Our music critics have already chosen the 29 best concerts in Seattle this week, but now it's our arts and culture critics' turn to pick the best things happening in their areas of expertise. Ranging from an evening with Ira Glass to the 8th Annual Belgian Beer Fest, and from Oil Pressure Vibrator to The Trojan Women, here are their 50 picks for this week. For even more options (including Lunar New Year events), check our complete Things To Do calendar.

Get all this and more on the free Stranger Things To Do mobile app—available now on the App Store and Google Play.


Jump to: Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday

MONDAY

READINGS & TALKS

Dr. Edwin J. Nichols
Clinical psychologist Nichols, known as a pioneer in work on "cultural competence" and cross-cultural communication in organizations and businesses, will talk about institutional racism and its manifestations, such as the school-to-prison pipeline.

The Revolution Where You Live: Resistance, Renewal for Trump Era
Sarah van Gelder (co-founder and editor-at-large of YES! magazine) will read from The Revolution Where You Live: Stories from a 12,000-Mile Journey Through a New America, which highlights the activism, ambition, and hope in America, from packed urban centers to tiny rural towns. Monday's event will take place at Elliott Bay Book Company, and, on Thursday, you can see Sarah van Gelder at Eagle Harbor Book Company on Bainbridge Island.

QUEER

Krebsy’s Coming Out Party!
Badass singer/performer Sarah Rudinoff and classical cellist Joshua Roman are having a party to celebrate 20 years of actor Josef Krebs' being out and proud. The proceeds will be donated to the Frank W. Ross Memorial Scholarship at Pride Foundation, an award for LGBTQ+ youth who have experienced the foster system or homelessness.

FILM

Collide-O-Scope: It's a Mad, Mad, World!
Created and hosted by Michael Anderson and Shane Wahlund, Collide-O-Scope is the cavalcade of curated video delights that takes over Re-bar twice a month. The show keeps getting better, with thematic suites, hallucinatory repetition, and inspired guests. Perennial bonuses: free popcorn and Red Vines, and multiple prizes waiting to be won via drawings throughout the show.

MONDAY-FRIDAY

ART

David Jaewon Oh: Combatants
The "combatants" in the photographic series by that name from David Jaewon Oh are women participating in combat sports. Jaewon Oh traveled up and down the West Coast from Canada to Palm Springs, and visited Chicago, too, to document women fighters training and battling at their home gyms. This show will feature those photographic portraits in large scale, reversing the expectation that women are small, and a small part of the combatant world. JEN GRAVES

MONDAY, THURSDAY-SUNDAY

PERFORMANCE

Every Five Minutes
Every Five Minutes by Scottish playwright Linda McLean (known for her celebrated debut work, Any Given Day) examines the lasting effects of prolonged torture. Presented by Washington Ensemble Theatre and directed by Ryan Purcell.

TUESDAY

READINGS & TALKS

Closing Up Shop? The Uncertain Future of Seattle's Art Galleries
It's no secret that galleries in Seattle have been struggling. Hear about why and how—and prepare to have some of those preconceived notions about the art world shaken—at this panel moderated by Gage Artistic Director Gary Faigin, and featuring four amazing people leading the arts scene in Seattle: gallery owners Greg Kucera and Mariane Ibrahim, artist (and Stranger Genius) Mary Ann Peters, and City Arts Magazine Arts Editor Amanda Manitach.

Laurie Frankel
This Is How It Always Is, Seattle writer Laurie Frankel's third novel, explores the trials, tribulations, questions, and unbridled delights that come along with raising a trans child. Though Poppy is only one of five children, and though the socially constructed disconnect between her genitals and her gender enter the realm of public concern, as Frankel writes, for only about 2 percent of her life, Frankel focuses the story on [the mother in the story] Rosie's concerns about Poppy. That's because the world seems to be focused on concerns about Poppy. Good city liberals might want to toss the book out the window at page 100 and start shouting: "WHO CARES?! Rigid gender binaries are so STUPID." But we all know who cares. Rosie's worries originate from a desire to protect her child from harm. Though the answers to her questions about the consequences of sudden genital discovery seem like they should be beside the point of raising a child in the United States, the problem is that they're not. Ultimately, the book, like all books (and like Poppy), is a story about the power of stories. But it's not sanitized, and the pages aren't gilt. It's the old-fashioned kind of story that shows how cruel people can be to each other, and also how selfless—the kind children can understand but that adults can really feel. RICH SMITH

