Barbara Oliver, Bay Area theater doyenne was 85

The actress and founder of Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company, who suffered a debilitating stroke in March, died Monday at her home in Berkeley. She was 85. Oliver was running a community theater in North Dakota in 1958 when she and her late husband, the noted UC Berkeley theater professor Bill Oliver, moved to Berkeley, where they raised four children. She launched the Aurora Theatre on a shoestring in 1992 and retired as its artistic director in 2004 while continuing to act and direct. Obituary: Mercury News