Our music critics have already chosen the 37 best music shows this week, but now it's our arts critics' turn to pick the best events in their areas of expertise. Here are their picks—from Seattle Restaurant Week to the Lemonhaze Convention and Comedy Festival, and from Seattle Radio Theatre's The War of the Worlds 80th Anniversary Live Broadcast to the Pike Place Zombie Crawl. See them all below, and find even more events on our complete Things To Do calendar.

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MONDAY

READINGS & TALKS

#MyVoteMyVoice
Get revved up for voting with local celebrity guests Washington State Attorney Bob Ferguson, Washington State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro Luna, and others. Meet community activists at information tables and watch winning films from the #MyVoiceMyVote video challenge. Civic-minded doggies welcome!

MONDAY-TUESDAY

READINGS & TALKS

Jill Soloway: She Wants It
Love or hate Transparent, you have to admit Soloway changed television. But I’d much rather talk about her TV adaption of I Love Dick. Have you seen that yet? Oh my god, what is wrong with you? What do you have against satires of the art world, send-ups of sexism, and Kevin Bacon’s bare ass? CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

MONDAY-THURSDAY

ART

Haein Kang: Illusion
Haein Kang, a Ph.D. candidate at DXARTS at the University of Washington, overlays technology onto human experiences and broadcasts the results of this interplay. For Illusion, Kang travels straight into the brain with an interactive installation that is activated by EEG signals. The instructions are simple: “Have a seat. Close your eyes. Focus on your breathing. Your brain waves will produce a rhythm.” KATIE KURTZ
Closing Thursday

MONDAY-FRIDAY

ART

UnWedged: A National Juried Exhibition
UnWedged is Pottery Northwest's annual, national Juried Contemporary Ceramic Exhibition. This time, it will be juried by potter Julia Galloway.
Closing Friday

COMEDY

Pearl Klein: A Body of Work
Enjoy a triptych of Solo Performance Month one-person spectacles: Alicia Radford's show; Pearl Klein's Revolution, or How the Word Turns, a peek into the mind of a poet replete with "industrial-strength language"; and Hannah Rae's contemporary-dance-infused exploration of public and private, the "tension between claustrophobia and agoraphobia," called "inside not out/some never awaken."

MONDAY-SATURDAY

ART

Kate Neckel: Stories
Let your eye rove over the energetic abstraction of Kate Neckel, a longtime resident of New York who's recently relocated to Seattle.
Closing Saturday

MONDAY-SUNDAY

ART

Preston Singletary: Raven's Treasures
Over the course of a career spanning more than 40 years, contemporary Tlingit artist Preston Singletary has become one of the biggest names in the Northwest's thriving, collaborative glass-art community. Challenging the notion that indigenous art must be defined by a relationship to traditional materials, Singletary's work has expanded the notion of what constitutes a "traditional material," creating objects rooted in both history and innovation. Singletary's work is in the collections of many museums around the world. EMILY POTHAST
Closing Sunday

FILM

Seattle Polish Film Festival
This film festival hailing from an important moviemaking center of Eastern Europe always has interesting features to offer.

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 $33, and many restaurants also offer two-course lunches for $18. 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, Agrodolce, and Lark. JULIANNE BELL

TUESDAY

READINGS & TALKS

'Ales from the Crypt
David Wright, who hosts the Thrilling Tales: Story Time for Grown Ups series, will narrate some of the most spine-tingling stories by perhaps the most famous 20th-century horror writer, Stephen King. Fortify your nerves with a drink and listen to this Booktoberfest reading.

Climate Change in History and Law from the Enlightenment to the Courthouse
Climate change might seem like a crisis that has loomed up suddenly, but it's been a little while since people discovered it, and this talk will trace the roots of climate awareness all the way back to the Enlightenment. They'll also give you an overview of the legal issues of climate change, including the current case Juliana v. US. The speakers will be oceanographer LuAnn Thompson, Oregon Attorney Sean Munger, and Washington State Congressman Joe Fitzgibbon, the chair of the House Environment Committee. Your moderator will be researcher Sean P. MacDonald. 

