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MONDAY
COMEDYJamali Maddix: Strip Club Einstein
The host of Vice's Hate Thy Neighbour and Channel 4's Adventures in Futureland will return to Seattle with tales of "uncomfortable home truths" in these times of political turmoil.
Vikings of Comedy Series
Cory Michaelis, Monica Nevi, Andy Iwancio, and Chase Mayers will put on their Viking hats and storm Ballard with jokes.
Author Talk: South by Sean Brock
Chef, restaurateur, James Beard Award winner, and cookbook author Sean Brock is a maestro of Southern cuisine, which started with him using “authentically” Southern ingredients (everything originating below the Mason-Dixon Line) and food grown in his own garden at his South Carolina venture Husk in 2010. He went on to open seven more restaurants (including three more Husks). Last August, he stepped away from Husk, making his departure permanent this past spring as he focuses all his attention on building a new empire in Nashville dedicated to the food he grew up eating in Virginia’s Appalachian coal country. He also finished his second cookbook, South: Essential Recipes and New Explorations, with recipes of reimagined Southern classics. For this Book Larder–hosted event, he’ll be chatting about Southern cuisine and the deep and varied food culture of the region with Seattle's own Warren Etheredge. Admission includes a copy of South. LEILANI POLK
Andre Aciman: Find Me
A couple of years after the film adaptation of Aciman's Call Me by Your Name beguiled audiences with Elio and Oliver's love story, Aciman is back with a sequel, Find Me. This one follows Elio's father Samuel as he meets a beautiful young woman on the train, Elio as he has an affair in Paris, and Oliver as he deliberates returning to Europe.
Nicole Chung: All You Can Ever Know
In her debut memoir, All You Can Ever Know, Nicole Chung, a frequent contributor to glossy magazines and former editor of the millennial favorite The Toast, details how she came to be. Born premature and put up for adoption, Chung was raised in small-town Oregon by a family of white people. The narrative of her adoption, the story she’d always believed, was that her birth parents had been forced to give her up so she’d have a better life. As an adult, Chung started to wonder if that simple narrative was correct, and she began a search for the family that gave her up. In this searing memoir, Chung captures what it’s like to be different, and to discover the truth. KATIE HERZOG
MONDAY-TUESDAY
FILMKinoFest
This festival, in association with the Portland German Film Festival, screens new and classic German-language cinema from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Gina Siciliano: I Know What I Am: The Life & Times of Artemisia Gentileschi
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Artemisia Gentileschi was a fucking badass. One of the most accomplished painters of the 17th century, her paintings have an emotional and technical depth that’s unrivaled. Gentileschi is most famous for painting themes like Susanna and the Elders, Judith and Holofernes (which depicted Gentileschi’s rapist as Holofernes getting his head expertly sawed off—a legend), and Judith and Her Maidservant. Gina Siciliano’s first graphic novel tells the story of this woman who braved the male-dominated art world to become one of the most formidable figures of Italian painting. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Closing Tuesday
MONDAY-WEDNESDAY
PERFORMANCESavion Glover
Leilani Polk has called Tony winner Savion Glover "the modern-day boundary-pushing equivalent of Fred Astaire" and "a leader and innovator in tap dance who has both performance and choreographic chops." Don't miss your chance to be in the company of his extraordinary feet.
MONDAY-THURSDAY
FOOD & DRINKSeattle Restaurant Week Fall 2019
Frugal gourmands everywhere rejoice over this twice-yearly event, which lets diners tuck into prix-fixe menus at more than 185 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 and Adana.
