Our music critics have already chosen the 48 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 for in every genre—from Navy Strength's Nightmare on Wall Street to a conversation between The Stranger's Charles Mudede and So You Want to Talk About Race author Ijeoma Oluo, and from Austen’s Pride: A New Musical of Pride and Prejudice to the Inscape Open House. See them all below, and find even more events on our complete EverOut Things To Do calendar.

Heading to Portland or Tacoma? Check out EverOut to find things to do there and in Seattle, all in one place.


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

MONDAY

READINGS & TALKS

Liz Plank: Modern Masculinity in the #MeToo Era
Vox Media journalist Liz Plank, who has done a lot of reporting on rape statistics in the #MeToo era, will appear in conversation with YES! Editorial Director Lauren Bohn to talk about her new book, For the Love of Men: A New Vision for Mindful Masculinity. 

MONDAY-WEDNESDAY

FILM

70mm Film Festival
Put down your phone and surrender to the splendor of actually-epic-scale cinema in the cathedral that is the Cinerama. Not much unites the films in this 13-day festival other than a commitment to MAGNITUDE, but several are essential viewing. I know you’ve heard it before, but I’ll say it again: Seeing a film in a darkened theater with strangers is a secular sacrament. The fact that you can't pause, talk, text, or tweet until it's over is a feature. Please enjoy it while it's still available. SEAN NELSON

French Cinema Now
For one week, Seattle turns into a center for French and Francophone cinema culture, offering some of the best movies you'll see all year. This week's notable features include the farce Kiss & Tell (Wed), the Adèle Haenel-starring crime comedy The Trouble With You (Mon), and the Golden Bear-winning Synonyms (Thurs).

MONDAY-THURSDAY

VISUAL ART

Alison Stigora: certain/uncertain
Seattle artist Alison Stigora creates gigantic sculptures that are constructed of coastal driftwood or galvanized steel, often filling up the gallery space and overpowering the viewer with their presence. Her work is aware of itself in a way that doesn’t seek to shrink it or make it easy to comprehend, but rather forces viewers to interact with it. Inspired by the Pacific Northwest’s natural landscape, the size and material of Stigora’s work call on our basic need for shelter while also leading us to think about our body in relation to space. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Opening Monday

MONDAY & THURSDAY-SATURDAY

PERFORMANCE

We Go Mad
Playwright Amy Escobar (Scary Mary and the Nightmares Nine) is back with a frightening haunted-house play incorporating bunraku, shadow play, and "object manipulation" into a story about a woman investigating the estate she's inherited.

MONDAY-SATURDAY

VISUAL ART

Amanda Manitach: Mirrors
Seattle artist and Stranger Genius Award nominee Amanda Manitach spends hours creating delicate graphite drawings, from which white capital letters call out at you against a smoky, sketched Victorian wallpaper background. “YOU ARE A MOTHERFUCKING STAR,” “XANAX HELPS,” and “CALM THE FUCK DOWN” are a few of the phrases you’ll find in Manitach’s work. For this show, the artist will be debuting new work in the same vein, but on mirrors. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Closing Saturday

ALL WEEK

FILM

Tasveer South Asian Film Festival
Seattle is lucky to have one of the largest South Asian-focused film festivals in the world, second only to Toronto. Now in its 14th year, the Tasveer South Asian Film Festival continues with a focus on stories from under-heard communities via a women-geared short film series (dubbed “She Persisted”) plus programming of seven LGBTQ+ movies. Films of note: the Tibetan refugee-driven drama The Sweet Requiem (Fri), with wife-and-husband directing team Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam in attendance, the folktale-inspiredadventure story Jhalki (Tues), and Hira Nabi’s portrait of Pakistani shipbreakers All That Perishes at the Edge of Land (Sat). LEILANI POLK

VISUAL ART

Henry
See new work by Ryan Henry Ward—you know him as Henry, and he's the muralist who has covered the walls of your city in goofy walruses and ostriches and fish and wizards.
Closing Sunday