Markus Zusak: Bridge of Clay
The author of the decorated and massively popular The Book Thief is finally back (after 12 years!) with a family saga about five classically educated orphaned brothers and the secret of their father's disappearance. Hear him read.

TUESDAY-SATURDAY

ART

Jenny Schmid: Wildness Lost
Schmid's latest prints enlist the help of mythical creatures like the Wild People and the Mermaid drawn from 16th-century art to flesh out themes of technology and environmental ruin.
Closing Saturday

TUESDAY-SUNDAY

PERFORMANCE

Arms and the Man
George Bernard Shaw's romance comedy, set in the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885, pits a Swiss mercenary on the run against a brave but boring Bulgarian officer as they war for the love of a romantic Bulgarian woman—who begins to prefer the sneaky Swiss. David Armstrong, formerly of the 5th Avenue Theater, will direct.

Cirque du Soleil: VOLTA
Every Cirque du Soleil show I’ve experienced has abounded with breathtaking, eye-popping visuals as well as awe-inspiring feats of movement by Cirque’s cast of dancers, physical actors, athletes, and circus performers (acrobats, contortionists, aerialists, and the like), all within a big tent. The subject matter of VOLTA, Cirque’s 41st production, involves extreme sports, touching on (but not limited to) shape diving, BMX, and rope skipping. One fan said it was “absolutely spectacular," so don't miss this Marymoor Park run. LEILANI POLK

Come From Away
What happens when kind island people who live in the poorest province in Canada realize that they have to play host to a bunch of irritated, scared, and stranded "plane people" who nearly outnumber them? They help. Instantly, food comes off the store shelves, the hockey rink becomes cold storage, and every home's a hotel. An indicative line, given by an actor playing a clerk: "Thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart. Would you like to come back to my house for a shower?" This is the strong, uplifting premise of Come From Away. Normally, I'm a stone when it comes to musicals. But by minute six or seven, I was smiling at all the small town charm and rooting for the spirit these people projected. RICH SMITH

Hostages
Yussef El Guindi won a Stranger Genius Award in 2015 for his ability to write clearly and honestly about moments of “displacement and discomfort—whether geographical, cultural, or sexual.” His genius for writing about discomfort will certainly be on full display in this new production of Hostages, a play about two college professors chained to a radiator after being taken hostage in a war zone. Expect lots of dark humor and intense drama. RICH SMITH

Incident at Vichy
Arthur Miller's play depicts the plight of a group of men plucked off the street and waiting their unknown fate in a police station in German-occupied France. Kelly Kitchens from Seattle Shakespeare and Seattle Public Theater will helm a cast from UW School of Drama, bringing this disturbingly relevant piece about widespread evil and the individual's response.

Oslo
Oslo won a Tony for its dramatization of the top-secret peace negotiations between Rabin and Arafat in the 1990s. The diplomatic talks were, weirdly, orchestrated by young Norwegian power-couple Mona Juul and Terje Rød-Larsen. Expect lots of long gray coats, wary handshakes, dark humor, and fine acting from Christine Marie Brown and Avery Clark. RICH SMITH

A People's History
Mike Daisey is back in town, as he often is, with a pretty simple but brilliant bit. He's going to read you some pages from Good Will Hunting's favorite history book—Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. Then he's going to read you some pages from his high-school history book. Then we're all going to sit there and have a little reflection session on the difference between history as told by the conquerors and history as told from the perspective of the dispossessed. RICH SMITH