MONDAY-SATURDAY
VISUAL ARTGinny Ruffner: Alternative Myths
I have no doubt that plants, flowers, and trees have some sort of consciousness. I mean, have you ever been really stoned and touched the trunk of a tree? It touches you back. And in Seattle artist Ginny Ruffner’s new exhibition at Oxbow, she proposes the concept of flora and fauna evolving completely in step with one another. From there she asks the question: How would this coevolution have affected humanity’s myths? Using augmented reality, Ruffner creates roosters composed of flowers, and birds with hands as wings. It’s sure to be an excellent show. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Closing Saturday
MONDAY & THURSDAY-SUNDAY
PERFORMANCEThe Thanksgiving Play
In this holiday comedy, Lakota playwright Larissa FastHorse takes aim at a group of white teaching artists who end up reasserting colonial ideology in their attempt to rid their teaching practice of that very same ideology. According to Jesse Green's review in the New York Times, the more cringe-inducing skits in the show are based on actual school lesson plans lifted from social-media posts: "They include potted history and offensive ditties and, in one case, a suggestion to split the pupils into Pilgrims and Indians 'so the Indians can practice sharing.'" Sounds like it'll be another fine entry into the growing canon of plays about white people fucking up something they're trying to fix. I'm unfamiliar with the actors in the show, but I have no doubt they'll flourish in the highly capable hands of director Kelly Kitchens. RICH SMITH
TUESDAY-SATURDAY
VISUAL ARTApril 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
Closing Saturday
Irreducible Forms
Second-year MFA students will reclaim complex ideas—which are so often "flattened into clichés and clickbait" on social media—by showing nuanced multimedia work "resistant to simplistic capture."
Closing Saturday
John Kiley and Dante Marioni: Incalmo
“Incalmo” is a glassblowing technique wherein two or more pieces of glass are fused together to become one. And in this Traver Gallery show, two of the best glass artists on the scene—John Kiley and Dante Marioni—collaborated on a project that combines Kiley’s eye for color with Marioni’s way with patterns. The 24 sculptures that compose the show are spherical in form, just on the verge of rolling right off the stand. Kiley and Marioni are not only close friends but were also both mentored by Maestro Lino Tagliapietra—and their complex and beautiful work simply must be seen! JASMYNE KEIMIG
Closing Saturday
Seattle Music: Past & Present
Seattle's music scene is captured in snapshots by Kelly O, a prolific documenter of local nightlife, and Diana Adams, gallery owner and artist.
Closing Saturday
TUESDAY-SUNDAY
PERFORMANCEDracula
Dracula will be breathed to life yet again when playwright Steven Dietz's adaptation of the Bram Stoker tale is revived and revised specifically for ACT Theatre. In this Dracula, the focus shifts to Mina Murray Harker. Her character has always been ripe for a reckoning or a refresh, or both. She is the source of endless fascination, because she is an obvious heroine in Stoker's novel, pure of heart and mind, and yet she's just as much a casualty of Dracula's desires as her poor friend Lucy. No matter how many gender norms Stoker challenged, it was still the Victorian era. Mina could be given only so much agency. "But to simply make her a victim was super unsatisfying to all of us," director John Langs explained. "So Steven has done some reworking of the story, and she really comes to the forefront. The hunted becomes the hunter in this particular adaptation." LEILANI POLK
Red List: Moths & Butterflies
The Xerces Society conservation nonprofit keeps a list of endangered butterflies and moths on the continent of North America. Browse it, and you can encounter such wondrous species names as the "scarce streaky-skipper" and the "regal fritillary." This exhibition, featuring collagist Lisa Myers Bulmash and dozens of other artists, aims to wake you up to the growing plight of our loveliest pollinator insects. Some proceeds from art sales will benefit Xerces.
Closing Sunday
WEDNESDAY
FILM1959: The Greatest Year in Film History Semester 2
Robert Horton is continuing his class series asserting 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." Delve into the highlights of this landmark year with this week's pick, Jack Clayton's realist social-climber drama Room at the Top.
BTSW Live: 'Who Gets to Be the Hero and Why It Matters'
This live taping of KUOW's Battle Tactics for Your Sexist Workplace podcast will dive into a conversation on "who gets to be the hero and why it matters," featuring special guests G. Willow Wilson (an award-winning novelist and comic book writer who has written X-Men, Wonder Woman, and the latest Ms. Marvel series) and Melanie McFarland (a TV critic and frequent BTSW guest).