TUESDAY-SATURDAY

ART

Timea Tihanyi and Nicholas Nyland
Timea Tihanyi and Nicholas Nyland are brilliant minds who happen to express themselves in ceramics. Nyland, who also works on paper, is a colorist with a total sense of joy and play, while Tihanyi, mostly using porcelain, is a structural engineer who puts her forms in the service of history. (A past show at Linda Hodges was a series of tiny buildings that looked like the architecture of a sometimes scary, sometimes hopeful ideology.) Nyland's work—this may sound strange—has that sense of play but is always adult. I don't exactly know how to explain that or why it seems necessary. You'll see what I mean. JEN GRAVES

WEDNESDAY

READINGS & TALKS

Arisa White, Anastacia Tolbert, Natasha Marin, Naa Akua
Renowned local poet, artist, and performer Anastacia Tolbert (who has THREE books coming out this year, BTW—keep your eye out for them) hosts and curates this night of readings by female and genderqueer writers of color. Natasha Marin, the mind and sweat behind reparatations.me and a number of other artistic projects that reckon with race, class, and gender will join her. Oakland poet and scholar Arisa White will read from her most recent collection, You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened, which transforms hate speech into empowering literature. And fashion icon/spoken-word poet Naa Akua will complete this quorum of radical black excellence. RICH SMITH

The Russian Revolution and the Making of the 20th Century: Global Perspectives at the Centennial
Professor-historian Glennys Young will speak on the Russian Revolution, its global effects, and its connections with the Pacific Northwest.

WEDNESDAY-THURSDAY

PERFORMANCE

CPR Practice
In CPR Practice, artist Geumhyung Jeong will attempt to revive a "dying" puppet/CPR dummy in a slightly creepy, slightly heartwarming performance that melds dance, puppetry, and theater.

WEDNESDAY-SATURDAY

OPERA

La Traviata
Giuseppe Verdi's classic tale of a courtesan who finds love gets the full stage treatment this season with the Seattle Opera. This production will be performed in the original Italian, with English subtitles.
There will be no performance on Thursday.

ART

Kiss Fear
Kiss Fear is a multimedia exhibit with poetry, sculpture, video, and performance—by poet Daemond Arrindell and artists Mary Coss and Holly Ballard Martz—that will present "touching, powerful and sometimes darkly humorous ruminations on America’s weapon of choice," guns. Supported in part by a grant from 4Culture.

We Are a Crowd of Others
MadArt Studio resident artists Gail Grinnell, Sam Wildman, and Eric John Olson have created a gigantic, site-specific textile installation (made from hundreds of yards of spun material) accompanied by public programming including meals, performances, lectures, and reenactments. See it before it closes this weekend.

WEDNESDAY-SUNDAY

PERFORMANCE

Can Can Cabaret Presents Wonderland
Can Can has transformed its venue into a snowy chalet and populated it with teasing beauties. See this cabaret show before it closes this weekend.

Woody Sez: The Life and Music of Woody Guthrie
Folk legend Woody Guthrie mixed his progressive politics with his music in a way that elevated both enterprises. He scrawled "This Machine Kills Fascists" across his acoustic guitar, wrote about Trump's housing discrimination and racist slumlordery back when he was living in a tenement owned by the president-elect's father, and acknowledged the oppression of Native Americans and other subjugated peoples even as he celebrated the beauty and promise of the US in songs such as "This Land Is Your Land." (He wrote a whole mess of songs about this part of the country, too! If you haven't already, check out The Columbia River Collection.) This show, directed by Nick Corley, presents a musical portrait of his life, with David Lutken in the leading role. RICH SMITH

THURSDAY

COMEDY

Bassem Youssef
Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef hosted an incredibly popular—and notably controversial—satirical news show (Al Bernameg) and has been called "the Jon Stewart of the Arab world." He made international news when a warrant was issued for his arrest due to comments he made on the show. Now he's working on a project called The Democracy Handbook, which explores issues in the United States, and he's visiting Seattle for a night to make you laugh and make you think.