This Is Halloween
It’s Tim Burton’s classic The Nightmare Before Christmas repackaged as a semi-scandalous spectacle for the masses. The audience eats chicken skewers and knocks back $10 cocktails while they watch Tim Keller as Jack “the Pumpkin King” Skellington sing and dance, cabaret-style, along with Dave Crellin/Armitage Shanks, Quinn Vaira, and others, while a ghoulish orchestra pumps out the show’s signature tunes. Despite the glitzy and consumerist exterior, the crew manages to smuggle a complicated cabaret about the horror of fixed identities into the unpretentious space of the Triple Door. RICH SMITH

WEDNESDAY

FILM

Schlock and Awe: Reagan-Era Horror
Deregulation and out-of-control greed were not the only horrors of President Ronald Reagan's reign. Northwest Film Forum celebrates slashers, mutants, and gore in a deep dive into the paranoia and excess (and mullets) of the era, and boy does that sound like a fun escape from our own hellscape. Catch the last films around Halloween, like tonight's bonkers fantasy-horror The Evil Dead II.

PERFORMANCE

Call Your Girlfriend Live!
Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman's "highbrow and lowbrow" political and pop-cultural podcast will be incarnated live onstage.

READINGS & TALKS

Chelsea Clinton: Start Now!
Clinton the Younger will sign her book Start Now!, an inspirational book about activism geared toward young fry.

Elaine Weiss: The Woman's Hour
In The Woman's Hour, journalist Elaine Weiss captures the pivotal summer of 1920, when the fight for women's suffrage came down to Tennessee's "yes" vote on the 19th Amendment. Learn more at this Town Hall event.

WEDNESDAY-SATURDAY

PERFORMANCE

The Turn of the Screw
In 1954, English composer Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) premiered his opera based on Henry James's ghost story The Turn of the Screw. Its music is darkly gorgeous, jolting, manic at times, and often outright scary. In key sequences involving the children in the story, the atonal sounds float like a ghost in a room of mirrors. Anyone familiar with the Portishead track “Cowboys” will already have a good sense of how this echo-stark opera sounds. Because the opera is as much about ghosts as sexual abuse of women and children, it provides new and important meanings for our #MeToo moment. CHARLES MUDEDE
No performance on Thursday

WEDNESDAY-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 is 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. It first premiered last year for a sold-out run at ACT, and returns this year surely with a few of its kinks worked out. The chemistry between BenDeLaCreme and Scott Shoemaker alone is worth the price of admission. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

Night Parade
The oldest Asian American theater group in the Pacific Northwest is teaming up with one of the area's youngest Asian American-led theater groups to bring you an immersive theatrical experience that sounds perfect for people who want to indulge in the season’s devilry. The drama, which will unfold at a secret TBA location in Seattle, follows a demon-obsessed artist named Shunkuno Arashi, whose life story is partially based on Yayoi Kusama (Instagram it), as well as a Japanese folktale about demons parading down the street and stealing people. So, uh, keep your head on a swivel. RICH SMITH

A Thousand Splendid Suns
Based on Khaled Hosseini's best-selling novel, Ursula Rani Sarma's play A Thousand Splendid Suns shows what happens when two women, Laila and Mariam, join in unbreakable friendship in wartime Kabul.

THURSDAY

FILM

Night Heat: The 41st Film Noir Series
They proliferated in anxious postwar America and still occasionally return to brood and smolder onscreen: films noirs, born of the chiaroscuro influence of immigrant German directors and the pressure of unique American fears. Once again, SAM will screen nine hard-boiled, moody crime classics like On Dangerous Ground, screening tonight.

Toxic-Free Future Presents "The Devil We Know"
Corporations do not exist to make the world a better place. They exist to make a profit. And making money make more money often requires making the world a worse place. This is The Devil We Know, a documentary about a huge US corporation, DuPont, and the social costs (which are negative) of a class of products it manufactures (Teflon kitchenware). To make and sell these things cheaply, it has to shift a large part of the cost of production to waste, which is mostly free but also often toxic. The doc is about how this waste affected factory workers in and residents around the corporation’s production site. An economics that ignores the laws of thermodynamics will always privatize profits and socialize negative externalities. CHARLES MUDEDE

FOOD & DRINK

Author Talk: Copenhagen Food with Trine Hahnemann
Copenhagen, Denmark's capital city, is a hub for gastronomic pleasures, including its burgeoning street-food scene. It's also the hometown of chef and food writer Trine Hahnemann, who shares 70 recipes inspired by Copenhagen's leisurely breakfasts, picnics, holiday dinners, and more in her new cookbook, Copenhagen Food. Meet the author and get your copy signed.