Anita Hill
Almost three decades ago, Anita Hill prefigured the #MeToo movement by testifying at Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings, asserting that he had sexually harassed her. Though Thomas was confirmed, and Hill shamefully treated (Joe Biden, notably, refused to call witnesses to back up her claims), Hill stands as a testament to the bravery of women who fight back. Now, she's the Chair of the Hollywood Commission on Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace. Hear this important women's rights activist speak about how far we have—and haven't—come. JOULE ZELMAN
Dao Strom: The Gentle Order of Boys and Girls
This Portland-based writer mesmerized me and everybody else in the room when she stopped by Seattle last year to read from her multimedia memoir We Were Meant to Be a Gentle People. The nonfiction song/poem came with an album that explored her relationship with her parents, who were two Vietnamese writers, and the Western and Eastern cultures that shaped her life. Now she's back with an older collection of multifaceted fictional stories about women dealing with men, The Gentle Order of Boys and Girls. The New Yorker called the stories "quietly beautiful" and "hip without being ironic." I've got high hopes. RICH SMITH
Silent Reading Party
The Silent Reading Party is one of the weirdest, most wonderful parties you’ll ever go to, because no one talks to you and you can get some reading done. You curl up on a couch or in a wingback chair with a book or magazine or whatever you feel like reading, while Paul Moore plays piano and waiters bring you things. Whenever Paul starts playing Erik Satie, I find myself staring into the fireplace or closing my eyes and melting into the couch. The reading party, which turns 10 years old in 2019, is so popular that there is often a line out the door just to get a seat. The people who know what they’re doing get there an hour before it starts. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE
WEDNESDAY-SATURDAY
VISUAL ARTJosie Morway: Acquired Tastes
Josie Morway's fantastical, highly detailed nature paintings, emphasizing the "beauty and brutality of nature," will grace this lavish and eccentric Roq La Rue gallery.
Closing Saturday
Translations: An Exploration of Glass by Northwest Native Carvers and Weavers
This glassworks show features pieces made in the museum's hot shop by family members of "three of the Pillars of the Evergreen Longhouse"—Mary Ellen Hillaire (Lummi), Gerald Miller (Skokomish), and Hazel Pete (Chehalis)—with the aid of Dan and Raya Friday. Old weaving and carving treasures from the families' collections are juxtaposed with the new glass interpretations of baskets, sculptures, and bentwood boxes.
Closing Saturday
WEDNESDAY-SUNDAY
FILMDan Savage's HUMP! Film Festival
The HUMP! Film Festival has been bringing audiences a new kind of porn since 2005. The 15th Annual HUMP! Film Festival festival features 21 short dirty movies—each less than five minutes—all created by people who aren't porn stars but want to be one for a weekend. The filmmakers and stars show us what they think is hot and sexy, creative and kinky, their ultimate turn-ons and their craziest fantasies. Our carefully curated program is a cornucopia of body types, shapes, ages, colors, sexualities, genders, kinks, and fetishes—all united by a shared spirit of sex-positivity. HUMP! is a celebration of creative sexual expression. You will see films at HUMP! that shock you. You will see films at HUMP! that make you laugh. And you will see films at HUMP! that turn you on. You will also be touched by the sincerity and vulnerability with which these films are lovingly made. HUMP!'s main mission is to change the way America sees—and makes and shares—porn. DAN SAVAGE
The Great Moment
Playwright Anna Ziegler earned a lot of attention in 2015 for Photograph 51, a well-received bio-drama about Rosalind Franklin, the woman who discovered DNA. Nicole Kidman played the starring role, everybody loved it, and Ziegler was praised for her "fair-minded and philosophical" (New York Times) approach to character building. Ziegler will likely bring that same talent for creating multidimensional characters to The Great Moment, which will have its world premiere at the Seattle Rep. According to press materials, the story follows a woman named Sarah, who is watching her grandfather slowly die while she raises her son. Alexandra Tavares plays the lead in this, and I've loved everything I've ever seen her in. RICH SMITH
The Tempest
Accomplished director Annie Lareau (Cornish College of the Arts'Â Much Ado About Nothing, many Seattle Public Theater productions), will tackle Shakespeare's fantastical final work about an island wizard, his hot daughter, his nonhuman slaves, and his princely prisoner. This staging will take place in an Edwardian castle, "one of the last periods before media started to infiltrate people's lives."