Rebecca Reeves and Danielle Schlunegger-Warner: Slipping Below
In this East Coast/West Coast collaboration, Reeves and Schlunegger-Warner fashioned impressive (and appropriately ghostly) resin ships, which seem to contain atmosphere and oceans within their hulls, before splitting off to develop their own installations.
Closing Sunday

TUESDAY

FOOD & DRINK

Feast at the Market
This progressive meal/self-guided tour lets you eat your way through Pike Place Market, tasting dishes from Aerlume, Honest Biscuits, Matt's in the Market, the Pike Brewing Company, Red Cedar and Sage, Seatown Market Diner, and other restaurants, capped off with desserts at Pike Place Market Atrium Kitchen. Proceeds benefit Neighborcare Health at Pike Place Market Clinic, which provides comprehensive primary healthcare to low-income and uninsured people in downtown Seattle.

TUESDAY-SATURDAY

VISUAL ART

Nate Gowdy: The American Superhero
Nate Gowdy, a Stranger contributor and a master at capturing telling glimpses of spontaneous human expressions, turns to studio portraiture in this exhibition about non-traditional American superheroes. Among those featured: drag queens Gaysha Starr and Aleksa Manila, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, Washington State Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu, and former Houston mayor Annise Parker. Gowdy's exhibition is inspired by the "Sikh Captain America," the performance artist Vishavjit Singh. 
Saturday

TUESDAY-SUNDAY

FOOD & DRINK

Nightmare on Wall Street
Continuing a spooky-season tradition started last year, Belltown’s award-winning tiki bar Navy Strength will temporarily transform into a “fully immersive haunting experience,” with libations inspired by horror films like Friday the 13th, The Babadook, Midsommar, The Ring, Pet Sematary, and more. They’ll switch out their usual kitschy drinkware for vessels like pumpkins and Jason Voorhees–masked tiki mugs, and employ ingredients like “candy corn orgeat.” Frightening horror-film soundtracks will contribute to the spine-chilling milieu. JULIANNE BELL

PERFORMANCE

Indecent
When Sholem Asch's searing critique of Orthodox Judaism, God of Vengeance, debuted on Broadway in 1923, the entire cast was arrested and tried for obscenity. They were tried not only because of the play's lesbian kiss—which for some reason didn't disturb the delicate sensibilities of Europeans, who praised the piece for years before it was translated into English—but also because of the rising anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant sentiment in America. Though it was the "roaring twenties," it was also a time when conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the world through theater and banking were peaking. Paula Vogel's Tony Award–winning play dramatizes the history of this show. In a recent interview, the playwright called it "a love letter to theater, a love letter to Yiddish culture, and a plea to every audience member who sees it: Please, please partake in the arts. The arts will see us through to our last days on earth." RICH SMITH

WEDNESDAY

READINGS & TALKS

Ijeoma Oluo: 'So You Want to Talk About Race' with Charles Mudede
So You Want to Talk About Race—the breakout book by Seattle-based writer, speaker, and emerging social-media icon Ijeoma Oluo—offers a fresh, compassionate, often witty approach to helping us have productive conversations about race and navigate these turbulent times. Drawing from a well of personal experience as a black woman with deep and intimate ties to the white world, Oluo distinguishes herself as a relatable yet nuanced commentator on a subject that so many others have tried less successfully to take on. It’s evident that she knows her theory, but she doesn’t get mired in the academic debates, instead offering vivid anecdotes from life on the front lines as well as practical advice that both longtime students of race in America as well as newcomers to the field will find useful. DEEPA BHANDARU

WEDNESDAY-SUNDAY

FILM

Seattle Latino Film Festival
This year's Seattle festival of Chicanx and Latinx cinema will feature 10 days of independent movies, filmmaker panels, workshops, and more, beginning with a splashy opening gala. The organizers say that this year's festival will feature "110 titles from 22 countries: films, short films, documentaries, and animation." There will be a special focus on young Latinx filmmakers in the US. 

Social Justice Film Festival
This film festival highlights fierce and powerful progressive movements around the world. As social justice provides the only throughline, many of the movies have little in common. But the selection skews toward limber, on-the-ground filmmaking in the midst of protests and conflicts. This edition's theme is "Courage." See documentaries about, among other topics, the gospel singer and activist Patrinell, Argentinian teenagers recovering from sexual assault, Native and Indigenous opposition to industrial projects that destroy the environment, fighters against vote suppression, and the Chinese dissident artist Hu Jie.

