{"id":387314,"date":"2026-07-05T22:17:25","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T22:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/387314\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T22:17:25","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T22:17:25","slug":"the-subterranean-scene-cal-alumni-association","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/387314\/","title":{"rendered":"The Subterranean Scene – Cal Alumni Association"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you were a Cal student anytime in the past six decades, chances are that you went to La Val\u2019s Pizza on Euclid Ave. Maybe you went for a slice or a beer. But if you knew the right people, you might\u2019ve found yourself in the underground theater in the basement.<\/p>\n

After descending a dark staircase, you\u2019d find yourself in a roughly 16-by-12-foot room that, in the \u201960s, played host to jamming musicians like Pops Foster, Bruce Conte, and Jerry Garcia. There was sawdust on the floor and, reportedly, a small bar. There\u2019s no sawdust anymore and the bar is gone, but the basement is still attracting small audiences of those in the know.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was originally called \u201cThe Cantina,\u201d or \u201cThe Hard Times,\u201d or \u201cBig Art\u2019s Hard Times,\u201d depending who you ask. The latter was a reference to local group Big Art & The Trashmasters. It became La Val\u2019s Subterranean Cabaret\u2014and later, Theatre\u2014in 1976, when Roger Spenger and Dan Fogerty, brother of the two Creedence Clearwater Revival Fogertys, bought the pizzeria. Under its new owners, the basement was home to all sorts of art.<\/p>\n

\"\"Baal rehearsal, 1996. Courtesy of Patrick Dooley\"\"Set for Doctor Faustus, 1995. Courtesy of Patrick Dooley\"\"Shotgun Players\u2019 The Merchant of Venice cast, 1994. Courtesy of Patrick Dooley<\/p>\n

Then, in 1990, a theater company called Central Works opened its first show down below, making The Sub a literal underground theater. For nearly forty years now, a stream of black-box theater companies have leased The Sub from the owners of La Val\u2019s. Some of the notable thespians that got their start in The Sub include Impact Theater, Subterranean Shakespeare, and Shotgun Players (who now perform on their own, larger stage on Ashby and MLK). As of 2017, Theatre Lunatico has taken up The Subterranean torch.<\/p>\n

Patrick Dooley, who created Shotgun Players on the spot when Roger Spenger asked if he had a theater company, described The Sub this way: \u201cThe fact that it\u2019s underground gives it a certain mystique\u2026 This is a space that\u2019s built for risk. It felt risky to be down there.\u201d Sitting in the pizza parlor on a recent afternoon, he said, \u201cIt\u2019s like a speakeasy. It smells kind of funky and it\u2019s got these low ceilings. There\u2019s something a little bit \u2018walk on the wild side\u2019 about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dooley\u2019s experiences are echoed by Stanley Spenger, brother of Roger Spenger and founder of Subterranean Shakespeare. As he wrote in a comment on Facebook, \u201cThe space was intimate, difficult, and unlike any conventional theater. You could hear audiences breathe. They could hear every word spoken. Actors were practically in the spectators\u2019 laps. It encouraged immediacy, risk, and invention.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over its sixty years, many of the artists in the basement have been Cal students or alums (including Dead Poets Society actor Dylan Kussman \u201994). All the art was good for business. La Val\u2019s gave theater companies free rehearsal space in the \u201980s and \u201990s as long as they brought in flocks of hungry students.<\/p>\n

But times have changed. As Stanley Spenger explained, \u201cPart of what made The Sub important was Berkeley itself in that era. Affordable rents, student audiences, political energy, and a strong experimental arts culture\u2026 The Sub fit perfectly into that ecology.\u201d Since then, the Bay\u2019s tech sector has skyrocketed and venues have become less affordable. As the university expanded, the counter-cultural vibe of earlier years has become memory.<\/p>\n

So The Sub doesn\u2019t host after-parties for rockstars anymore. The floors aren\u2019t covered with sawdust and the seats aren\u2019t packed like they used to be. But it\u2019s still operating\u2014available as always to student audiences. It\u2019s still a place of intimate risk, a world apart from the football games and pool tables in the pizza parlor above. And the Sub\u2019s stiff seats, school desks presumably taken from an unlucky classroom long ago, foretell a good show as much as ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you were a Cal student anytime in the past six decades, chances are that you went to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-387314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}