This year in Seattle, you have no excuse for not having Halloween plans—check out our Halloween calendar for more than 100 events ranging from costume parties to haunted houses. But if those numbers overwhelm you, we’re here to break it down even further—starting with this list of Halloween-themed performance events in the coming weeks that you should buy tickets for now, before they sell out. Find all of your options below, ranging from the 13th annual Cabaret Macabre to the Seattle Immersive Theatre’s terrifying Harvest show to This is Halloween.
OCTOBER 13-31
1. Harvest
This adults-only, immersive Halloween theater experience requires that you sign a waiver before entering, so you know it’s going to be freaky. After you “soak up some liquid courage at the Doctor’s cocktail party,” you’ll have 30 minutes to freely wander the world of “horror and intrigue” that was conceived and directed by Ali el-Gasseir and designed by Paul Thomas.
OCTOBER 20-30
2. Sister Kate’s “The Seance”
The Sister Kate Dance Company will pay homage to the haunted season of Halloween, with a new, intimate cabaret show full of dancing skeletons, melancholy ghosts, and enchanting chorus girls.
OCTOBER 21-31
3. This Is Halloween
It’s Tim Burton’s classic The Nightmare Before Christmas repackaged as a semi-scandalous spectacle for the masses. The audience eats chicken skewers and knocks back $10 cocktails while they watch Tim Keller as Jack “the Pumpkin King” Skellington sing and dance, cabaret-style, along with Luminous Pariah, Paris Original, Marissa Quimby, and Baby Kate, while a ghoulish orchestra pumps out the show’s signature tunes. Despite the glitzy and consumerist exterior, the crew manages to smuggle a complicated cabaret about the horror of fixed identities into the unpretentious space of the Triple Door. RICH SMITH
OCTOBER 20-22
4. Ian Bell’s Brown Derby Series
“Seattle has a venerable and undignified tradition of marvelously ramshackle bar theater. If Dina Martina is its queen, Ian Bell’s Brown Derby Series—which adapts major motion pictures for raucous, boozy audiences—is the crown prince,” wrote Brendan Kiley in 2015. For this round, actors will present a staged reading of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge—because “Halloween and the Brown Derby Series go together like razorblades and trick-or-treat candy.”
OCTOBER 26
5. Banned! Books in Drag—Halloween Edition
Nightlife gets all eloquent and stuff at R Place. Presented by the Seattle Public Library and hosted by Jeffrey Roberts of The Gay Uncle Time, Banned! Books in Drag features an ensemble of drag queens and comedians performing works inspired by their favorite titillating literature. Local crowd favorites like Arson Nicki, Mona Real, Cucci Binaca, Cherry Markos, Sparkle Leigh, and many more will stand up against censorship in their finest couture. Just like the library, the show is free. Unlike the library, it features a well-stocked bar. MATT BAUME
OCTOBER 27-29
6. Halloween Hell Harvest (of comedy!)
Celebrate Halloween with horror comedy sketches at the Slate Theater, ranging from “interdimensional Lovecraftian horrors” to “the real life terrors of sleep paralysis.” Every night will include a costume contest, prizes, and candy.
OCTOBER 27-31
7. Ghost Game X: For Life Eternal
The Cabiri Performance Troupe presents this creepy, folklore-inspired performance featuring theater, contemporary dance, aerial acrobatics, shadow puppets, and vignettes about mythological creatures “who draw life from the living to sustain themselves.” Plus, there will be desserts from local bakeries, specialty cocktails, and, on Halloween itself, a costume contest.
OCTOBER 28
8. The Mystery of Sleepy Hollow: Revamped!
This radio drama production—starring Dave Ross, Jim Dever, and Tracey Conway—sets Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow in the Pacific Northwest, just before World War II.
9. The Rocky Horror Pastie Show
Enjoy a live burlesque interpretation of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, featuring performances by Zora Phoenix, Isaiah Esquire, Miss Alex Kennedy, Sofia Flash, Lily LeFauve, Dee Dee Pepper, Nina Nightshade, and Johnny Nuriel, with Grant Frey as Brad and Lovie Lane as Janet. Come in your best, as there will be prizes for the best Rocky Horror costumes.
OCTOBER 28-29
10. Carnevolar VII: Abduction
The seventh annual Halloween circus show and dance party from Emerald City Trapeze will feature aerialists, pole dancers, and Cyr wheelers soaring and spinning through an eerie alien-themed spectacular.
OCTOBER 29-30
11. Sister’s Back to School Catechism: The Holy Ghost and Other Terrifying Tales
This irreverent theater piece promises comedy, Halloween stories, and tips on how to build a “Catholic appropriate” Halloween costume.
OCTOBER 31
12. The 13th Annual Cabaret Macabre
For over a decade, the Cabaret Macabre has existed in various forms as hosted by The Bad Things. This year, Cabaret Macabre returns to Columbia City on Halloween for an evening of music and cabaret performance with high Halloween pageantry. MC Sailor St. Claire kicks off the evening, with musical performances courtesy of The Bad Things, Chervona, Baby Gramps, and Intuitive Compass, burlesque performances by Sinner Saint Burlesque’s Lady TaTas and Dona Dei Cuori, and bellydancing from Miss J9 Fierce and Danse Carouselle.
13. Carnival of Souls: A Spookshow Spectacular!
Celebrate the spirit of variety this Halloween, with a carnival setting featuring live music, magic acts, burlesque performances, sideshow stylings, and inspiration from horror films.
14. Cucci’s Spooky Weed
This double feature will start with a “scary drag show” featuring Arson Nicki, Butylene O’Kipple, Cucci Binaca, Hexate, and Jackie Hell, and will be followed by a dance party with wall-to-wall spiderwebs that will be “CRAWLING with queers in costumes.” In other words, as they say, it will be “an arachnidhomotransphobe’s worst nightmare.” Go in costume and hope to win some kind of prize at the midnight costume contest.
15. Sandbox Radio Presents The Shadow Knows
On Halloween night, look forward to new plays, songs, poetry, and adaptations of classic literature—accompanied by live music and sound effects—at this spooky episode of Sandbox Radio, a podcast combining radio, theatre, and music.