PERFORMANCE

MUGZ: A Drag Show
Americano will host this themeless drag night where styles can be diverse and out-there. For the first iteration, expect jaw-dropping insanity from "monthly mugz"  Christian Brown, Michete, SHE, and Uh Oh, as well as (tonight) guest mugz Butch Alice and Monday Mourning.

Seattle Radio Theatre: "The War of the Worlds" 80th Anniversary Live Broadcast
You know the story: When it first aired on the radio in 1938, The War of the Worlds scared the living shit out of people who thought the hour-long broadcast of H.G. Wells’s book brought to dramatic aural life was real, mostly because of how it was presented (odd news bulletins that interrupted the program, a supposedly live report with Martians at the scene, more alarming news bulletins involving an alien invasion). Obviously, this could never happen today, but it’s still fun to look back and remember those literally dark (pre–TV/social-media/electronics in general) days. For this special 80th anniversary celebration, Town Hall, Seattle Radio Theatre, and KIRO Radio have banded together to stage a live broadcast of the classic. It will feature live music and sounds effects, plus the voice powers of Dave Ross and other KIRO Radio hosts along with some Seattle Radio Theatre mainstays. LEILANI POLK

READINGS & TALKS

Ampersand Live
Forterra presents Ampersand Live, a multimedia storytelling event "about people and place." The list of (all-local!) performers—with filmmakers, artists, writers, musicians, and more—boasts the musicians the Westerlies, activist Nikkita Oliver, dancer and choreographer Zoe Scofield, wildlife photographer David Moskowitz, artist/activist C. Davida Ingram, author Donna Miscolta, singer Tomo Nakayama, and others.

Gage Georgetown Calling: Art Lecture Series with Emily Pothast
Emily Pothast, artist, art scholar, curator, and co-founder of the bands Hair and Space Museum and Midday Veil, will lecture on diverse, unusual topics in art history, such as tonight's "Art of the Apocalypse." 

Lori Dorfman: How Typical News Narratives Undermine the Public’s Health
As part of the UW Lecture Series titled "Bunk," Dr. Dorfman of the Berkeley Media Studies Group, a project of the Public Health Institute, will explain how myths of the American individual can harm public health by disregarding influences larger than a single person.

Michelle Bailat-Jones with Anca Szilagyi and Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum
Flannery O'Connor Award-winner Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum (awarded for her short-fiction collection What We Do With the Wreckage) will read new work alongside Christopher Doheny Award-winning novelist Michelle Bailat-Jones and Anca L. Szilágyi.

Seattle Arts & Lectures: Barbara Kingsolver
Acclaimed novelist Barbara Kingsolver takes the long view. About her new novel, Unsheltered, Kingsolver says, “We’re living through a scary historical moment when the most basic agreements about who we are as citizens, and how we’ll succeed in the world, are suddenly unraveling. It isn’t the first time. People are such interesting animals. Unsheltered speaks to these moments, and uses the lens of unravelings past to ask where we might be headed.” Sometimes, the long view is exactly what we need to make sense of the present, and Kingsolver will be speaking about her new work, and her life as a writer and a reader, when she comes to Seattle. KATIE HERZOG

Shelley Jackson: Riddance
The author of The Melancholy of Anatomy, Half Life, and Patchwork Girl will read from her new work Riddance; or, The Sybil Joines Vocational School for Ghost Speakers & Hearing-Mouth Children. Children with speech impediments at a school in Massachusetts learn how let the dead speak through them in this assemblage-style novel told through "transcripts, found documents, and archival material."

