The UC Theatre opened on June 30, 1917, a first-run movie house at the corner of University and Shattuck in downtown Berkeley. Its owners -- Luther H. Williamson and Richard H. Bradshaw -- named it after the nearby University of California campus, a marketing decision that confused people for the next century. The auditorium measured 150 feet deep and claimed to seat 2,000, though the actual capacity was 1,466. For its first six decades, the UC operated as a conventional cinema, cycling through whatever Hollywood sent. That changed on April 1, 1976, when the theater under Gary Meyer's management reinvented itself as a revival house. Just 48 hours after showing its last first-run film, the UC began a daily rotation of classic cinema: the opening double feature paired Truffaut's Day for Night with Fellini's 8 1/2. Every night brought something different. The programming was eclectic, obsessive, and deeply personal -- a film lover's idea of paradise.

For 22 years, the UC Theatre was one of the most dedicated Rocky Horror Picture Show venues in the country. The late-night screenings of the 1975 cult film began in the late 1970s and ran until January 1999, spawning an audience participation group called Indecent Exposure that became one of the earliest and best-known shadow cast troupes in America. Members acted out the film live on stage while it played on screen behind them, the audience shouting callbacks, throwing toast, brandishing newspapers during the rain scene. By the time Indecent Exposure disbanded in October 1995, they had become famous enough to be filmed on a Los Angeles soundstage for scenes included with the Rocky Horror home video release. The late-night shows were more than entertainment -- they were ritual, a weekly gathering of misfits and regulars who found community in a darkened theater, united by their willingness to do the Time Warp one more time.

Tom Hanks once said the UC Theatre was one of the things that sparked his love of film. Linwood Dunn gave a talk on the special effects behind King Kong for a showing of the 1933 original. Cicely Tyson was honored at the theater in 1984 by Northern California Women in Film and TV. A live orchestra played for select silent film screenings. But by the late 1990s, the magic was fading. The theater had been "marginally profitable" for years, and when new owners acquired the building in 1999, Landmark Theatres negotiated a lease at just $3,000 per month -- then asked for a reduction to $1,500. Attendance dwindled. The daily rotation gave way to weeklong runs in fall 2000. In 2001, the UC Theatre closed, a casualty of seismic retrofit costs that the owners could not justify for a venue that was barely breaking even. The Shotgun Players performed rent-free for a while, and in 2006 plans for a jazz club were submitted to the city. Neither plan stuck. The building sat dark on University Avenue, its marquee blank.

The idea surfaced in 2009: what if the UC Theatre became a concert hall? David Mayeri and partners purchased the building, and Mayeri was blunt about the potential -- the UC "has great sight lines, great bones. It could fill the niche The Fillmore fills in San Francisco." The Berkeley Music Group, a nonprofit organization headed by Mayeri, led the conversion, reshaping the interior for 800 to 1,400 concertgoers, expanding the stage, and adding a restaurant and bar. The venue was renamed the UC Theatre Taube Family Music Hall after a major donor. Getting the doors open proved its own drama. The first show was scheduled for March 1, 2016, featuring Best Coast and Wavves, but construction delays forced a move to The Fillmore. Trombone Shorty was supposed to inaugurate the venue on March 26, but technical issues cancelled that too. Finally, on April 7, 2016, Dark Star Orchestra took the stage and the UC Theatre lived again -- not as a revival house for classic cinema, but as Berkeley's answer to the Fillmore, a place where the East Bay's appetite for live music could fill a room that had been dark for fifteen years.