As Seattle heads into its soggy season of endless gray and dusk at 4:30 p.m., a miraculous thing happens: ART, which has been nourishing souls and curbing suicide rates since time began. Here for you are a multitude of events worth surviving autumn for. Attending these events will make you smarter, sexier, and less likely to become one of those people who relate primarily to cats and Law & Order reruns. Keep this guide in a safe place for future reference—autumn ain’t over till it’s over.
Christian Rizzo
Writing about French performance artist Christian Rizzo is a bitch. His work has been described as "non-dance" and "extravagant minimalism," and both phrases are meaningless. Basic, factual descriptions of his work—he rubs his face in glitter, he likes rabbit masks and spiked heels, he sews together dresses that dance in the breeze, he sets angular choreography onstage with houseplants and enormous spheres and music by the Smiths and poetry by William Carlos Williams—don't even make a chip on the big, black iceberg of his vision. At the root, he satisfies the fundamental definition of an artist: He creates a new universe, gives it a set of universal and consistent laws, and lets us watch things happen inside it. By that definition, I suppose he sounds a bit like a god. And, like any god, his universe may enrage you. It may transform you. But you cannot deny that it exists. Oct 7—10. On the Boards, 100 W Roy St, 217-9886. BRENDAN KILEY
'Sextet'
Tommy Smith is a playwright and Seattle satellite (like Mike Daisey, Reggie Watts, and the other NYC comets who can't help regularly passing through our atmosphere) whose plays are too seldom seen around here. But this fall, he brings us his world premiere Sextet, about sex and revenge surrounding the composers Schoenberg, Tchaikovsky, and Gesualdo. It's a "choral play," with some scenes written in columns to be spoken like a player piano and others with Smith's enviable combination of colloquial, conversational wit hiding exquisite structure that smacks you in the mouth when you least expect it. Sextet will be directed by Roger Benington, who breathed gut-clenching life into Crave and God's Ear at WET. (Full disclosure: I once collaborated on a performance project with Smith outside Seattle. Come October, you will see he is a great writer despite his association with me.) Oct 7—Nov 15. Washington Ensemble Theatre, 608 19th Ave E, 325-5105. BK
Implied Violence
Since winning the Stranger Genius Award in 2008, Implied Violence has mostly graced other cities with its insanely ambitious, densely symbolist performances. The members have been dosing each other with ether, playing William Tell (real bows, real arrows, real stakes), bouncing manically to chamber orchestras, applying leeches to each other's arms, bleeding in each other's mouths, and otherwise turning themselves inside out to make awesome and awful stage-dreams from New York to Austria. This fall, the Frye Art Museum will host IV's first exhibition, Yes and More and Yes and Yes and Why—their props, relics, photos, and installations—including a performance in the Frye's reflecting pools on October 9, during which an archer will shoot 60 homemade arrows per minute into a paraffin sculpture. Once the sculpture is full, it will be carried into the museum, completing the exhibition. This is just the beginning of IV's homecoming party. Look for more this fall. Oct 9—Jan 2. Frye Art Museum, 704 Terry Ave, 622-9250. BK
'The Lieutenant of Inishmore'
Martin McDonagh is the Irish weirdo who went on the dole at the age of 16, spent years watching American television and eating potato chips, and then—without having seen a single stage production—set pen to paper and wrote a series of wickedly funny scripts that stuck theater's finger into a light socket and gave everyone a good shock. The Lieutenant of Inishmore is about an Irish paramilitary torturer who loves one thing in life—his black cat. And when a teenager finds that cat mangled on the side of the road, shit goes sideways: There are drug dealers, dismembered limbs, IRA politics, hayseeds frantically painting cats with shoe polish, and gallons and gallons and gallons of blood. The Lieutenant of Inishmore is almost 10 years old, but it's never been seen in Seattle—take advantage. Oct 15—Nov 14. ACT Theatre, 700 Union St, 292-7676. BK
Pat Graney Company
Who could've predicted that the daughter of a Chicago detective would put such a definitive stamp on Seattle's dancers and performance artists? But choreographer Pat Graney has given this city some of its best habits, and you can see them all over younger artists—KT Niehoff, Amy O'Neal, Salt Horse, Implied Violence—if you know how to look. She gave us physical ambition (the towering stack of books for The Vivian Girls), a hugeness of scale (130 female martial artists between 8 and 60 for her Meditation Movement Project), literariness (her early work derived from Gertrude Stein and Julio Cortázar) coupled with a relentless unpretentiousness (exactly 0 percent of her work is about proving how smart she is), an engagement with pop culture (Star Wars, Dune, bubblegum music), a social conscience (Graney has worked with incarcerated women for 15 years), and those chunky black high heels you're always seeing on modern dancers around here (she's made other people adopt her fetish—incredible). This October, On the Boards is mounting a Graney retrospective—which received an American Masterpieces grant from the NEA—in a three-hour performance of Faith, Sleep, and Tattoo. It will be Big. Oct 21—24. On the Boards, 100 W Roy St, 217-9888. BK
Kyle Loven
We've already shortlisted puppeteer and solo performer Kyle Loven for this year's Genius Award, which you can read about on page 27. Fundamentally, he's an artist like Christian Rizzo—he creates strange new universes with their own rules and invites us to step inside for a while. After touring to Taiwan this fall, he'll return to show us Crandal's Bag, something about a man who "collects the undesirable" and encounters a surprise. One can only guess. Dec 9—20. Washington Ensemble Theatre, 608 19th Ave E, 325-5105. BK
