Our music critics have already chosen the 44 best music shows this week, but now it's our arts and culture critics' turn to recommend the best events in their areas of expertise. Here are their picks in every genreâfrom the Great Victorian Radicals Bake-Off to Town Hall's Homecoming Festival kickoff on Labor Day with Robert Reich and Pramila Jayapal, and from the last night of Seattle Opera's Rigoletto to PAX West. 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
PERFORMANCEPressure Cooker: O Succulent!
An entry in Nordo's nontraditional theater series, Butch Alice and Anya Knee's O Succulent treks along with Professor Archie McDinklethorn and Sister Sandwich in a tribute to LARP storytelling. McDinklethorn and Sandwich search for succulents and encounter adventure in the AridSun Desert as they search for succulent plants. As always, enjoy food that complements the themes of the show.
Sandbox Radio: Gone Fishin'
If you love the musical scoring and sound effects of old-timey radio dramas but prefer to hear stories about subjects more modern than cowboys and robbers, get yourself to this Sandbox Radio performance composed of local theater artists and musicians.
MONDAY-FRIDAY
VISUAL ARTZac Boetes: Total Shig Show: Urgent Blowout
Zac Boetes is a depictor of eerie, silly, grotesque beasts (and humans), often painted on repurposed materials. The designs declare the influence of tattoos, cartoons, and psychedelic grooviness.
Closing Friday
MONDAY-SATURDAY
VISUAL ARTJason Gobin and Trevor Hunt
Fisherman, tribal canoer, and artist Jason Gobin (Tulalip Nation) carves, paints, and digitally renders traditional Salish forms. Trevor Hunt, "part of the famed Hunt family of Fort Rupert on Vancouver Island," continues the legacy of the Kwagiulth artistic style (also known as Kwakwaka'wakw/Kwakiutl, a culture on the north side of Vancouver Island).
Closing Saturday
Post Gage Society
Peruse the works of skilled artists who've graduated from the Gage Academy of Art, including Eve Alyson, Maria Bruzas-Zinkus, Charles Burt, Grace Flott, Christina R. Grachek, Jonathan Hodge, Donna Lough, Arvia Morris, Ashwini Sadekar, Renée Simard, Misa Steinmetz, Martijn Caspar Swart, Kevin Johnson, and Caroline Williams.
Closing Saturday
TUESDAY
FOOD & DRINKAuthor Talk: Dappled with Nicole Rucker
You may have spied Los Angeles-based pastry chef Nicole Rucker's glorious pastries and baked goodsâpreviously from her popular spots Gjelina Take Away and Gjusta, and later from her pie company Rucker's Pie and her restaurant Fionaâin your Instagram feed. Now, she's released her debut cookbook, a paean to baking fruity desserts like peach and ricotta biscuit cobbler and huckleberry blondies with peak-season produce. Catch her at Book Larder, where you can try a recipe from Dappled and pick up a signed copy. JULIANNE BELL
Nisi Shawl and Jack Skillingstead: Wastelands
If you're beset by fears of planetary doom, you're not alone, as this volume of post-apocalyptic fiction edited by the famed genre anthologist John Joseph Adams will demonstrate. Two esteemed contributors, Nisi Shawl (Everfair) and Jack Skillingstead (The Chaos Function) will appear to discuss the aftermath of whatever finally gives human civilization the boot. The book also includes new stories by such writers as Tananarive Due, Elizabeth Bear, Wendy N. Wagner, and others, as well as reprints by sci-fi/fantasy lights like Carmen Maria Machado, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Charlie Jane Anders.
Senator Jeff Merkley: America is Better Than This
With no previous background as an immigrant rights activist, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley became a leader in immigration reform after witnessing firsthand the humanitarian crisis at the Southern U.S. border. He'll be joined in conversation by KUOW's Ross Reynolds on this tour stop for his new book America is Better Than This.
TUESDAY-SATURDAY
VISUAL ARTAlicia Lisa Brown: What if the man in the New World needs mimicry as design, both as defense and as lure?