THURSDAY
COMEDYJimmy O. Yang
An extremely engaging comic and actor who plays Jian Yang in the hilarious HBO comedy series Silicon Valley and who had a role as a hedonist in the popular film Crazy Rich Asians, Jimmy O. Yang sends up stereotypes of Asian Americans in his stand-up act. Now, many comedians cover this ground, but the 32-year-old Yang—who moved to Los Angeles from Hong Kong when he was 13—is sharper than most. “I’m really proud to be Asian,” Yang boasts, “because I’ve never seen an Asian person on The Maury Povich Show.” He further expanded his entertainment empire with the memoir How to American: An Immigrant's Guide to Disappointing Your Parents, which should yield rich seams of humor onstage. He'll be taping a comedy special on this date; admission is free, but you'll need to RSVP in advance to reserve a seat. DAVE SEGAL
Seattle International Comedy Competition 2019
For nearly all of November, a lengthy last-comic-standing battle rages. Thirty-two comedians (split into two batches, each of which performs every night for one week) start the contest, and one will finish a champion. Celebrity judges and audience reactions determine who passes the preliminaries and who becomes a finalist.
Christopher Kimball - Milk Street: The New Rules
In his new book, James Beard Award-winning author Christopher Kimball outlines new rules of cooking aimed at making your time in the kitchen simpler and tastier, from how to tenderize tough greens on the fly to how to create creamy textures sans dairy. Meet the former host of America's Test Kitchen in the flesh at this signing.Â
Mod Carousel presents: Decadence
With stars like Paris Original, Trojan Original, the Luminous Pariah, and Moscato Extatique, plus host Caela Bailey, you won't want to miss the latest innovations in burlesque.Â
Ampersand Live
Forterra presents Ampersand Live, a multimedia storytelling event "about people and place."
David Treuer: The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee
In his book The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, David Treuer, who grew up on Ojibwe on a reservation in Minnesota, counters a popular narrative of Native American history—that Native civilization ended with the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Hear him read from this book of "Indian survival, resilience, adaptability, pride, and place in modern life" at the A. Scott Bullitt Lecture in American History.
Saeed Jones: How We Fight for Our Lives
Saeed Jones, a good poet who championed good poetry as the culture editor at Buzzfeed for several years, has poured his talent for writing exuberantly about the most painful shit imaginable into his debut memoir, How We Fight for Our Lives. Press materials and a growing number of rave reviews tell me Jones focuses this book on the trials and triumphs of life as a gay black man in America. It's also apparently a paean to his mom. Hard not to get behind either mission. And if his nonfiction is as searing and surprising as his poetry, then he'll likely scoop up one or two of the major awards for which this book has already been nominated. RICH SMITH
Tim O'Brien: Dad's Maybe Book
Tim O’Brien—whose best-selling works include The Things They Carried and If I Die in a Combat Zone, both of which are highly readable and offer revealing glimpses into the world of war—was already old when his sons were born. No stranger to loss, his new work shares a series of letters he wrote for his sons to read after he's gone. Thankfully, the man isn’t dead yet, and Dad’s Maybe Book—which touches on everything from soccer to magic tricks to, of course, war—is at heart a love letter from a father to his sons, something he wished his own father had left for him. This sounds direr than it is, but as always, O’Brien’s work is filled with as much joy and humor as pain. KATIE HERZOG
'Mary Anne Carter Is TOOO MUCH': The Closing Party!
