Our music critics have already chosen the 41 best music shows, but now it's our arts critics' turn to recommend the best events in their areas of expertise. Here are their picks in every genre—from Spectrum Dance Studio Theatre's Shot: A Presumption of Guilt and Dangerousness to the Capitol Hill Art Walk, and from a reading with Tara Westover to the Ballard Brewed Spring Beer Festival. See them all below, and find even more events on our complete Things To Do calendar.

Found something you like and don't want to forget about it later? Click "Save Event" on any of the linked events below to add it to your own private list.


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MONDAY

FOOD & DRINK

Seattle Vegan Mac Down
Sample entries from both amateur chefs and local restaurants like No Bones Beach Club, Papas Hot Potatoes, Cycle Dogs, Soul Sweet Vegan, Stirring Vegan, Celest Cafe, and Brass Knuckle Bistro and vote for the best and creamiest plant-based mac in all the land. Supplement your cheesy pasta consumption with vegan franks from the Cycle Dogs food truck and beer and cider from Lagunitas, and take in tunes from dreamy indie pop bands Sundae Crush and Chanel Beads.

MONDAY-TUESDAY

VISUAL ART

Na Kim: Set v.15
Na Kim's pieces have been shown at Victoria and Albert, MoMA, Milan Triennale, and more. At this visually appealing exhibition, she melds fine art and graphic design to separate out geometrical forms. This is a continuation of a series she began in New York in 2015, in which the same elements are reordered in succeeding shows.
Closing Tuesday

MONDAY-WEDNESDAY

VISUAL ART

Patrick Moriarty: Deep Artwork
In his youth, Minnesotan punk rocker Moriarty designed posters from such groups as Curtiss A, the Mekons, Soul Asylum, the Replacements, and many others. After moving to Seattle, he became an art director for Fantagraphics and then filled the same role at Comics Journal. He's been a GAP Award recipient, been featured on the Sundance channel, and snagged a Golden Toonie.
Closing Wednesday

MONDAY & WEDNESDAY-SUNDAY

New Topographics
The original version of this influential photographic exhibition, composed of mostly black-and-white "unheroic, man-made" landscapes, was shown at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. Old photographs by Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, and Henry Wessel will be accompanied by other, related works by different artists.
Closing Sunday

MONDAY & THURSDAY-SUNDAY

PERFORMANCE

Feathers and Teeth
Washington Ensemble Theatre is setting out to show that April really is the cruelest month with this horror-comedy about a teenager's grief. After her mother's death, a 13-year-old named Chris has to deal with the sting of her dad's new fiancée. When the dysfunctional family finds a weird animal with "feathers and teeth" in the backyard, shit starts to get weird. And bloody. And disgusting. Bloodsgusting. Director Bobbin Ramsey takes on this strange bird from playwright Charise Castro Smith. Rachel Guyer-Mafune and Samie Spring Detzer are playing the lead roles, so this should be very funny and good. RICH SMITH

MONDAY-SUNDAY

FESTIVALS

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
After the long, hard, and—this year—snow-filled-winter, the best way to shock you out of seasonal depression is to stick your face in a ton of fresh flowers. You’re in luck, because Skagit Valley’s annual Tulip Festival is really something to behold as, quite literally, millions of pink, yellow, purple, orange, and red tulips shoot up from the ground and announce that winter is finally over. (Or at least, it’s over in the rest of the world. It’ll be chilly here through June.) While you could fly to Holland to get your fill of tulips, the trip up I-5 is quicker, cheaper, and, with one mountain range to the east and another to your west, even more Instagrammable than Amsterdam. KATIE HERZOG

FOOD & DRINK

Seattle Restaurant Week
Frugal gourmands everywhere rejoice over this twice-yearly event, which lets diners tuck into prix-fixe menus at more than 165 different restaurants hoping to lure new customers with singularly slashed prices. Three courses cost a mere $35, and many restaurants also offer two-course lunches for $20. It’s an excellent opportunity to feast like a high roller at an accessible price point and cross some otherwise spendy establishments off your food bucket list, including critically acclaimed restaurants like Tilth, Sushi Kappo Tamura, and Adana. JULIANNE BELL

TUESDAY

FILM

Salmon People: Northwest Native Opposition to Genetically Engineered Fish
Learn about the risks of farming genetically engineered fish in the Pacific Northwest at this Town Hall movie night and talk with New Canoe Media. 