Brown interprets the concept of mimicry in the context of post-colonial Caribbean culture and contemporary art, particularly the imitation of the dominant culture and of the upper classes. She works with motifs of collars, hair, pearls, spoons, lace, and canes.
Closing Saturday
Beili Liu: Each and Every
Each and Every is Austin-based Beili Liuâs first solo exhibition in Seattle. Liu creates immersive âsite-responsiveâ and site-specific installations that create and explore various dichotomies. She often works with quotidian materials (thread, scissors, paper, water) to create her works, which both familiarizes and disorients viewers. For her show at MadArt, Liu will be suspending thousands of pieces of concrete-coated childrenâs clothing inches above the gallery floor. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Closing Saturday
Contemporary Northwest Print Invitational 2019
There are bound to be many treasures at this showcase of contemporary fine art prints and works on paper at Davidson and Seattle Print Arts' invitational fair, featuring pieces by 67 artists.
Closing Saturday
Jennifer Beedon Snow and Joe Max Emminger
Jennifer Beedon Snow makes the loveliest paintings of tennis courts and subdivision pools in suburbia, while Emminger paints quirky people, animals, and figures in between.
Closing Saturday
TUESDAY-SUNDAY
VISUAL ARTCauleen Smith: Give It or Leave It
On my way out of Cauleen Smith's Give It or Leave It, a tweet I'd seen recently sprang to mind. Reflecting on something her friend had said, New York journalist and critic Jillian Steinhauer tweeted, "Just retract all my mixed reviews and replace them with 'almost kind of a commentary on something.'" Give It or Leave It is almost, kind of a commentary on something. That doesn't mean that it's bad or unenjoyable. Smith's show is a vibrantly hued but messy altar. Riffing off the phrase "take it or leave it," she weaves together films, banners, multimedia pieces, and site-specific light installations from four distinct sources of inspiration: Alice Coltrane's California ashram, Bill Ray's 1966 photo at Simon Rodia's Watts Towers, Noah Purifoy's desert assemblages, and Rebecca Cox Jackson's Shaker community in Pennsylvania. Everything is so spread outâtwo of the three galleries contain a short film and one other smaller piece. It is pretty, vibey, somewhat sparse, and shooting off in a thousand different directions. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Closing Sunday
Jane Wong: After Preparing the Altar, the Ghosts Feast Feverishly
I love how poets use space. I think it has something to do with the way their minds wrap around words, arranging them into something familiar yet strange, that lends itself well to curating spaces. This will be poet and artist Jane Wongâs first solo exhibition. Exploring the themes of hunger and waste and their meaning for immigrant families, Wongâs show will consist of altars, sculpture poems, and belongings alongside texts that evoke her childhood in New Jersey where her parents ran a Chinese American restaurant. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Closing Sunday
WEDNESDAY
PERFORMANCEDungeons & Drag Queens Versus the Lizard People!
Drag artists will embrace their nerdy sides on this live-action role-play adventure rife with "sashaying serpents, luscious lizards, and a ravishing reptile goddess."