God, you ever just feel like toooooooo much? Like you’re running late to everything because you’re spending too much time carefully applying glitter to your eyelids and when you do roll up you smell like a weird mixture of weed and mothballs because you’re wearing your grandma’s sweater that you found in the depths of your closet because all your other clothes were dirty? Well, Seattle artist Mary Anne Carter is creating a space just for you. In her ambitious immersive installation at The Factory, Tooo Much explores Carter’s own “muchness” through 25 different mediums—from paint to cigarette jello to hand-airbrushed clothing to a lotion fountain (!!!). This light-hearted, bright, maximalist art show will be an exploration into “self acceptance and common connection” through our own tooooooooo muchness. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Closing Thursday
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—like Brighter Future: To be heard. To be seen. To be free. at King Street Station—here.
THURSDAY-FRIDAY
FILMEngauge Experimental Film Festival
This experimental film festival will once again screen "films that originated on film" from artists around the world.
THURSDAY-SATURDAY
VISUAL ARTMaja Petrić, Etsuko Ichikawa, Peter Gronquist: Digital Perspectives
This group exhibition brings together three artists whose work—in one way or another—utilizes different digital mediums to talk about humanity’s relationship to the world around us. Maja Petrić will be presenting Particle Attraction, a new interactive piece where viewers have the chance to walk through a simulated landscape. Etsuko Ichikawa will be continuing her exploration of nuclear waste and “what we choose to leave behind” in Murmurings of Love, in which a futuristic figure smashes a vessel made of uranium glass. And finally, in A Visual History of the Invisible 2, Peter Gronquist will be projecting a “soothing and hypnotic” digital installation of a large gold fabric magically suspended against a bright-blue sky. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Opening Thursday
THURSDAY-SUNDAY
FILMCinema Italian Style
The Cinema Italian Style is a weeklong SIFF mini-festival featuring the best in contemporary Italian cinema.
Beautiful
The dancers of Can Can and powerhouse singer Shaprece (who "ranks among the Northwest’s most radiant, soulful vocalists and producers of torch-song-centric electronic music," per Dave Segal) collaborate on this sensuous coming-of-age story, featuring a leading performance by Shaprece and new choreography.
Frost/Nixon
Forty-five million people watched the first episode of a five-part interview David Frost conducted with former president Richard Nixon in 1977, three years after Nixon left office in disgrace. It is still the most widely viewed political interview in world history. Peter Morgan's play Frost/Nixon reminds us of the era when politics first became something that happens on TV. Sadly, you watch it knowing that Trump will never offer us the consolations Nixon did. Nixon admitted wrongdoing and apologized. We'll get none of that from Trump, no matter what. Frost/Nixon under Trump thus serves as a way to measure how far down the dark pit our democracy has descended. RICH SMITH
Where is home : birds of passage
You know what's really scary? Concentration camps for asylum seekers at the border, constant ICE raids, border patrol separating children from their parents and not having the administrative infrastructure to unite them, and the state generally doing everything it can to dehumanize people who want to immigrate to this country. In her brand-new—and first-ever (!)—solo show, Where is home : birds of passage, local Italian American choreographer Alice Gosti aims to push back against the xenophobic narratives that drive these anti-immigrant policies. She'll draw from her own history with immigration as well as the larger history of Italian immigration to the United States in a spectacle that will run about three hours. As always with Gosti's work, you'll get to decide how much attention you want to devote to this performance. And the act of making that decision, of course, is part of the performance. RICH SMITH
Susan Dory: Exotic Mass
In 2012, Jen Graves wrote: "Susan Dory's color combinations have always been luscious. But in the last two years, her work has undergone a transformation—in Catenary Curves, Dory's signature softness and refined paint handling has gone a little bit street. It's as if each painting were a set of open jaws, or many sets of jaws, each vying for space in a fractured horizon. It is an exhilarating break." See how Dory's style has evolved even further at this solo show.
Opening Thursday
FRIDAY
READINGS & TALKSDan Hooper: Our Universe’s First Seconds
Learn what happened just a few seconds after the Big Bang at this talk by Dan Hooper, head of the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago, and author of the new book At the Edge of Time.