TUESDAY-WEDNESDAY

READINGS & TALKS

Box Brown: Cannabis
Ignatz Award-winning cartoonist Box Brown, whose books include Andre the Giant: Life and Legend, Tetris: The Games People Play, and Is This Guy For Real?: The Unbelievable Andy Kaufman, offers a deep dive into the history of anti-weed laws in the United States in his graphic essay Cannabis: The Illegalization of Weed in America. 

TUESDAY-THURSDAY

VISUAL ART

Priscilla M. Dobler: El Baño
Interdisciplinary Mexican American artist Priscilla M. Dobler (Mayan), who often explores domestic spaces and women's work, will show pieces as part of the series Nosotrus: Mexican-American reflections of identity.
Closing Thursday

TUESDAY-SUNDAY

PERFORMANCE

Marie, Dancing Still: A New Musical
This new musical from Stephen Flaherty, Lynn Ahrens, and five-time Tony Award winner Susan Stroman shines a light on the life of Marie van Goethem, a young "opera rat," as they called ballerina students at the Paris Opera in the 19th century, who inspired Degas's Little Dancer Aged 14. The sculpture was the only one the impressionist master ever displayed in public. Though critics of the era praised the piece, they also "protested almost unanimously that she was ugly," according to the National Gallery of Art, mostly because they were fucking losers. Flaherty and Ahrens's story takes you behind the curtain of a cutthroat world of ballet, where a bunch of young, working-class girls have to beg, borrow, steal, and land a perfect grand jeté to get ahead. New York City Ballet principal dancer Tiler Peck will play the title role. RICH SMITH

Urinetown: The Musical
The themes of scarcity, greed, populism, and capitalism running amok make the triple Tony-winning post-apocalyptic musical Urinetown, with music by Mark Hollmann, lyrics by Hollmann and Greg Kotis, and book by Kotis, a perfect satire for our times. This is a co-production with the 5th Avenue Theater.

VISUAL ART

Lore Re-Imagined: Shadows of Our Ancestors
Curator Chieko Phillips has brought together three artists who make work that engages the cultural traditions of previous generations. Satpreet Kahlon uses embroidery and textile techniques passed down by her mother and grandmother to create soft works with strong critical subtexts. Seattle-born artist Alex Anderson studied ceramics in Jingdezhen and Hangzhou, China, and currently lives and works in LA, making work that probes the moral and physical decay lurking behind seemingly flawless facades. Also known as a photographer, Megumi Shauna Arai's Unnamed Lake uses the Japanese hand-stitched embroidery technique of sashiko to reflect on the physical, mental, and emotional implications of the act of mending. EMILY POTHAST
Closing Sunday

WEDNESDAY

READINGS & TALKS

Dave Barry: Lessons from Lucy
The somewhat corny but still goofily vulgar and curmudgeonly humorist takes his favorite dog Lucy as a role model for living well in old age.

Ditch Please: Panel with Samie Detzer, Jody Kuehner, Maggie Rogers, & Markeith Wiley
Cherdonna Shinatra will talk about the themes of her performance exhibition DITCH and what it means to continue to make art in the Trump era. She'll be joined in conversation by Samie Detzer (the artistic director of Washinton Ensemble Theatre) and multidisciplinary artist Markeith Wiley.

An Evening with Edward S. Curtis by Clay Jenkinson
National Humanities Medal-winning scholar Clay Jenkinson will speak about the famed photographer Edward S. Curtis, whose works have become iconic of the European American gaze on American Indians. Sometimes adopting the character of Curtis, Jenkinson will address Curtis's art, career, travels, and patronage relationship with Theodore Roosevelt, as well as the controversies raised by his oeuvre and biography. This event also will raise money for the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum.

