfortunately sold out, other acts, such as The Fresh & Onlys and The Dodos, have some tickets left. The art shows and movie screenings all still have tickets available as well. The festival runs this Tuesday through Sunday.

Ian Birnam is the lead music critic.

Theater

If you have a hot date to impress or free time to hang out with friends, you’re in luck, because it’s a packed week for out-of-the-ordinary theater openings.

For action-violence, head over to La Val’s Subterranean to see Impact Theater perform “Titus Andronicus,” beginning this Thursday. Set in the Roman Empire, it’s Shakespeare’s most violent play and will include fight choreography and tons of stage blood.

Starting this Thursday at San Francisco’s The Cutting Ball Theater, “Tontlawald” is an experimental retelling of an Estonian tale involving a ghost forest. The performance will blend drama, dance and acapella chorus. At Zellerbach Hall this Friday and Saturday, legendary choreographer Bill T. Jones and the Arnie Zane Dance Company will premiere “Story/Time.” Accompanied by a live score, the dance will reflect on the passage of time and memory.

Deanne Chen is the lead theater critic.

Visual Art

The East Bay and San Francisco art scenes offer ample opportunities to get your culture fix in the coming week.

Following the opening of “The Art of Letterpress” (covered last week by Jessica Pena), The Compound Gallery & Studios will be screening “Typeface” on Thursday. Tracing the events at a letterpress museum in rural Wisconsin, the film is about the preservation of the antique art form in the technology era.

The next evening, Francesco Deiana and Lafe Harley play with lines, light and patterns in their show “More Light” at Park Life in San Francisco.

Also on Friday, San Francisco’s Roll Up Gallery and Noise Pop come together to introduce the works of Teebs, or Mtendere Mandowa, in the show “Teebs: s p c d.” Described as a “painter of sound,” he combines sound and sight into vivid, engaging works of art.

Anna Carey is the lead visual art critic.

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“Working for the Mouse”, brainchild of Trevor Allen, one-man show extraordinaire, is being revived at the Impact Theater, located in the basement of La Val’s Pizza on the north side of campus. Based on Allen’s time spent as a teenage actor playing Disney characters at the SoCal theme park, “Working for the Mouse” is a hypnotizing whirlwind of characters, some beautiful, some obnoxious, and some just straight up crazy. And that’s not even including the Disney characters.

If there’s a lesson to be learned from “Working”, it’s that it’s good to be crazy, if not required, to work at Disneyland. Sex, drugs and magic pixie dust are the order of the day at the Happiest Place on Earth, and Allen’s wide-eyed 17-year-old version of himself anchors the whole psychedelic experience. Allen’s infatuation with Disneyland as a kid motivated him to work for the mouse after graduating from high school, moving from the East Bay to the desolate OC area of Anaheim.

The ensuing summer brought unholy insanity and Allen chronicles the mayhem with an eye for detail and a gift for voices. Jumping in and out of various personas, Allen is a one-man ensemble, bringing dozens of characters into the fold, from Tammy, the 21-year old bombshell blonde who plays Alice in Wonderland, to Gary, the pissed-off midget who is supposed to be Allen’s “buddy”, though is more tough love and Hitler youth jokes than kind friendship.

Thrilling adventures through abandoned mine cart rides and after-hours parties with the entire Disney Brass Band covered in body paint and nothing else are just a few of the various situations Allen finds himself him. Yet no matter how much trouble Allen gets into, it’s his good humor and cheer, both past and present, that pulls us, as well as him, through his Disney ordeals. Most importantly, the stories ring true, with Allen’s triumphs and heartbreaks registering as genuine and endearing.

A story about at kid named Scotty and an imaginary baseball is particularly heartfelt and tragic, and provides an emotional arch to the entire performance. With a sense of black humor similar to that of “Little Miss Sunshine”, “Working for the Mouse” is an absolutely hilarious time, with enough Disney magic and Hitler references for the whole family. Running at the Impact Theater until July 8^th.

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