Ivanna Baranova: 'Confirmation Bias' Book Launch
Ivanna Baranova will celebrate her debut poetry collection, Confirmation Bias—which traverses such themes as feminine conditioning, racialization, Slavic and Latinx diaspora, experimental therapy, and nausea under capitalist hegemony, per press materials—alongside celebrated locals Sarah Galvin, Sonya Vatomsky, Robert Lashley, and Richard Chiem.
Write Our Democracy: Writers Respond
This refreshing series celebrating free speech invites writers and artists to construct, erase, and re-write our country's documentation that enables systems of oppression. Featured guests include Dujie Tahat, Catalina Cantú, Raúl Sánchez, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, and Kristiana Kahakauwila.
FRIDAY-SATURDAY
FOOD & DRINKAmerica's Test Kitchen Seattle Eats Festival
It’s the return of public TV’s favorite cooking show, America’s Test Kitchen, for the Seattle Eats Festival, which is definitely cause for culinary celebration. The two-day event kicks off at Block 41 with ATK’s Cheers to 20 Years anniversary celebration, a party to benefit local nonprofit FareStart (which helps people experiencing homelessness or poverty with training and jobs in the service industry), and celebrate the release of ATK’s new How to Cocktail cookbook. ATK hosts and test cooks will be on hand (including mains Bridget Lancaster and Julia Collin Davison), with well-regarded local mixologists (like Amanda Reed of Heartwood Provisions) and chefs (Adana’s Shota Nakajima among them) serving bites and cocktails. The main event occurs the following day, with a bevy of local restaurants, cafes, eateries, and the chefs behind them offering food and drink alongside an afternoon of ATK-led cooking demos (like a how-to on Torta Caprese Italian chocolate almond cake, which is gluten-free and all for me), cookbook signings, photo ops, and more. This year’s featured guest chef is venerable Iron Chef-famed Masaharu Morimoto, who just opened a restaurant in Chinatown/ID. LEILANI POLK
Medicine Ball: Playwrights v. Poets 2019: The Climate Change Edition
In partnership with Climate Change Theatre Action, playwrights and poets will duke it out in what press materials tout as the "literary battle royale of the century," using inspiration from visual art related to climate change. The winner will be democratically determined by you, the audience.
Novel Nights
Raise money for Seattle's most beloved writing center, Hugo House, at this book club series featuring special guests (including the authors, if they're still alive!). The books you'll discuss this week are The Lord of the Rings (Fri) and The Boys in the Boat (with author Daniel James Brown) (Sat).
Zoee Xiao
Bellevue-based watercolor painter Zoee Xiao uses her traditional Chinese training combined with western techniques in her paintings. Xiao's bio explains that "she grew up in a beautiful southern town in China which raised in her a passion for visual art and nature," and her love of colors and shapes in nature is clear.
Opening Saturday
FRIDAY-SUNDAY
PERFORMANCELocally Sourced
Three local choreographers will present three brand-new works for Pacific Northwest Ballet, all of which pique my curiosity for different reasons. Tony-nominated choreographer Donald Byrd often uses dance to examine acts of violence levied against minorities, so it'll be interesting to see how music by Emmanuel Witzthum, who creates warm, morning-light compositions, works into his vision. Bellevue-based choreographer Eva Stone, who produces the CHOP SHOP: Bodies of Work festival, will have a new piece called F O I L. She often challenges assumptions about gender in her work, and her recent collaboration with Au Collective at PNB & SAM’s Sculptured Dance ruled. And PNB corps member Miles Pertl makes his choreographic debut with music from Stranger Genius Award finalist Jherek Bischoff, whose soaring indie compositions always make me feel better about life. RICH SMITH
Short Run Marathon
Prolong the excitement of the year's biggest indie comics event in Seattle, Short Run, with this exhibition of select festival guests.
Opening Friday
SATURDAY
COMEDYMiscast
In Miscast, improvisers who've never seen a particular movie/TV show will be cast alongside scripted performers playing a character from said movie/show. It's always a goofy, unpredictable time as improvisers muddle through scenes that turn increasingly nonsensical. Tonight's edition will ruin scenes from Friends.