Lori Gottlieb and Luke Burbank: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
Gottlieb—you Ithaqua know her from the Atlantic column Dear Therapist—demystifies her profession in Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, in which she chronicles her career and her own attempt to get her psyche in order. She'll be chatting with comic Luke Burbank, who's been an NPR host and currently presides over the Portland public radio program Live Wire.

Michio Kaku: Our Future Beyond Earth
If we screw up this planet irretrievably—and physicist Michio Kaku thinks we will—can we settle on a different planet in another solar system? Kaku's new book explains how we might be able to do so thanks to advances in robotics, nanotechnology, and biotechnology. Hear him speak at this Town Hall talk.

Poetry in Translation: Indigenous Showcase Edition
Washington State's beloved first civic poet laureate, Claudia Castro Luna, curates this bilingual poetry series. This edition, devoted to Indigenous poets, will feature Duane Niatum, fabian romero, and Sasha LaPointe.

Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Cosmopolitan Origins of Revolution in Southeast Asia
Rather than classifying the various revolutions of the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam as distinctly national or local, some historians have suggested alternative ways of looking at Southeast Asian political movements throughout history. In his book Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Cosmopolitanism and Revolution in Southeast Asia, John Sidel—a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science— suggests that these revolutions were informed by "cosmopolitan connections" in very different ways.

Viking Warrior Women: Debating a Swedish Grave & Its Implications
Remember in September of 2017 when archeologists discovered that the grave of a supposed Viking warrior king was actually the grave of a Viking warrior woman? Turns out, these "shield maidens" existed in large numbers—and not just in pages of Old Norse texts or Wagner's operatic fantasies. This talk with Uppsala University's  Neil Price will examine these relatively new discoveries and how they're changing attitudes about gender in the Viking age.

WEDNESDAY-SATURDAY

PERFORMANCE

Shot: A Presumption of Guilt and Dangerousness
This Spectrum Studio Theater dance piece is an artistic protest against the killing of black people by law enforcement. The theater calls it an "unapologetic critique of the current American landscape, where black people find themselves in an intense cycle of fear, intimidation, aggression, and death."

VISUAL ART

Saya Moriyasu: Quiet
"The wrongness feels right to me," writes Moriyasu, recalling her mixed Japanese and American heritage and her consequent predilections for styles recalling European chinoiserie. Her works are often monumental ceramics, adapting folk art, myth, and visual humor.
Closing Saturday

WEDNESDAY-SUNDAY

PERFORMANCE

Bonbon
The slinky dancers of Pike Place's kitschy cabaret return with another tasty show. Ever wanted to ogle athletic dancers twirling from chandeliers inches from your face? Go. There's also a family-friendly brunch version that you can guiltlessly take your out-of-town relatives to.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a play-within-a-play adapted from the novel by Mark Haddon. Precocious, non-neuro-typical teenager Christopher sets out to solve the murder of his neighbor's dog, a crime of which he's been unjustly accused. But his investigation, which is shaped by unusual fears and abilities, leads him to his own family's secrets and lies.

Hollywood & Vine
Enjoy a vintage and magic-filled tribute to Tinseltown with the 20-year-old circus troupe Teatro ZinZanni as they perform in their new Woodinville space.

THURSDAY

COMEDY

Charity Comedy Show
Having raised more than $400 for the Ballard Food Bank at his last charity show, Bo Johnson will host another do-gooding night, this time benefiting United Way of Genesee County’s Flint Water Fund. Feel good about where your money's going with Chris Mejia, Monisa Brown, and Chase Mayers, all of whom have comedy fest cred.

FILM

British Comedy Classics
The finest British comedies of the 1940s and ’50s—like The Lavender Hill Mob, screening tonight—have aged marvelously well, thanks to understated, funny scripts and endlessly watchable professionals like Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood, Audrey Hepburn, and Peter Sellers.