Tacoma Film Festival
Tacoma's offering to the Northwest international film scene, named one of the "Top 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee" by MovieMaker, includes more than 200 movies, talks by visitors from around the world, a VR studio, workshops, and parties. If you missed offbeat hits like Green Grass and The Death of Dick Long at SIFF 2019, here's your chance to see them. This year, The Stranger's own Charles Mudede will be a juror, and his 2005 film Police Beat (co-directed with Robinson Devor) will be screened October 6. Students get in free to the whole fest!

PERFORMANCE

Everything Is Illuminated
Jonathan Safran Foer’s semi-autobiographical first novel, Everything Is Illuminated, about a man (also named Jonathan Safran Foer) who travels to Ukraine to try to track down the details of his Jewish ancestry, is one of the most brilliant and celebrated novels of the last 20 years. Much of it is narrated by a translator who shows Jonathan around and gets many English words wrong, hilariously. The language of the book is key, and Book-It adaptations always emphasize the language of the original text in a way that other dramatic treatments (and the movie) don’t. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

Zombie Cheerleaders from Hell
The Heavenly Spies are back with their annual Halloween show featuring scary hot dancers—plus "terrifying masks and pretty pasties, black cats and twerking booties, sweet transvestites and dancing cuties."

VISUAL ART

Path with Art: Hear & Now
Trimpin is a musical genius who builds room-sized art installations that are also instruments. Picture a Rube Goldberg machine exploded all over a room, but one you can play Beethoven on. This year, Trimpin again partnered with students from Path with Art, a nonprofit that works with homeless people to create original works of art. Together they constructed a new sound sculpture bursting with poetry, visual art, and, of course, music. RICH SMITH
Opening Wednesday

THURSDAY

FOOD & DRINK

Brew at the Zoo
What's better than a day at the zoo? Sampling beer and enjoying exclusive animal encounters, we'd say. This tasting event offers attendees seven tokens, a souvenir tasting glass, a pair of general admission zoo tickets, and special meet and greets with wild creatures.

Moon Phase
Quaff natural wine from Left Bank and get down to disco music at this fundraiser for Seattle/King County Coalition On Homelessness.

Taste America: Seattle Raising the Bar
For the first time ever, the James Beard Foundation's Taste America tour, which brings together visiting and local star chefs for a night of unforgettable dining at their annual gala dinner, has added a new cocktail reception recognizing the region's mixologists alongside bites from buzz-worthy chefs. Amanda Reed of Heartwood Provisions, Laara Garcia of Gold Bar, Chris Elford of Navy Strength, and Niles Peacock of 190 Sunset will shake and stir up libations, while Edouardo Jordan of Salare and Junebaby, Kimberley Cosway of Heartwood Provisions, Shota Nakajima of adana, Josh Delgado of Le Coin, Nicole Matson of How to Cook a Wolf, Felipe Hernandez of Los Hernandez Tamales, and Brian Clevenger of East Anchor Seafood, GH Pasta Co., Le Messe, Raccolto, and Vendemmia will offer refreshments.

PERFORMANCE

Bon AppĂŠtit! The Julia Child Operetta
Strolling through the Smithsonian Museum one afternoon, I stumbled upon a full replica of Julia Child's kitchen. I walked in because I had recently finished watching some classic episodes of The French Chef, including her infamous lobster show. "You have to cut him right here," Child says as she sticks her knife into the lobster's neck, "where all of his brains and hearts and feelings are." Genius. Anyway, in the Smithsonian exhibit, I saw a picture of Child bent over a counter in a small French kitchen. On the placard next to the photo was a quote from the famously tall chef: "When I get my own kitchen, I'm going to build the counters up to my waist. I'm through with this French pygmy bullshit!" If you haven't figured it out yet, Child is one of the greatest and funniest people ever to wield an eight-inch knife. In this light opera, a shade of the chef will crack you up while also making a giant chocolate cake, which I am told will be made with Theo Chocolate. A serving of cake is included in the ticket price. RICH SMITH