Northwest Chocolate Festival 2019
Now in its 10th year, this gathering of artisan chocolate makers actually extends beyond the Northwest to more than 20 countries around the globe, with exhibitors like beloved Seattle staples Fran’s and Bakery Nouveau, and Portland’s Moonstruck Chocolate and Bees and Beans joining names like Theo and Philo Artisan Chocolates (from the Philippines), Hogarth Craft Chocolates (New Zealand), Al Nassma Chocolate (Dubai), and FuWan Chocolate (Taiwan), among so many others. You’ll find milk and dark chocolate, truffles, bonbons, caramels, molten cakes, decadent desserts, and plenty more, in addition to enjoying demos, educational workshops and seminars, cooking classes, and tastings. Look, it’s a shit-ton of chocolate, okay? How can you argue with that? You can’t. Go get blissed. LEILANI POLK
QiQi Cabaret
Get ready for a night of QTPOC-centered multi-genre performance art, fashion, and heavy house beats. This edition will feature CarLarans, Kylie Mooncakes, Da Qween, LÜCHi, special guest Amora Dior Black, and DJ PAPI.WAV.
Short Run Comix & Arts Festival
In 2018, Stranger lit critic Rich Smith wrote of Short Run: "You’re going. You’re bringing at LEAST $50 cash. You’re picking up new art books, zines, buttons, and little strips of beautiful screen-printed ephemera from more than 270 internationally/nationally/locally-renowned comics creators." All this applies for the ninth edition of Short Run, only it'll be even bigger. This year's artists will include Jasjyot Singh Hans, Glynnis Fawkes, Marc Bell, Malaka Gharib, and Jul Gordon. (Mexican artist Abraham Diaz will unfortunately not be present, having been denied a visa.) There will also be a screening of a collection of the late, lamented Bruce Bickford's animation, courtesy of Clyde Petersen and friends. Head to the afterparty at the Vera Project once you're done shopping.
SUNDAY
FILMSecretary Norman Mineta
Secretary Norman Mineta—who served as the sole Democratic Cabinet Secretary in the Bush administration— shares the details of his modest upbringing; his family’s removal to a WWII mass-incarceration camp; and the instrumental role he played in enacting the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 as a congressman. This special Labor Day documentary screening will be followed by a discussion with Mineta himself.Â
K’URB Street Food Market Pop-Up
Enjoy a curbside feast with "hyperlocal, globally inspired" cuisine from local vendors like T'Juana Tacos, Piroshky Piroshky, BeanFish Taiyaki, Kismet Turkish Cafe and Bakery, and more.
Bon Appétit! 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
'Caravan Chronicles' Open Rehearsal & Sneak Preview
Catch theater simple's production of an interactive play set in and around an Airstream trailer. You're invited to sit in on their rehearsal or join their fundraising preview before they head off to a festival in Turkmenistan. It may seem odd to recommend a rehearsal, but since they haven't announced Seattle performance dates this year, and their production of Master and Margarita last year was extraordinary, this is worth checking out.Â
Dressed to Protest: Amanda Donnan, Ellen Lesperance, Davora M. Lindner
This panel discussion in conjunction with Dress Codes: Ellen Lesperance and Diane Simpson will explore identity and ideology through apparel, focusing on the ways in which clothing can function as a symbolic form of resistance for marginalized communities.Â
An Evening with David Sedaris
He’s back. One of America’s most beloved writers and humorists returns to Seattle for his annual performance. It’s almost a tradition by now, the yearly visit from David Sedaris, as though your favorite uncle or the best friend you wish you had pops in for a night to read from whatever he’s working through. We’re lucky that way. No word yet on whether his material will be old or new (maybe both?) but, like always, he is sure to amuse. KATIE HERZOG
Malaka Gharib: I Was Their American Dream
Malaka Gharib's graphic memoir about growing up in America in a Filipino Egyptian family has been charming the hell out of critics with its portrait of a girl dealing with crushes, code-switching, and culture.