Rigoletto
The powerful men charged with sexual assault in the #MeToo era are doing just fine. Seattle Opera's production of Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto is here to show us it was ever thus, and that it shall ever be so long as we continue to uphold longstanding social and political norms around consent, harassment, and male power. Rigoletto is a classic opera based on a Victor Hugo play called Le roi s'amuse. The story follows the Duke of Mantua on his various sexual conquests. He loves cuckolding courtiers while his court jester, Rigoletto, mocks the cucks. But shit hits the fan when the Duke goes after Rigoletto's own daughter, Gilda. To exact revenge, Rigoletto puts out a hit on the Duke, but it all goes horribly wrong. Director Lindy Hume updates Verdi's opera by replacing jolly old misogynists in codpieces with men in suits in executive offices, calling greater attention to the violence against women and the power imbalance. The aesthetics and tone of Hume's production, she says, were inspired by Silvio Berlusconi's "bunga bunga" sex parties, which were detailed by national outlets in 2013. RICH SMITH
WEDNESDAY-SATURDAY
PERFORMANCELungs
Listening to a manic PhD student and a human man-bun argue about whether they should bring a child into this hell world might not sound like a good way to spend part of your evening, but after watching Really Really Theatre Group's production of Duncan Macmillan's 2011 chamber play Lungs, I can comfortably say I recommend it. On a bright, bare set designed by Lex Marcosâtiled with huge pieces of extremely well-sanded plywood, so it almost looks like the white room in The Matrixâthe man, played with warmth and a deceptively lulling calmness by Arjun Pande, announces his desire to help produce a child. This statement unleashes a torrent of hopes, joys, fears, and misgivings from within his partner (Erika Vetter, who plays her role with incredible skill and dynamism). What follows is nearly 100 minutes of smart, charming, rapid-fire dialogue about a deal-breaker issue for many: Should we have a baby? Macmillan's language sparks with enough wit and intelligence to hold your interest. RICH SMITH
WEDNESDAY-SUNDAY
PERFORMANCEBulrusher
Stranger Genius Award and Artist Innovator Award winner Valerie Curtis-Newton will direct Eisa Davis's 2007 Pulitzer-nominated play about a multiracial, clairvoyant orphan girl (Ayo Tushinde) growing up in 1950s California. Young Bulrusher feels out of place in her very white town, where the whimsical dialect of Boontling is spoken, but things change when she meets a newcomerâa black girl from Alabama.
The Legend of El Dorado
Three women on a summer trip turn into sexy, fishnetted robbers on motorcycles in the cozy cabaret's latest production, featuring all-new choreography and a soundtrack with singing by Brent Amaker.
THURSDAY
FOOD & DRINKThe Great Victorian Radicals Bake-Off
Seattle Art Museum has summoned bakeries from around Seattle to create show-stopping desserts inspired by the exhibition Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts & Crafts Movement. Participating pastry pros (including Anthony Maurice Davis, Jeff Benitz from Benitz Bakers, Edward Villacorta from Pinoy, and many others) have one week to develop, create, and deliver their entries, which will be judged on taste as well as adherence to the theme. On your mark, get set, bake! JULIANNE BELL
Ellie Belew: High Voltage Women
Ellie Belew's new book tells the fascinating and frustrating story of the women hired by Seattle City Light to diversify its largely white, largely male workforce. In the early 1970s, the city's public utility hired 10 women to train as line workers. Surprise: The company undertrained them, isolated them, fired them, lost a lawsuit, rehired them, and looked the other way while the women endured sexual harassment on a daily basis. Though they dealt with all that bullshit while also working one of the most dangerous jobs on the market, the women maintained their determination to burst through this glass ceiling so that others could follow in their footsteps. RICH SMITH
Thursdays with KUOW
American news consumers do not trust the media. And can you really blame them? On the one side, you have Fox News railing about HER E-MAILS, on the other side, you have Rachel Maddow shouting that THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, and in the middle, you have sources like NPR, which most people think of as a good soporific if you canât sleep. So, how do news stories actually get made? KUOW is going to bare all (or at least some) during a series of weekly talks and presentations by KUOW reporters. And like the press should be, itâs free. Coming up this week: "The Challenges of Reporting on Vaccines" with Isolde Raftery. KATIE HERZOG
Chelsie Kirkey: A Breach of Peace
Breach of Peace tells the story of an "unexpected hardship" a woman faces that comes in the form of a dark storm and a violent fallen angel over the course of 12 paintings. This woman is saved by grace and light. In the artist statement outside the show, Kirkey writes that this series was born after she felt as if an "outside force was waging war within me, working strenuously to tie me down and tape my spiritual eyes closed." It's all a bit biblical, but no worse for it. I felt particularly drawn to the painting of the severed head, which reminded me of Judith beheading Holofernes or Salome presenting the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter. Go for the lilies, the skies, the story, the bloody, decapitated head. Also, look at those clouds! JASMYNE KEIMIG
THURSDAY-SATURDAY
PERFORMANCEThe Neverborn
Two murderous orphaned sisters seek out their "probably not dead research scientist mother" while dodging the law, wannabe avengers, and "a haunted baby painting" in Kelleen Conway Blanchard's new play, directed by Catherine Blake Smith.