THURSDAY-SATURDAY

PERFORMANCE

Anansi and the Halfling
A black millennial navigates the classroom and the realm of the gods in this song-, puppetry-, and dance-filled take on African storytelling and the discovery of one's people's history, written by Madison Jade Jones.

Andrew Schneider: AFTER
Andrew Schneider and his frequent sound designer, Bobby McElver, created this compelling piece of avant-garde theater with one question in mind: "How can we induce a collective hallucination?" The show, which premiered at EMPAC, asks some pretty fundamental questions. Who are you? How did you get here? And where will you go AFTER? (Get it?) Enjoy state-of-the-art light and sound effects as the cast tackles that series of linear questions in the least linear way you could possibly imagine. RICH SMITH

I and You
Two teenagers—a boy and a deathly ill girl—argue and bond in Laura Gunderson's "ode to youth, life, love, and the strange beauty of human connectedness."

Vinegar Tom
In Caryn Churchilll's play set in Puritan New England, a mother and daughter are accused of witchcraft after the daughter refuses a man's advances. Kaytlin McIntyre (Nadeshiko, Zapoi, The Lost Girls) will direct this Cornish production.

THURSDAY-SUNDAY

FILM

NFFTY
The "young filmmaker's Cannes"—Charles Mudede called it "world-class"—this festival assembles the best films made by directors under 25. See works by promising cineastes who will make you feel very old.

PERFORMANCE

A Bright Room Called Day
Unsurprisingly, theater directors have been looking to plays about the rise and reign and fascism to warn us of our society's possible fate. The Williams Project describes the set-up of Tony Kushner's A Bright Room Called Day: "A new president has just come to power by the slimmest of margins. Though his rhetoric is alarming, democratic institutions are strong and the opposition is looking good heading into the next election. This is Berlin, in 1932." Kushner (Angels in America) portrays activists and creative types trying to come to terms with their country's turn towards authoritarianism, weighing the ethical and material costs of cooperation versus rebellion. If you're suitably inspired and alarmed by the drama, the Williams Project has a plan: It will put audience members in touch with local activists in order to facilitate civic action.

FRIDAY

COMEDY

Andy Kindler
Bitter, acerbic comedian Andy Kindler (Everybody Loves Raymond, The Daily Show) is also a funny and frequent tweeter: "When you hear phone recordings of Trump and Cohen it's scary to realize that Cohen was the brains of the operation." But of course, he'll be way more fun live.

Can You Handle It?
Two of the funniest improv comedians around, Graham Downing and Michael Castillo, will host people in the community for "a big dumb gay talk show" about first crushes and other fun stuff. Bonus! There will be a special bell straight guests can ring if they don't understand queer slang, and they will get a gracious explanation. Come in costume for the Halloween edition. 

FOOD & DRINK

Alice B. Toklas Tour and Dinner
The Hotel Sorrento lays claim to the peculiar honor of having been deemed one of the 13 most haunted hotels in the world by USA Today. Why? It’s said that the specter of late eccentric socialite Alice B. Toklas lurks there; she’s known mostly as the muse and lover of Gertrude Stein (not to mention the progenitor of an apparently killer pot brownie recipe). Toklas lived briefly in Seattle as a teen, and her apparition has been glimpsed roaming the halls of the Sorrento’s fourth floor dressed in flowing white. At this spooky event, the hotel will pay homage to its favorite “permanent resident” with a tour of some of the sites of reported paranormal activity, followed by a prix-fixe dinner inspired by Toklas’s eponymous cookbook. (No word on whether her famous brownies will be served.) JULIANNE BELL