READINGS & TALKS

Florence Williams: The Nature Fix
People who hike every chance they get aren't doing it just for the ’gram. Anyone with a working understanding of their own body knows that walking around in nature just makes you feel better. In her new book, The Nature Fix, journalist Florence Williams digs into the science behind why forest bathing calms your mind and sharpens your senses. Williams is a terrific writer and speaker who has spent a lot of time in the wilderness, and she'll have some good cheat codes for city kids who want the same feeling but don't own a pair of hiking boots. RICH SMITH

VISUAL ART

Pioneer Square Art Walk
Once a month, Seattleites flock to the streets in Pioneer Square for a chance to stroll, sip on booze, and attend as many art openings as possible at First Thursday. It's the city's central and oldest art walk, and takes place in a historic neighborhood known for its abundance of galleries. Wine and hobnobbing steal the scene for some, but at its core, it's an impressive communal unveiling of new artwork. Check out our list of suggested art openings here.

THURSDAY-FRIDAY

COMEDY

Stabbin' Cabin
A cast of energetic improvisers will play teen screamers straight out of '80s summer-camp slasher movies in this send-up of the genre.

THURSDAY-SATURDAY

PERFORMANCE

The Christians
Pony World Productions will present Lucas Hnath's Obie-winning play about the leader of a highly successful, growing church who suddenly announces that he no longer believes in hell, disconcerting his congregation and straining his marriage. Leah Adcock-Starr (of Wooden O) will direct.

VISUAL ART

April Surgent: In the Space Separating
It’s that time of year where the warm sun of summer gives way to the crisp chill of fall—at least in a world before climate change walloped our ideas of what weather is like during each season. But I think the work of glass artist April Surgent is apt for this time of year—misty and contemplative, the engraved glass panels composed of landscapes of the Pacific Northwest’s majestic beauty. Craggy mountain ranges, low skies, the way that fog rolls through the quiet of an evergreen forest. Surgent’s work captures the way I always like to think of this area I call home: eternal, all-knowing, and bigger than I could ever conceive. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Opening Thursday

THURSDAY-SUNDAY

PERFORMANCE

Beware the Terror of Gaylord Manor
The world-famous Seattle-based drag queen BenDeLaCreme has written and performed three acclaimed solo shows, but Beware the Terror of Gaylord Manor, premiered in 2017, was the artist's first foray into writing, directing, and starring in an original play of her own. It's a spooky, campy twist on the horror flick genre, featuring ghosts, dancers, music, and special effects. The chemistry between BenDeLaCreme and Scott Shoemaker alone is worth the price of admission. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

Carmina Burana + Agon
Pacific Northwest Ballet kicks off its 47th season by hanging a 26-foot-long, 2,500-pound golden wheel from the ceiling for founding artistic director Kent Stowell's Carmina Burana, a ballet based on a 13th-century medieval poem written by a bunch of saucy Catholic clerics. As a choir belts out one of the most dramatic—if not most played—pieces of classical music, "O Fortuna," more than 100 dancers do their thing beneath the wheel of fortune, embodying fate's random mood swings. PNB pairs this epic dance with George Balanchine's Agon, which Balanchine himself called "the quintessential contemporary ballet," according to press materials. RICH SMITH

Sunset Baby
A young woman and her estranged father, a veteran of the Black liberation movement, clash over the hurts of their past in this drama by Steinberg and Obie Award-winning Detroit playwright Dominique Morisseau.