FOOD & DRINK

Ruth Reichl: Author Reception: Save Me the Plums
As a restaurant critic for the New York Times in the 1990s, legendary food writer Ruth Reichl gained renown for her acerbic observations and penchant for donning disguises to maintain her anonymity in restaurants, and she went on to become the editor in chief of the now-defunct Gourmet magazine. Reichl has since penned several best-selling memoirs as well as cookbooks and a novel, has won four James Beard Awards, and is known for her warm voice and fierce advocacy of home cooking. In her newest book, Save Me the Plums, she shares recipes alongside stories about her time at Gourmet. JULIANNE BELL

READINGS & TALKS

Cadence Video Poetry Festival
Video poetry has been around since the late 1970s, but it's been enjoying a slight revival in a world where three-minute videos on the internet serve as our primary mode of media consumption. Local fiction writer Chelsea Werner-Jatzke is curating the second iteration of this festival, which will include video poems from Shaun Kardinal, Catherine Bresner, and Sierra Nelson. Bresner will lead workshops throughout the month for those who want to learn to create their own cinepoems. RICH SMITH
Hear from Claudia Castro Luna, Shawn Levy, and others at Full Cadence on Thursday.

Grace L. Dillon: Indigenous Futurism
Grace L. Dillon will give a talk on music, literature, and art that features Native-centered worlds "liberated by imagination"—a creative genre she calls Indigenous Futurism.

Noir at the Bar: April 2019
Seattle crime writers will gather in the Pike Place pizza spot to drink whiskey and read from their latest murder-filled, hard-boiled releases. The lineup features Will ("the Thrill") Viharo, Brian Thornton, Bethany Maines, Victor Rodriguez, Reb MacRath, Laura Lucas, Katrina Carrasco, and John Blakemore.

UW Science Engage!
Co-hosted by Town Hall, this series will allow UW researchers to practice science communication skills and the audience to learn about cutting-edge research. Topics tonight include vaccines, coastal waters, and somatosensory neurons.

VISUAL ART

Capitol Hill Art Walk
Every second Thursday, rain or shine, the streets of Capitol Hill are filled with tipsy art lovers checking out galleries and special events. Check out our critics' picks for this month—including Honey, Mari Nagaoka's series of drawings in ballpoint pen—here.

THURSDAY-FRIDAY

COMEDY

The Matchelorette
Directors Kayla Teel and Michael Draper and a cast of improvisers will re-create the seedy/addictive TV show The Bachelor with contestants eliminated one by one from a competition for true love. Teel and Draper are both magnetic local wits themselves, so we're anticipating a rose-worthy run of this new spontaneous play.

THURSDAY-SUNDAY

COMEDY

Kate Willett
Horndog bisexual humor reaches a climax in California comic Kate Willett’s sets. Her delivery is super-casual and even-keeled, which enables her punch lines to hit with a deceptive power. Hear Willett break down the differences between West Coast and East Coast people and the romantic entanglements that can occur at Burning Man, and roar with laughter. She’s the type of stand-up comedian who can hold her own with Margaret Cho, with whom she’s toured.  DAVE SEGAL

FESTIVALS

MoPOP Pop Conference 2019
At this annual pointy-headed music-nerd conference, which was started in 2002, academics, critics, artists, and hardcore fans come together to hear panels on a broad theme relating to the art form that connects them all. This year's weighty theme will explore "the many ways music reflects and expresses the realities of the end and the possibilities of rebirth."

FILM

Cascadia International Women's Film Festival
This festival in the small, artsy city of Bellingham showcases women's filmmaking every year. Don't miss Edge of the Knife, the first-ever feature exclusively filmed in the Haida language. The special guest will be Oscar-winning director Freida Lee Mock. 