Kristen Miglore: Food52 Genius Desserts
When Food52 creative director Kristen Miglore says the desserts in her new cookbook are “genius,” she’s not using the word lightly: They’re culled from her James Beard Award–winning column Genius Recipes, in which she curates particularly innovative or time-tested dishes. Expect sweet confections that are Mensa-worthy brilliant, from chocolate chip cookie brittle to a foolproof vegan chocolate cake to Dorie Greenspan’s famous “world peace cookies” and beyond. Miglore will discuss her favorite desserts and her criteria for choosing recipes as well as sign books purchased onsite, and guests can try treats from the book. JULIANNE BELL

HALLOWEEN

Pike Place Zombie Crawl
Dress in your best undead threads and most morbid makeup for this zombie crawl, in which you'll shamble through Pike Place Market in search of themed libations at participating restaurants and bars. Drinks will include the Bloody Eyeball Float from Shug's Soda Fountain + Ice Cream, a Blood Orange Mule from Rachel's Ginger Beer, the El Diablo with Hellfire Bitters from Maximilien, and more.

Prohibition Sucks: A Vampire Speakeasy
If a group of 1920s vampires found themselves in search of some illicit sanguine spirits, they'd seek out this fancy Prohibition-era speakeasy shindig, which calls for a "Great Gatsby black tie" dress code and features live music, passed hors d'oeuvres by chef Shawn Martin, and classic era-appropriate craft cocktails "with a vampire twist" from Seattle Bartending. Proceeds benefit NW Honey Bee Habitat Restoration.

PERFORMANCE

The Seattle Process with Brett Hamil
Described as "Seattle's only intentionally funny talk show" and "a mudpie lobbed into the halls of power," The Seattle Process with Brett Hamil offers politics, exasperation, information, and comedy. In October, for the show's third anniversary, Hamil will elicit thoughts and wisdom from Joe Nguyen, the endearingly foul-mouthed (and Stranger-approved) state senator candidate from the 34th; Sarah Smith, whom The Stranger endorsed for US Congressional District WA-9, and Seattle Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda. Hamil also claims he'll be dishing on "leaked proposals from the Innovation Advisory Council (The Durkan Platinum Donor Panel) showing their plans to "disrupt" homelessness in lieu of a modest tax on the top 3% of corporations."

West End Girls: A Drag Spooktacular
West Seattle's reliably weird pageant, hosted by Cookie Couture, will pull out extra tricks for Halloween. See the finest looks from Betty Wetter, Fraya Love, Hellen Tragedy, Londyn Bradshaw, and Old Witch.

READINGS & TALKS

Mia Ayumi Malhotra: Isako Isako
Malhotra's collection Isako Isako, which nabbed the 2017 Alice James Award, addresses myth, war, exile, and intergenerational memory. Hear her read at this book launch.

FRIDAY-SATURDAY

ART

Ken Barnes: oYo
Former rock climber and current sculptor Ken Barnes shapes elegant, simple objects in beautiful stone. In his new show, he concentrates on the "oYo form," which he's been exploring for the past 20 years. The oYo has two vertical holes drilled through the stone, offering a window into its core.
Closing Saturday

FESTIVALS

Lemonhaze Convention and Comedy Festival
This event capitalizes on the natural bond of cannabis and comedy, pairing a convention filled with educational seminars and panels with a block party filled with live performances and vendors selling everything from buds to vape pens. Doug Benson, Jessimae Peluso, Donnel Rawlings, and Judah Friedlander will headline the comedy portion, and speakers will include Stranger staff writer and resident cannabis expert Lester Black, who will give a talk on journalism's crucial role in the legal weed industry.

HALLOWEEN

Seduction 2018
Does Halloween give you sexy shivers? Submerge yourself in a haunted shipwreck at the Seattle Erotic Art Festival's party and enjoy dancing, go-go hotties, great performers like Ms. Briq House, the Shanghai Pearl, Whisper de Corvo, and others, plus treats, swag, and salacious art that'll make you sweat. Doll yourself up in your most opulently sinister threads and compete in the costume contest. Your ticket price will help fund the festival next year.