Ben Edols and Kathy Elliott: Undercurrent II
Australian glass artists Ben Edols and Kathy Elliott show light-filled botanical forms.
Closing Saturday
Girlfriends of the Guerrilla Girls
This show at CoCA brings together Seattle artists who identify themselves as feminist and also do not have gallery representation. The lineup includes ceramicist Hanako OâLeary, who creates vagina vessels and Japanese Hannya-inspired masks that replace faces with labias. Itâs pretty metal. Ann Leda Shapiroâs sexually explicit Angerâwhich the Whitney Museum of Art refused to hang in her one-person show in 1973âwill also make an appearance. Stranger Genius Award winner C. Davida Ingram, as well as Sheila Klein, Alice Dubiel, Deborah Faye Lawrence, Cecilia ConcepciĂłn Alvarez, Dawn Cerny, E.T. Russian, and the Guerrilla Girls themselves, round out the show. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Meet the artists on Saturday
Repossessed
Until 1968 in Washington, it was legal to discriminate against minorities, with white-only clauses and other restrictions on homeowner deeds, a practice called âredlining.â This had a deep impact on the history of our city and our communities. At the moment, thereâs a wave of artists across Seattle trying to reckon with this ugly historyâlike Warren Popeâs Blood Lines, Time Lines, and Red Lines at Northwest African-American Museum or Excluded, Inside the Lines at Wing Luke Museum. This group show at SOIL adds to the mix, bringing together Black, indigenous, Asian, Latinx, Muslim, and Jewish artists who work in different mediums to grapple with the history and effects of redlining locally. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Closing Saturday
THURSDAY-SUNDAY
PERFORMANCEDecadent Delights
Enjoy Teatro ZinZanni's winning combination of tasty dinner and circus anticsâthis time combined quite literally! A Maestro chef struggles to create the perfect meal with the aid of Madame ZinZanni, despite the shenanigans of a host of acrobats. Co-starring comedian Kevin Kent and singer Maiya Sykes (Postmodern Jukebox, The Voice), along with "comedian and yodeling dominatrix" Manuela Horn, illusionist Voronin, "contortionist-puppet Svetlana," aerial acrobat Ling Rui, performing artist Maxim Voronin, and the two trapeze artists of Die Maiers.
Indy Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Temple of the Doomed Ark
Sketch writers from the Habit plus collaborators Jeff Schell and Ryan Dobosh take aim at all three Indiana Jones movies in this musical parody, smashing the second and third into a silly, song-filled version of the first. The producers say, "Indy Jones dutifully denies that the Crystal Skull ever even happened." The show is directed by Mark Siano, who had a big hit with local theater production Bohemia last year.
FRIDAY
COMEDYGreg & Mykaela: Subtext & Subtlety
Very talentedâand "serious"âimprovisers Mykaela Hopps and Greg Gerbus will take inspiration from a single word to conjure "Symmetry. Melancholy. Lost dreams. Estranged siblings." Expect high intensity, profound character work, and laughs.
Three Dollar Bill Outdoor Cinema: Kinky Boots
Charlie (Joel Edgerton), a square, inherits his father's factory, where squares make boots all day. Industrial England has been in decline for ages, so Charlie isn't too shocked when he finds out the business is failing. Still, something must be done! Charlie tries firing people, but that doesn't suit his charming facial features. Then, thanks to the prodding of a sweetie named Lauren (pixie-cute Sarah-Jane Potts), Charlie goes cool-hunting in London and stumbles across Lola (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a damsel in distress who just happens to be a man. Not just any boots will satisfy Lola: You know, they have to be strong enough for a man, but stilettoed for a woman. And they absolutely cannot be dyed burgundy. Over the mild protestations of the factory workers (conveyed primarily through Nick Frost's boyish facial contortions), some satisfactory boots are fashioned. What a climax, eh? That's why there's an obligatory Milan fashion show at the end. ANNIE WAGNER
100% That Queen
Local drag performers will pay tribute to Lizzo and her divine contemporaries all night long.