VISUAL ART

Ginny Ruffner: Alternative Myths
During this residency, Ruffner (who has been called "the most irrepressible spirit in Seattle art" by former Stranger critic Jen Graves) continues her rich explorations of augmented reality, imagining mythologies that could have developed alongside alternative co-evolutions.
Opening Thursday

Mapping the Grid
SAM Gallery welcomes artists who employ or adapt images of grids, maps, and geometry—Harold Hollingsworth, Ryan Molenkamp, Jo Moniz, Nina Tichava, and more.
Opening Thursday

Terry Turrell: Spirit World
An autodidact mixed-media painter and sculptor who often mixes the two mediums, Turrell exults in highly textured techniques that often incorporate recycled materials.
Opening Thursday

FRIDAY

FOOD & DRINK

Taste America: Seattle Gala Dinner
At this star-studded supper, the James Beard Foundation (named after the late, great cook and food writer) will bring together a stacked lineup of acclaimed local chefs. Visiting all-star chef Kwame Onwuachi—who has won acclaim for his Washington, DC, restaurant Kith/Kin and whose recently published memoir, Notes from a Young Black Chef, is slated to be adapted into an A24-produced film starring Lakeith Stanfield—will team up with local all-star Rachel Yang of Joule and Revel to create an unforgettable meal, with bites and dessert provided by other top local chefs. This is a unique opportunity to catch a ton of culinary luminaries in a single evening—don't miss it. JULIANNE BELL

FRIDAY-SATURDAY

COMEDY

Joe List
Joe List may look like your standard-issue white, nerdy comic, of whom there are thousands in America, but he’s one of the funniest of that common species. He uses a slick yet understated delivery to crack cleverly and neurotically about relationship conflicts, self-consciousness, panic attacks, and shitting in Bloomingdale’s. He also has a funny bit about differentiating between meditation and napping. “If you tell people that you nap, they think you’re lazy. If you tell them that you meditate, they think you’re better than them.” He has released the albums Are You Mad at Me? (2016) and So Far No Good (2011), and cohosts the podcast Tuesdays with Stories, all of which are worth checking out. DAVE SEGAL

FOOD & DRINK

15th Annual Great Pumpkin Beer Festival
Though pumpkin beer is a decidedly divisive beverage, Elysian Brewing Company’s annual squash-themed celebration continues to draw fans year after year. The great pumpkin in question—a gigantic gourd weighing in at several hundred pounds—is scooped out, scorched, filled with pumpkin beer, sealed, conditioned, and tapped at the event. What’s more, over 80 pumpkin beers, including around 20 from Elysian, will be poured. JULIANNE BELL

Leavenworth Oktoberfest
Since Leavenworth is Washington's Bavarian-style village all year round, we believe them when they say that their Oktoberfest celebration is "the next best thing to Munich." Kicking off with an opening ceremony complete with a keg tapping and an oompah-style marching band dressed in dirndls and lederhosen leading a procession, the festival promises German-style fare like bratwurst and coleslaw, family activities, and enough beer to keep your stein full at all times.

OysterFest
You can slurp freshly shucked bivalves and quaff wines and microbrews in peace knowing that all the proceeds from this festival will go into the hands of the charities that help host it. There will also be live music, the annual West Coast Oyster Shucking Championships, water quality exhibits, and non-oyster food offerings like garlic shrimp and spring rolls.

PERFORMANCE

Kate Wallich + the YC with Perfume Genius: The Sun Still Burns Here
The Sun Still Burns Here is a new live album by Perfume Genius (aka Mike Hadreas) in the form of a Kate Wallich + the YC performance. It's a perfect fusion of Wallich’s cold-blooded rituals and Perfume Genius’s pathos-drenched chamber pop, and it’s like nothing the two artists have ever done before. Perfume Genius isn't just playing music alongside dancers. Hadreas and the rest of the band have full-on dancing roles, each one with its own character arc. And yet Wallich and her dance company, the YCs, aren't merely backup dancers for Perfume Genius. Each of the dancers in the YCs appears to be on their own journey, variously embodying the music, disregarding the music, or creating the music themselves. The project represents growth for all the artists involved. It's Wallich and the YCs' fifth evening-length performance, and their experience is starting to show. Each dancer is dancing better than they ever have. And Wallich's juxtapositions of the high and low dance vocabularies—combining Janet Jackson moves with Pina Bausch moods—really works. RICH SMITH

Men in Dance Adjudicated Choreographer Showcase
Men dancers at the highest levels of artistry will enliven modern, contemporary, urban, jazz, and ballet genres. The choreographers this year all hail from or have ties to Seattle—Daniel Ojeda of Ballet Idaho, prolific local Beth Terwilleger (seen at 12 Minutes Max and Converge Dance Festival), Elise Meiners Schwicht (SALT II Contemporary Company, Converge), Nahshon Marden (Sensible Theatre Company, the Equalux Fundraiser), and Joel Hathaway (performer and choreographer for the Missouri Contemporary Ballet company).