PERFORMANCE

The Master and Margarita: A Remix of Bulgakov
Last time this Theatre Simple production by Rachel Katz Carey came to town, in 1997, Stranger writer Bret Fetzer noted that it "deftly weaves together multiple story lines and metaphysical romance with vigorous hands-on theatrics." Now it's back, with the same director and a new score by Brent Arnold. If you haven't read Bulgakov's 1930s masterpiece, it's the story of the Devil and his entourage (including a scene-stealing talking, smoking cat) testing the residents of Stalinist Moscow to see if Communism has really changed their nature. But it's also about Pontius Pilate, love, and the immortality of art.

FRIDAY

READINGS & TALKS

Austin Kleon: Keep Going
Self-help writer Austin Kleon's new book Keep Going is all about making your mental health a priority, even if it means temporarily disconnecting from the world. He'll be joined in conversation by photographer Chase Jarvis.

Damon Young: What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker
On VerySmartBrothas.com, website co-founder Damon Young offers witty, passionate, and beautifully constructed takes on culture and the news. That same élan is expected to animate this memoir about the "extreme sport" of being black in America. It's also a self-examination of the constant anxieties and complexities born of the pressures of white supremacy and heteronormativity, and the uncertainties of might-have-beens. Local activist and writer Ijeoma Oluo will engage Young in conversation. 

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: Minutes of Glory
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's name gets thrown into the ring every time the Nobel Prize committee convenes to select the year's winner. And for good reason. Known early on for his great plays, The Black Hermit and This Time Tomorrow, the Kenyan genius went on to lead postcolonial thinking with books such as Decolonising the Mind and Moving the Centre. His 2006 novel, Wizard of the Crow, was released to critical acclaim. The man hasn't stopped since the mid-1960s, and it doesn't look like he plans to. Thiong'o returns to Seattle with a new book of short stories called Minutes of Glory, which begins with the very first story he ever wrote and tracks his long and laureled career from there. Reviews have been mixed, but a chance to see such a captivating storyteller in the flesh is not to be missed. RICH SMITH

FRIDAY-SATURDAY

COMEDY

Ahmed Bharoocha
A shaggy everyman whose dad is Muslim Pakistani and his mother Irish Catholic, American stand-up comedian and actor (on the YouTube sketch series Dead Kevin) Ahmed Bharoocha says he can only experience “half-white guilt.” No matter his ethnicity, Bharoocha possesses distinctive perspectives on religion, refugees, and atheism. He has a clever metaphorical explanation about how atheists can be annoying that involves a tightrope, a hilarious bit about our galling love of cows and their milk, and a brilliant takedown of anti-gay-marriage assholes. Bharoocha’s humor is relatable without being cloying, and his observations about well-worn subjects are just skewed enough to smack of freshness. DAVE SEGAL

Rachel Walls
According to former Stranger contributor Joseph Schafer, local comic Rachel Walls brings a "relatively calm deadpan exterior belies a filthy sense of humor tempered with feminist sentiment and an excellent gift for one-liners" to the stage.

PERFORMANCE

Language Rooms
Before his ACT Theatre premiere of People of the Book this fall, Stranger Genius Award winner Yussef El Guindi will have another play—a very dark comedy—staged by Pony World Theatre. Ahmed is a regular, if rather awkward, American guy who works at "a secret military intelligence group that interrogates terrorism suspects." When he's forced to grill someone very close to him as a test of loyalty, Ahmed must confront his own roots and patriotism.

Mark Haim: Parts to a Sum
In a world being driven apart for political gain, choreographer Mark Haim wanted to make something joyous and humorous that brings people together. He asked 432 people from more than 20 countries for a video of them doing 5 to 10 seconds of movement. He chose dancers, students, friends, and relatives, some of whom he hadn't spoken to in years. The idea was to learn all their "dances" and perform them from oldest to youngest, becoming a single vessel for hundreds of different people. In the end, 371 people sent in videos. The dance has taken more than two years to learn. The show premieres on April 5. After his dance, the bar will open up and a postshow party will begin. Haim will play the sequence of video submissions on a big screen so the audience can see the hundreds of parts that made up his joyful sum. RICH SMITH

A Midsummer Night's Dream
George Balanchine's beautiful choreography of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream will get a Northwest forest setting and rainbow sherbert-colored design in this Pacific Northwest Ballet production.