READINGS & TALKS

Dr. Prabhjot Singh: Bringing Healthcare to Every Neighborhood
Among other positions, Dr. Prabhjot Singh is the director of the Arnhold Institute and Chair of the Department of Health System Design and Global Health at the Mount Sinai Health System and Icahn School of Medicine. At this event, he'll speak about community health systems (and the disadvantages of a top-down approach) in the context of his new book, Dying and Living in the Neighborhood.

Our Waters, Our Home: An Evening with Zsofia Pasztor and Adrienne Ross Scanlan
Adrienne Ross Scanlan and Zsofia Pasztor, authors of (respectively) Turning Homeward: Restoring Hope and Nature in the Urban Wild and Rain Gardens for the Pacific Northwest, will discuss how rain gardens and salmon can thrive in the city. Both authors are advocates of urban ecology through rain gardens, and their books offer both nonfiction inspiration and practical instruction. Aaron Clark of Stewardship Partners will moderate.

ART

Art Collecting 101
SAM Gallery and Shop Manager Jody Bento will go over the basics of beginning an art collection at this popular, free workshop.

Critical Issues in Contemporary Art Practice: Rhea Anastas
Reserve your spot for a talk by art historian, critic, and curator Rhea Anastas, who also teaches at the University of California, Irvine. Anastas has organized performance art events such as "New Cuts: K8 Hardy" and exhibitions of film by Cauleen Smith. She's also published Double Bind, a series of interviews with Leigh Ledare, as well as numerous other books on art and artists.

Joey Veltkamp: Heartbreak Simulation
Immerse yourself in art by Joey Veltkamp that examines the "easily corrupted phenomena" of memory and its profound effect on our perceptions of reality—leading us to the questions: "Are we at the dawn of the creation of our own reality as futurist Elon Musk suggests? Or are we at the end of times, as death cults have believed for centuries?"

The Seattle Times Presents: 2016 Pictures of the Year
Editors and photojournalists from the Seattle Times will present their picks from 2016 with a stills and video slideshow. Get context for the photo-testimony of major events in the Pacific Northwest this year. You may even win a photo print in their free drawing.

FOOD & DRINK

Guest Chef Night
FareStart is a fantastic organization that empowers disadvantaged and homeless men and women by training them for work in the restaurant industry. Every Thursday, they host a Guest Chef Night, featuring a three-course dinner from a notable Seattle chef for just $29.95. This week FareStart welcomes chef Jerry Traunfeld (Poppy and Lionhead).

THURSDAY-SATURDAY

PERFORMANCE

Proof
Strawshop honcho Greg Carter directs Proof, David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play about Catherine, the daughter of a late University of Chicago professor and mathematical wizard of prime numbers. Catherine is a math genius herself, and she worries she's inherited her father's mental illness along with his smarts. Invariably, one of Seattle's theaters produces this contemporary classic each year, but Carter's sure to pull out the political fire burning just beneath the play's surface. RICH SMITH

THURSDAY-SUNDAY

PERFORMANCE

Mothers and Sons
Terrence McNally's Mothers and Sons is a Tony Award-nominated play about queerness, AIDS, family, and romance. It's a drawing room drama, showing just an hour and a half of the characters' lives, and is about a woman visiting her late son's former partner.

Shot
Shot is an exploration of police brutality and racism through dance theater, presented as part of Spectrum Dance's season examining American identity, race, and culture.

The Trojan Women
Caroline Bird's contemporary, feminist take on Euripides's antiwar tragedy, The Trojan Women is the hard medicine we need right now. It gives us a glimpse into the future we're headed for if the, ugh, president starts WWIII with one of his goddamn tweets. Troy's women are locked in the maternity ward of a prison hospital while the city burns outside. The men are dead, and the women have to reckon with the bloodshed and burned flesh of Greek vengeance. This thing is going to be intense, but look for Ray Tagavilla's comic turn as Poseidon (and plenty of gallows humor, besides) to lighten the mood a little. Directed by Leah Adcock-Starr. RICH SMITH

ART

Those Who Remain: Concerto for Installation and Improviser
The installation of Those Who Remain: Concerto for Installation and Improviser is the second in a two-part tribute to the Northwest poet Richard Hugo, based on two of his poems. This part—on view during museum hours at Seattle's Asian Art Museum—will be animated by four separate performances, each with different artists and musicians, throughout the next two weeks. The piece was created by Seattle's Wayne Horvitz with the Japan-based artists Suzuki (dancer/choreographer) and video artist/VJ Yohei Saito. JEN GRAVES

FRIDAY

READINGS & TALKS

Claudia Rowe
Hear Claudia Rowe read from The Spider and the Fly, a true crime book about the relationship between a reporter (Rowe) and a man who murdered eight women in cold blood.