She is Fierce: Good Mourning
Stories from female and genderqueer perspectives told through music, dance, poetry, and visual art will take the reins at this event affiliated with Good Mourning: A Festival of Grief. 

FRIDAY-SUNDAY

PERFORMANCE

Austen’s Pride: A New Musical of 'Pride and Prejudice'
The season begins with Austen's Pride, a quasi-adaptation of Pride and Prejudice that is also about Jane Austen's writing of the novel. Written by Lindsay Warren Baker and Amanda Jacobs, Austen's Pride has been in development for years. It started without Austen in it—but over time, it's become about the author herself. One of the reasons producing artistic director Bill Berry picked it is because "it's about a female character at the center, a woman who is powerful, has agency, is literally forming her own narrative. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

VISUAL ART

Maria Phillips: Hidden in Plain Sight
Instead of being completely paralyzed into inaction by the overwhelming lack of response to climate change and environmental degradation, Seattle artist Maria Phillips is diving head first into interrogating her own consumption habits. Using non-recyclable plastics and single-use items generated by Phillips and her family over the course of nine months, the artist has created a two-part exhibition at BAM. The first part will feature a series of jewelry pieces and small-scale works accompanied with a video installation. The second will be a large-scale, immersive installation that’s meant to confront viewers with the role that plastic has in our everyday life. Spooky, beautiful shit. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Opening Friday

Robert Williams: The Father of Exponential Imagination
The work of Robert Williams is sick, perverse, offensive, violent, erotic, profane, and firmly without any sort of god to speak of. That is also precisely why it is incredible. A technically skilled draftsman, Williams’s works are often psychedelic, depicting an alternate, unhinged reality. He is naughty to the nth degree, hemmed in neither by “good taste” or any type of moral responsibility. In addition to being an artist and comic book illustrator, Williams was also a key figure in the California hot rod scene of the late 1960s. This exhibition coincides with the release of a major new monograph of Williams’s work, published by Fantagraphic Books and due out in November. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Opening Friday

SATURDAY

COMEDY

Tragic School Bus
Taking off on the educational children's series, this cleverly conceived show follows a group of poor adults trapped in public school limbo and their increasingly insane teacher as they go on "magical" field trips to learn about topics of your choice. Directed by Jessica Dunstan and Jet City Artistic Director Mandy Price, this one should earn an A.

FOOD & DRINK

17th Annual Fresh Hop Ale Festival
Amazingly, Yakima Valley supplies more than 75 percent of the nation’s hops. During this time of year, local craft brewers avail themselves of the proximity and abundance of the hops crop, making ales with hops processed no more than 24 hours after being harvested. The result? Brews with a milder, more botanical profile and less bitterness than is normally associated with hoppy beers. Because of the fragile nature of those little green, cone-shaped flowers, it’s hard to rival the range of fresh hop beers found in our region, and they’re available for an extremely limited time. Yakima’s Fresh Hop Ale Festival, which benefits Yakima County–based arts and science organizations, provides a rare opportunity to taste a range of these hyper-seasonal, ephemeral beers in one place before they’re gone. JULIANNE BELL

READINGS & TALKS

Nora Krug: Belonging
Krug's honest, fascinating graphic memoir, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, originated when she became determined to revisit the mysteries of her childhood in Karlsruhe, Germany. How had her grandparents' generation experienced the reign of the Nazis and World War II? Why did no one ever speak of the period? Belonging collages interviews, research, and personal reminiscence.