Valtesse
For those with a yen for high-end kink, the performers of Valtesse will revel in opulent "couture burlesque, aerial, whips, chains, dance, and doms." Wear black, red, and/or fetish gear to fit in, and stay on after the show for a party by the fireplace.

FRIDAY-SUNDAY

FILM

Rewind: 1999 Film Series
Revisit some pre-Y2K classics on their 20th birthday, from Fight Club (Fri) to The Iron Giant (Sat) to Magnolia (Sun).

PERFORMANCE

Frederick Douglass Now
Roger Guenveur Smith blew the top off my fucking skull when he came through Seattle a few years ago with his Rodney King solo show. Smith is an incomparably good character actor with an incredible command of language and a jazz-infused storytelling technique I haven't seen from anyone else. Our own Sean Nelson called the show "a master class in wringing glorious art from life's tragic dimension," a sentiment I agree with completely. Now Smith is coming through with Frederick Douglass Now, a solo show about the self-liberated abolitionist who is "getting recognized more and more," the president notices. Somehow, tickets for Rodney King didn't completely sell out back in 2016. Don't make that mistake again, Seattle. RICH SMITH

Queer, Mama. Crossroads
Seattle civic poet Anastacia-Reneé continues her foray into the dramatic arts with this new show about black queer parenthood "imagined in the spirit realm." For this production, she will step out of the spotlight and take a seat in the director's chair, writing and directing roles for five actors, including the poets Naa Akua, Kamari Bright and Ebo Barton. With Queer, Mama. Crossroads, Anastacia-Reneé seems to be single-handedly building herself a poet's theater in Seattle, featuring some of the region's most powerful performers. RICH SMITH

Yoni Ki Baat
Watch South Asian performers present Yoni Ki Baat, a take on The Vagina Monologues, an annual event that this year is directed by Jaya Ramesh. The festival says: "Yoni is a complex word: it is used to refer to the vagina or vulva. In Sanskrit it can also mean 'sacred space' and serve as a symbol for divine creative energy." The event is inclusive and acknowledges the complexity of gender.

VISUAL ART

Simon Hanselmann: Bad Gateway
You know that moment when you’re in the middle of a session with your friends—slamming beers, passing a joint, shoving chips into your mouth, binging old episodes of Project Runway—and suddenly the smoke clears, a space opens up in your brain, and you realize the depth of your complete unhappiness? Tasmanian-born, Seattle-based artist Simon Hanselmann’s beloved comic characters Megg, Mogg, and Owl all constantly wrestle with that moment, their relationships to each other, drugs, and existence. In this show at BAM, Hanselmann will be presenting new sculptures and watercolors to coincide with the release of a new volume of Megg, Mogg & Owl published by Fantagraphic Books. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Opening Friday

SATURDAY

COMEDY

Bechdel Test
In a better world than this, female characters in films would talk about whatever the fuck they please—say, horses, cramps, or ongoing global disasters at the hands of a small-fingered megalomaniac. But all too often in this world, female characters, when they talk to each other at all, discuss one thing and one thing only: men. There’s even a term for it—the Bechdel Test, named for the cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who, in a 1985 comic strip, featured a character explaining that she goes to a movie only if it has at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. Inspired by the Bechdel Test, Jet City Improv re-creates films that fail the test, but with a Bechdel-approved twist. You name the movie; they make it pass. KATIE HERZOG

Chain Lynx Fence
Stranger arts calendar editor Joule Zelman will host another night of all-queer, femme, and nonbinary comedians, adepts of improv, stand-up, and sketch. The idea is to concentrate the immense amount of talent in the queer scene with a focus on people who are often marginalized in comedy—still! This edition will feature Bobby Higley and Vee Chattie, as well as storyteller/comedian Tara Curran and improv group Team Pynk.