Hayan Charara and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Detroit-born Hayan Charara, whose parents were from Lebanon, is known for the poetry collections Something Sinister (2016), The Sadness of Others (2006), and The Alchemist’s Diary (2001). He has also edited other Arab American poets in Inclined to Speak (2008). Hear him at intimate Open Books along with local poet Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, who will soon publish her first book.

Michael Lewis in Conversation with Steve Scher
Michael Lewis (author of bestselling books like The Big Short, Moneyball, and The Blind Side) will speak about his latest work, The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds. This new book explores the research-based collaboration between psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky that showed "the ways in which the human mind erred, systematically, when forced to make judgments in uncertain situations."

Saki Mafundikwa with Charles Mudede
In his busy career, the graphic designer Saki Mafundikwa has founded the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts (ZIVA) in Harare, written Afrikan Alphabets: the Story of Writing in Africa, and directed the film Shungu: The Resilience of a People, which screened at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and won major prizes in Zanzibar and Kenya. Join him and our own Charles Mudede for a conversation on his achievements.

Tim Wise
Activist and author Tim Wise (known for his writing on white privilege, white ignorance, and anti-racism) will speak about his work, including his latest book, Under the Affluence: Shaming the Poor, Praising the Rich and Sacrificing the Future of America.

FOOD & DRINK

Georgetown Liquor Company 10th Anniversary Party
Georgetown Liquor Company is one of those good old Seattle bars that I love but do not frequent enough. However, other people apparently do, because Georgetown's favored hangout for scrappy vegan punks and classic console gaming enthusiasts is celebrating 10 years this Friday. You can win one of those New Belgium Brewing cruiser bikes, get beer swag, gorge on Field Roast corn dogs, play Super Mario World on an actual Super Nintendo, and do it all while supporting a rad local bar. The drinks are happy hour priced all day, and there is even a raffle! TOBIAS COUGHLIN-BOGUE

FRIDAY-SATURDAY

FESTIVALS

Timbrrr! Winter Music Festival
This event in Leavenworth—the infamous German-themed town/tourist attraction nestled in the Cascades—looks like the coziest mid-winter music festival, filled with beardo-magnet amenities like skiing and snowboarding, a hot-toddy garden, wine tastings, and festival-branded flannel shirts. The weekend’s musical offerings are varied, with 15 local and national acts ranging from original flannel-wearers/indie-rock darlings the Thermals to local up-and-coming hiphop goddess DoNormaal. Also among the headliners is Richmond, Virginia, singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus, who rose to national prominence last year with her straightforward, NPR- and dad-approved indie-rock debut, No Burden (RIYL: Courtney Barnett). Local heroes Wimps will also warm up the fest with their snarky, skateboarding, hot-dog-loving scrap-punk. BRITTNIE FULLER

PERFORMANCE

Whim W'Him presents SENSATION
SENSATION promises a variety of new works from exciting choreographers, including Larry Keigwin (Keigwin + Company), Penny Saunders (Hubbard Street Dance Chicago), and, of course, Olivier Wevers (Whim W'Him artistic director).

FOOD & DRINK

CoffeeCon Seattle 2017
Discover everything you ever wanted to know about coffee with brewing classes, tastings, demos, history lectures, and more. Meet with experts and producers in the field.

FRIDAY-SUNDAY

ART

Truth B Told
Onyx Fine Arts' 12th annual juried exhibit, Truth B Told, will reveal the truth about Black artists: their strength and fragility, the variety of their styles, and the uncategorizable nature of a broad, diverse group of artists. A section of the exhibit will focus on the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a labor organization that was instrumental in the Civil Rights Movement. There will be an artist talk on Saturday about "The Art of Buying Original Art."