Susanna Ryan: Seattle Walk Report
Seattle Walk Report is exactly what it sounds like: reports of walks in Seattle. Popularized on Instagram (@seattlewalkreport), the project was started in 2017 by an anonymous illustrator (now known to be Susanna Ryan). Seattle Walk Report's 150-plus pages of twee, guidebook-style comics create an endearing collection of the small details that make Seattle a home. An abbreviated list of its findings: Churros. A scary teapot shaped like a sad dog. The Wedgwood Rock. A parking meter wearing a tie. The oldest building in Seattle (it's by the Capitol Hill Goodwill). A ground-level mailbox in Georgetown (maybe a mailbox for dogs?!). A starfish AND a crab chilling on Alki Beach. The terra-cotta on a West Roy Street apartment building. One confident duck. CHASE BURNS

VISUAL ART

Inscape Open House
The former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service building was turned into artist studios. Now is your chance to peek inside Inscape and see what these 30+ artists working in "installation, painting, clothing design, jewelry, photography, ceramics" and more have been doing all this time, on all five floors. Be sure to stop in on Maggie Argiro and Sanwal Deen, the artists-in-residence, as they pay tribute to the dhaba, a term for the Punjabi roadside restaurant. Other events: the A.Oei Studio Fashion Show, Kara Mia Fenogliotto's conceptual installation incorporating minimalist silk dresses, Haein Kang's Wind from Nowhere's ("data-driven sound installation"), Jessica Bender's Mediumship glasswork, and the Reclaimed Design Market.

SATURDAY-SUNDAY

PERFORMANCE

Black Beauty
As a kid, my two favorite pastimes were reading and horseback riding. Which means that I was a voracious consumer of all things related to horses, including the poignant classic, Black Beauty. It’s told from the eponymous horse’s point of view and is about his life—from his early years as a colt on an English farm, to his life of servitude pulling cabs in London, to his retirement in the country—and recounts all the highs and lows he endures, cruelty and loving care included. Themes of animal welfare, and treating people and animals with kindness, sympathy, and respect are threaded throughout, so it seems appropriate that the stage adaptation by James Still is being staged by Seattle Children’s Theater, which is renowned for its high-production-value presentations. My guess is this one—which will feature large-scale puppetry, live music, and a multi-generational cast—will be no different. LEILANI POLK

SUNDAY

COMEDY

Stephen King Unexpected
Expect to see (we're guessin') gruff Northeasterners battling clowns, vampires, sentient cars, and/or the undead in this improv tribute to the horror maestro Stephen King, a perfect show for Halloween.

FOOD & DRINK

Taste of Seattle Made
Now in its fifth year, this annual event is hosted by Seattle Made, an alliance of local producers and manufacturers, and it aims to bring attention to the prolific makers in our city and their delectable wares. To that end, they’ll concoct culinary mash-ups incorporating the goods of more than 40 different participating businesses—for example, a killer-sounding spicy mac-and-cheese kimchi sandwich made with tangy, crunchy kimchi from Firefly Kitchens, a dash of small-batch Ballyhoo Hot Sauce, hand-crafted macaroni from Lagana Pasta, and flaky, buttery Honest Biscuits. You’ll get to try that and more, plus sip five sample pours from breweries like Ghostfish, Fremont, Stoup, and Peddler, and distilleries like Oola. JULIANNE BELL

PERFORMANCE

Takahira Yamamoto: Property of Opaqueness
In conjunction with Carrie Yamoakoa's current exhibition at the Henry, recto/verso, Portland-based artist Takahiro Yamamoto will treat Seattle to a sneak peek of his collaborative dance performance Property of Opaqueness, which will premiere in Portland next fall. 

READINGS & TALKS

Patti Smith
Did the world begin to collapse in 2016 because corporate greed reached its zenith as political courage reached its nadir, or because it was the Year of the Monkey in the Chinese zodiac? Mystic punk rocker Patti Smith investigates in Year of the Monkey. Listen, Patti Smith is a legend, her album Horses rules, and the writing here is good and full of a genuine curiosity about the world. But the book elicited two major responses from me: the occasional sagacious nod, and eye rolls that hit with concussive force. For Smith, the world's serendipitous events and strange associations seem to be little clues to the great detective story that is life, but they're also just errant equations that prove the inherent chaos of the world. The tension, then—charged with the grab-bag spirituality that characterizes so much boomer bullshit—is this: Will Smith find some sense of personal narrative closure in her life or will she eventually die feeling uncomfortable with the unknown? RICH SMITH