Minority Retort
In an interview I conducted with Central Comedy Show co-host Isaac Novak, he observed that most comedy bills in Seattle still consist of about 80-percent white males. One imagines that is also the case in Portland—or perhaps it’s even greater, seeing as the Rose City’s population has a higher Caucasian percentage than the Emerald City’s. With this statistic in mind, Portland-based stand-up comedy event Minority Retort offers a platform to redress this imbalance by championing comics of color. This edition will feature Ash'Ley Rushin, Richie Aflleje, Adi Naidu, and Anthony Robinson, while hosts Jason Lamb and Julia Ramos will be joined by guest host Summer Azim.  DAVE SEGAL

Miscast
Funny and spontaneous performers are paired with actors following a script to reshape scenes from real movies and series that the improvisers aren't familiar with in this series directed by John Carroll. This time, they'll do "Marvelous Miscast," which will muddle up your favorite superhero stories.

FILM

Pr0n 4 Freakz
ScumTrust Productions and NWFF are partnering to bring you queer and trans smut every two months—including tonight! Arrive early to hang out with freaky new friends and shop the “sexy witch market.” Stay on after the dirty movie for a Q&A on sex, pleasure, queerness, and gender.

Scarecrow Academy 1959: The Greatest Year in Film History
The video rental library Scarecrow's new series contends that 1959 was the best year in film history ever. It saw "a high point of Hollywood studio filmmaking, the rise of new independent cinema, the great flowering of international movies, and the beginning of the French New Wave." Film critic Robert Horton will delve into the highlights of this landmark year. Tonight's film is the CinemaScope Western Ride Lonesome.

FOOD & DRINK

Anacortes Spring Wine Festival
Sample wines from over 30 Washington wineries and try bites like cheese, chocolates, and biscotti from local restaurants, all with a view of the Guemes Channel.

Ballard Brewed Spring Beer Festival
Ballard is known for its high density of quality breweries, and this fundraiser for Bellwether Housing will let you taste two beers from 11 of them: Bad Jimmy’s, Hale's Ales Brewery, Lagunitas Brewing Company, Lucky Envelope Brewing, Maritime Pacific Brewing Company, NW Peaks Brewery, Obec Brewing, Peddler Brewing, Populuxe Brewing, Reuben’s Brews, and Stoup Brewing. Each brewery will also bring a never-before-tasted new release. Honey Mustard and the Tall Boys will provide music.

The Great Seattle Vegan Chocolate Meltdown
Taste a smorgasbord of chocolates from Food Empowerment Project-approved companies, customize your cup of cocoa with toppings at an all-you-can-drink hot chocolate bar, and sample chocolate ice cream at a tasting station. The event will also have raffle prizes and activities for kids.

PERFORMANCE

F*** Yes! Oh F***!
Support Studio Current while enjoying food, drinks, music, film screenings, art, and performance. See performances by local stars like Angel Alviar-Langley, Grief Girls, Nic Masangkay, Kill Baby Kill, and many others. A day of spectating will wrap up with a dance party at Vermillion.

Informal Performance: Exploring the Creative Legacy of Merce Cunningham
UW and Cornish student dancers from across disciplines will collaborate using the late dancer/choreographer/Cornish alum Merce Cunningham's "formulation of chance operations" as a tool for creating art grounded in their own experiences. 

READINGS & TALKS

From Zine to Lit Scene: A Reading and Conversation with Steve Hughes and Jekeva Phillips
Hear an interesting new voice from Detroit, zinester and fiction writer Steve Hughes, alongside local literary and theatrical celebrity Jekeva Phillips (creator of Word Lit Zine and the Bibliophilia festival). Hughes, the longtime publisher of Stupor: A Treasury of True Stories, will read from his new collection, STIFF, an ode to the economically devastated city. After Phillips has read as well, the two will "discuss the ways in which their alt-lit zine backgrounds have influenced their writing."