PERFORMANCE

FRESH: The One-Year Anniversary
Seattle is a drag capital. We've nominated many girls and ghouls to participate in the Hunger Games of Drag (RuPaul's Drag Race) and the Hunger Games of Spooky Drag (Dragula). But Seattle's booming scene is more often defined by drag created in opposition to glitzy TV drag—even our queens who do get on these shows tend to flip off convention (hello, BenDeLaCreme)—and Arson Nicki's new(ish) drag show Fresh is the best place in Seattle to find the latest drag talent riotously flipping off convention. CHASE BURNS

Parliament Square
James Fritz's play, critically admired in the UK, follows an unstable young mother who commits an extreme act of protest that, instead of igniting revolutionary fervor, is largely ignored and leaves her life ruined. Will she stick to her (unspecified) political principles? Pony World Theatre will stage the drama's US debut.

RE/33: 33 Fainting Spells Revisited
Dance company 33 Fainting Spells, co-founded in 1994 by Seattle choreographers Dayna Hanson and Gaelen Hanson, boasted six evening-length dance theater works and two short dance films that used "polystylistic movement" with source material drawn from literature, film, and culture. RE/33, a new cross-disciplinary project, revisits the company's work.

FRIDAY-SUNDAY

FILM

Friday Harbor Film Festival
Tip: take advantage of any excuse you have to travel up to the San Juans. The Friday Harbor Film Festival is a pretty good one, with documentaries focusing on Pacific Rim topics from culture to environmentalism, as well as discussions and special events.

FOOD & DRINK

Espelette Week
Renee Erickson's French Atlantic-inspired oyster bar will celebrate espelette, a vibrant red pepper that is traditionally strung up to dry at the end of the summer in the French village of Espelette and the Basque regions of France and Spain, with special menu items this week.

SATURDAY

ART

Eirik Johnson
What motivates people to carve their initials into the bark of a living tree? This fall, local publisher Minor Matters will be releasing PINE, a book of new photography by Neddy-award winning artist Eirik Johson. For this body of work, Johnson has photographed found instances of tree graffiti, considering the circumstances that might have prompted people to leave such marks. To accompany these images, Johnson has commissioned a digital mixtape by an exciting roster of musicians including SassyBlack, Newaxeyes, Whiting Tennis, and Tenderfoot. This exhibition timed to the book's release will showcase Johnson's work in color photography, illuminated light boxes, and sound. EMILY POTHAST
Opening Saturday

Lusio Lights
If you've never seen the rare tropical plants of the Volunteer Park Conservatory illuminated by light artists, now's your chance: This is the time they'll host their popular Lusio event. Make it extra special by wearing your Halloween costume.

COMEDY

Book Club: The Holiday Party
This improv performance centers on the story of "a group of well-off mid-thirties adults" who have gathered for their monthly book club meeting "in the Nice part of town on a regular night, after their Barre classes and upscale juice crawls." Audience members are asked to bring a book to the performance, which the improvisers will then discuss, with "no self-awareness, an entire bottle of wine, and an absolute lack of critical skills."

The Nightmare Society
The Nightmare Society tells the story of a commune of artists who act out your nightmares at the sound of a grandfather clock. Explore your deepest fears while intermittently giggling at the revival of this hit improvised horror show, which always comes up with bizarre and compelling imagery.

FILM

Sámi Mini Film Festival
Spend a day acquainting yourself with Sámi (indigenous Northern Scandinavian) culture with documentaries and short fiction films from Norway, Sweden, and Finland Sápmi (the name given to traditional Sámi territory). After watching such films as Kaisa's Enchanted Forest (the longest offering, at 86 minutes) and I Will Always Love You Kingen, stay on for a panel discussion.

FOOD & DRINK

Chocotober with Chef Matt Broussard and Chef Kelsi Billedo
You won't be spoiling your dinner with chocolate, because your dinner will be made of chocolate. This installment is brought to you by Chef Matt Broussard and Chef Kelsi Billedo.