Video Games Are a Drag
Drag artists will embody their favorite Nintendo, Sega, and Atari characters in this geeky show complementing PAX West.
FRIDAY-SATURDAY
PERFORMANCE14/48: The World's Quickest Theater Festival
True to its name, the 14/48 Festival turns around 14 brand-new, theme-based, 10-minute plays in two days. The high-pressure nature of the event produces an evening of surprising theater for audience members, who arrive in their seats charged with expectation and anxiety for the performers. Though there are always a few experiments that don't quite come together, it's endlessly fascinating to see the way one theme filters through the minds of several very different theater artists. Expect shit to get weird. RICH SMITH
Imminent Mode Closing Party
Celebrating its fifth anniversary, Imminent Mode is a yearly exhibition that brings together artists working in different mediums to create something thatâs both wearable art and a gallery installation. This year, organizers have asked five teams of two artists to âimagine how society, politics, science, religion, and the environment will impact fashion in the next centuryâand beyond.â Attend the wrap-up and shop styles for sale. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Robin Arnitz: Maternology
Arnitz paints in a figurative and emotive mode; her series in the past have included self-portraits with her facial features erased and her identity only guessable from what's around her. This exhibition expresses the happiness and stress of early motherhood.
Closing Saturday
FRIDAY-SUNDAY
FESTIVALSBumbershoot 2019
Bumbershoot, Seattle's biggest music, comedy, and arts festival, will take over Seattle Center for Labor Day Weekend 2019 for the 49th year. Major touring artists (Lizzo, Carly Rae Jepsen, the Lumineers, Taking Back Sunday, Bea Miller) will take the same stages as local talents (Y La Bamba, the Dip) across the music, art, and comedy spectrums, with a special food selection known as B-Eats.
FRIDAY-MONDAY
FESTIVALSPAX West
The first thing to know about PAX WestâSeattle's annual Labor Day weekend convention devoted exclusively to gamingâis that it always sells out in minutes. The convention features dozens of panels with special guests, an exhibit hall, new game demonstrations, and video game-inspired musical performances. If you can't make it to the main event, there are always lots of fun affiliated parties going on around town.
SATURDAY
COMEDY$10@10PM
Improvisers Taya Beattie and Claire Jencks will choose some of the best improv theater groups in town and beyond for a cheap new weekly late-night show.
Pink Party 11
This is it: the boss fight of queer geek parties, and one of the main reasons we look forward to PAX every year. Relax in the "Gayming Lounge" with geek-themed drink specials, participate in a massive cosplay contest with serious cash prizes, and dance all night long with host Arson Nicki.
Neal Kosaly-Meyer: Finnegans Wake
Seattle composer, musician, and substitute teacher Neal Kosaly-Meyer will continue his amazing feat of reciting James Joyce's Finnegans Wake from memory, chapter by chapterâas if reading the modernist monster wasn't hard enough. In praise of Kosaly-Meyer's feat, Charles Mudede wrote, "Maybe this is the only way the novel could be saved. Itâs not all that amazing to memorize something that everyone understands; itâs very impressive to memorize something understood by only one person, who has been in the grave for many years."
SUNDAY
COMEDYVonnegut Unexpected: Kurt Vonnegut Improvised
The improvisers of Unexpected Productions will take some instinctual liberties (paired with audience suggestions) with Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, and other works by the late writer Kurt Vonnegut.
Bar Ferdinand's 4th Annual Sparklefest
Sip sparkling red, white, and pink wines by the glass or bottle and enjoy food, games, and more activities on Cold Chaser Farm throughout the day.Â
MONDAY
READINGS & TALKSLabor Day with Robert Reich and Pramila Jayapal
Two liberal champions will come together for a Labor Day talk: former US Secretary of Labor (and Leftbook social media star) Robert Reich, who'll bring his new book The Common Good, and WA Seventh District Representative Pramila Jayapal. Come for a rational and compassionate argument for a more virtuous society that resists the forces undermining the public good.