Give Up the Ghost
There comes a time of night when the mind turns to ghosts. It’s approximately 10 p.m., the hour when you let in the unknown, and shades reveal themselves, and possibilities open. Give Up the Ghost is a new late-night storytelling event at Queen City (every second Saturday of the month) where a nonfiction writer, fiction writer, poet, journalist, or artist tells a ghost story.  CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE
This month's reader is Stranger staff writer Nathalie Graham.

Rick Barot and David Biespiel
Tacoma-based, Philippines-born poet Rick Barot is the author of the collections The Darker Fall, Lambda Literary finalist and Grub Street Prize-winner Want, and Chord, with a fourth, The Galleons, due out in 2020. He's won all the fellowships, or at least NEA, Guggenheim Foundation, Artist Trust, Civitella Ranieri, and Stanford University grants. He'll read with David Biespiel, an award-winner for A Long High Whistle and Poetry Foundation's Best Book of the Year and a shortlister for The Book of Men and Women. 

Seattle Reads Centerpiece Evening: Thi Bui's 'The Best We Can Do'
For the 21st time, the Seattle Public Library Foundation and the Wallace Foundation will invite the public to discuss a single book, Thi Bui's The Best We Could Do, a graphic novel memoir of growing up in America as a Vietnamese refugee. For this special evening, Bui herself will be there to give special insights, and Book-It Repertory Theater will present a staged reading adapted by Susan Lieu and directed by Kathy Hsieh.

VISUAL ART

Georgetown Art Attack
Once a month, the art scene of the tiny airport hamlet of Georgetown ATTACKS all passersby. In more literal terms, it's the day of art openings and street wonderment. If the westerly locations are too far, there's a free Art Ride! Check out our critics' picks for this month—including Odd Jelly Out: Introversion—here. 

SATURDAY-SUNDAY

PERFORMANCE

Balloonacy
I don’t have children, so I can’t say if babies will like Balloonacy, one of the cutest pieces of theater made for young children in recent years. But I once saw Balloonacy at Minneapolis’s Children’s Theatre Company stoned out of my mind, and WOW, is it one of the most magical things to ever be created for the stage. It’s a wordless, situational comedy about an old man who lives alone and is trying to celebrate his birthday when suddenly red balloons bust into his apartment to tease and tickle him. It’s basically an allegory for socialism, but for kids. CHASE BURNS

SUNDAY

FOOD & DRINK

Loxsmith Bagel Bar Mitzvah
The popular 48-hour-fermented, lye-boiled bagel pop-up returns, this time with an all-new menu.

National Grilled Cheese Day Pop-Up
Celebrate the national holiday by partaking in cheesy, melty toasted sandwiches from various food trucks.

READINGS & TALKS

Elizabeth Gilbert
So you saw Eat, Pray, Love and think you know a little something about Elizabeth Gilbert? Well, you’re wrong about that. The milquetoast movie, which was adapted from her 2006 memoir of the same name, in no way captured the true brilliance of Liz Gilbert, a woman who isn’t a crazy good writer (seriously!), but is funny as fuck and has a life story that’ll make you weep more than you want to. This is especially true when she talks about leaving her husband for her best friend, the writer Rayya Elias, who was dying of cancer at the time. It’s a heartbreaking story, but Gilbert tells it with reverence, pathos, and humor. Bring tissues. KATIE HERZOG

Tara Westover
In many ways, Tara Westover had a pretty idyllic childhood. She grew up on a beautiful mountain in Idaho with a lot of brothers and sisters. She had cool pets, and even a scrapyard she could play around in. But her father was the lord of all these joys, and he was an abusive Mormon conspiracy theorist who refused to send the kids to a hospital when they got sick or injured. He and his wife also prevented the kids from getting a formal education. In Educated: A Memoir, Westover tells the story of her escape from an isolated, backwoods hellhole into the hallowed halls of Harvard and Cambridge. Her reckoning with her parents and her subsequent search for a chosen family serves as a good model for those of us who may have also had unsupportive and/or actively bad parents. RICH SMITH