SATURDAY

FOOD & DRINK

The 8th Annual Belgian Beer Fest
Hooray for Belgian yeast, enabling top Washington breweries to produce exotic tripels, dubbels, saisons, wits, abbeys, and lambics! Yes indeed: at this beer fest featuring over 100 brews, everything has been made with imported Belgian yeast. Sample deliciousness from brewers like Fremont, Peddler, Magnet, Triplehorn, Flying Bike, Postdoc, Propolis, and many more. Ticket price includes 10 tasting tokens and a glass.

PERFORMANCE

Adept: A Sick & Disabled LGBTQ Show
The voices of the sick and the disabled have long been neglected. The fact that Donald Trump openly mocked New York Times investigative reporter Serge Kovaleski for his disability and still found a path to the presidency speaks to this, and it gives us all the more reason to pay attention to and amplify those voices now. Well, Gay City is here with a bullhorn. Watch Mateo Cruz, Fatima, poets Tara Hardy and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Nic Masangkay, billie rain, and comic hero E.T. Russian sing, dance, tell stories, and otherwise spread joy for all. This show is subtitled and accessible for deaf and blind people. RICH SMITH

Oroboro
K. Brian Neel has taken on a variety of roles in Seattle theater, from an elastic solo performance about a man dreaming that he's falling from a top of a building to staging Waiting for Godot (twice!) at the Seattle Fringe Festival. Now Neel has written and directed a new 18th & Union production, Oroboro, which is described as a comedy "made up of scenes that swirl and wrap around each other...brainy and physical, a psychedelic fractal of a show."

ART

The Pancakes & Booze Art Show
Yes, there is a free pancake bar at this extravaganza. Yes, it has booze and art from over 60 participants, including some creators working before your very eyes, and you even can become a living canvas. No, you can't come if you're under 21, alas.

Saturday University: Islam Across Asia Winter Series
During this three-week series, presented in partnership with the University of Washington’s Jackson School of International Studies and the Elliott Bay Book Company, get "historical, cultural, and contemporary perspectives for exploring Islam and the arts, from Central Asia to Indonesia."

QUEER

Pinned Singlet Party
If you have HAD IT with this cold drizzle and you just want someplace warm to rip off all your layers, thank your lucky stars for the Eagle's regular singlet party. Bust out your singlets and spandex—or if you don't have any (yet), then some skimpy gym shorts will do. It can be difficult during our gloomy winter months to find a sexy, sweaty romp—but this shindig never disappoints with loud music, dark corners, slippery go-gos, and, most importantly, some reliably friendly faces to make out with. MATT BAUME

SATURDAY-SUNDAY

PERFORMANCE

Mimosas Cabaret
The great protest art of the Donald Trump era is already happening, with the Mimosas crew choosing a daring show to stage as their latest 30ish-minute musical. They're doing the show Cabaret, a song-and-dance extravaganza set in the days of Hitler's rise to power. The allegories to today are chillingly perfect, from nationalist Nazis singing "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" to the gut-wrenching appearance of the Star of David. For 50 years, Cabaret has been a reflection on the past, but now it's a scream of alarm about the future. You won't just cry at this show, you will sob. MATT BAUME

Oil Pressure Vibrator
This has WTF sex vibes swirling all around it. Over the course of an erotic and humorous multi-media performance involving dance, video, and a CPR dummy, Korean artist Geumhyung Jeong confesses her love for an excavator machine. You know that monster Tonka truck thing that's digging holes all around Seattle right now? That thing. RICH SMITH

SUNDAY

READINGS & TALKS

Asia Talks: Bruce Lawrence with Miriam Cooke
Two authors will visit the Asian Art Museum as part of the "Asia Talks" series: Bruce B. Lawrence (Who Is Allah?, which explores "how the very name of Allah is interwoven into the everyday experience of millions of Muslims") and Miriam Cooke (Dancing in Damascus: Creativity, Resilience, and the Syrian Revolution, which emphasizes the perspective of artists, filmmakers, and writers in respect to the civil war).

An Evening with Ira Glass: Seven Things I’ve Learned
Ira Glass, host of NPR's hit radio show This American Life, is in the business of making meaning out of ordinary (or not-so-ordinary) stories. At this event, he'll use bits of video, audio clips, and storytelling to make broad points about culture and society. Glass is clear that the show will morph and grow: "This talk is a container for whatever lessons interest me the day I show up on stage."

Get all this and more on the free Stranger Things To Do mobile app—available now on the App Store and Google Play.