Good, Cheap Fun

As money gets tighter and prices rise, where can a person go to see a movie for $5 or less, or a live concert for $10?

Try going back to school.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to do homework or take exams. Just take a relatively short drive to Santa Rosa Junior College or Sonoma State University for one surefire way to see good shows at low prices.

“The ticket prices are really low, certainly, compared to anything (else) you’d see in the Bay Area,” Kerry Campbell-Price, Dean of Continuing Education at Santa Rosa Junior College. “I am amazed at the number of community people who come to the campus for our events, and we seem to be getting more.”

The choices this weekend alone range from a live stage play and a vocal jazz concert at the junior college to a theatrical satire, a recent documentary film and a classical music trio at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park.

“What makes us stand out, I think, is the diversity of the programming that we do,” Floyd Ross, Executive Director of the Sonoma State University Center for Performing Arts.

“People who have never been on the campus before usually are blown away, not only by how beautiful the campus is, but also by how much is going on here. Over the course of our season, we’re doing something in the neighborhood of 140 individual performances.”

The performers range from students and faculty to visiting professionals. Later in the month, Bay Area gospel music luminary Linda Tillery headlines a soul concert on the Santa Rosa Junior College campus, and TV comedian Ralphie May plays Sonoma State University.

And don’t presume that local profs can’t perform like pros. Mel Graves, director of SSU’s jazz programs, is also a busy jazz bassist and composer. Jazz saxophonist Bennett Friedman, head of SRJC’s music department, has worked as a professional musician for decades and will lead his own quartet in concert at the junior college later this month.

Even student performers often are more seasoned than one might assume.

“A lot of our jazz students are working musicians, who play gigs on weekends,” said Ross at Sonoma State University. “They go to jazz festivals and come back with first-place awards.”

Campus stage productions draw from the same talent pool as Sonoma County’s professional and semi-professional theater companies, said Leslie McCauley, Theatre Arts Department Chair at Santa Rosa Junior College. Her students appear in productions at other companies, and guest actors from those troupes perform on campus.

“So there’s actually a lot of cross-pollination. It’s not like you go to one theater and see professionals and you go to another and see students. It’s sort of the same group,” said McCauley.

The combination of guest artists and faculty and student talent make both college campuses very potent cultural venues, but Ross finds that sometimes, audiences from the broader community hesitate to venture into the halls of learning to look for fun.

“There are people who feel that it is a closed society on a university campus, and it’s quite the contrary,” he said. “The whole point of performing arts is to perform in front of the public. The students are here not only to learn, but to perform.”

Colleges make convenient entertainment destinations, Ross reasons, because they’re centrally located and have plenty of parking when classes are over.

“The campus is a very friendly place,” he said. “The important message here is for the community to look both at our campus and the JC as a resource, not to be intimidated by them, or feel separate from them. We are part of the community.”

You can reach Staff Writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com.