HALLOWEEN

BeautyBoiz go BOO, pt. 4
Make your Halloween as queer as possible with Forward Flux and BeautyBoiz, featuring Kimber Shade's runway show, dance by Purple Lemonade and others, Rajah Makonnen's large-scale digital projection art, and a DJ duel between DJ Ricki Leigh and DJ Reeces Pieces. There'll be plenty of cherished queens to lead the festivities in gory, heroic, fantasy, alien, and fetish drag: Sativa, Hera Diamandis, Old Witch, Better Wetter, and many others.

Fremonster Spectacular
Halloween party people will be glad to know that Fremont's annual Halloweekend bash will return with even more DJs, live performances, tricks, treats, goblins, ghouls, and inventive booze creations than ever before. Expect Valtesse go-go dancers, fog machines in every corner, bondage and suspension performances from Seattle Shibari, live sets from DJs Jeromy Nail and Kipprawk, a costume contest, and a whole lot more.

HAUNT: The Ultimate Halloween Bash
Shake and shimmy the night away with 2,000 of your closest friends at an incredible Seattle Center spectacle that claims to be this city's "largest, hottest, and most anticipated" Halloween party. There will be a high-stakes costume contest with a $1,000 prize for the best overall winner, so put some effort into it if you want to fund your holiday booze budget.

Ninth Annual Emergency Room Costume Crawl
The goal of this bar crawl isn't to actually send anyone to the emergency room (drink water and eat snacks!), but the more your costume looks like you escaped from the hospital (or is by other means impressively spooky), the better chance you have of winning a $500 cash prize or a $250 gift certificate to the Dunbar Room. The participating bars (Vito's, Little Neon Taco, the Hideout , and the Dunbar Room—all of which are also in the general vicinity of the cluster of ERs on First Hill) will each feature its own special offerings of food, drink specials, and music.

PERFORMANCE

Aviona | Face the Strange | griot
Stage manager/singer/actor Aviona M. Brown will express herself as a "Mexican girl in this Black-American obsessed world"; B. Alex Reed of Flint, Michigan, will perform a piece on "self, transition, and the great [un]known"; and  the Gregory Award-nominated Aishe Keita, who was in Seattle Rep's excellent Familiar and Book-It's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, will do something as yet unspecified but probably worth watching. All are taking the stage as part of Solo Performance Month.

READINGS & TALKS

Community Book Discussion and Author's Book Talk: Abdi Nor Iftin
Abdi Nor Iftin’s story provides more evidence for the argument that immigrants are the best Americans. Iftin fled civil war in Somalia for Kenya, where he eventually won a lottery to gain entry into the United States. He escaped war, famine, and the grip of al-Shabaab, which targeted him for openly aspiring to live in the US. (He loved this country so much, he nicknamed himself “Abdi the American.”) On his quest to get to a country he knew only from the movies, he sent dispatches to This American Life and the BBC, providing firsthand accounts of war and a complex immigration process. His new memoir, Call Me American, collects these accounts and fleshes out the story of an immigrant who achieved his dream, and of a country that’s better for it. RICH SMITH

Dr. Marie Rose Wong: Building Tradition: Pan-Asian Seattle and Life in the Residential Hotels
Get to know a Seattle neighborhood replete with historical treasures at this Town Hall event. Dr. Marie Rose Wong, associate professor at Seattle University, will tell the 157-year story of the International District through an account of its hotels.

Frankenreads: Mary Shelley Celebration
In 1816, three friends decided to see who could write the scariest story. One of them, Mary, 18 years old, then had a dream about a doctor who created a sentient being out of scraps of dead human parts—a being that turned on its creator. Mary turned elements of this dream into her story, published as Frankenstein in 1818, the year she turned 20. It’s now been 200 years since Mary Shelley invented the sci-fi genre. On the bicentennial of her masterpiece, UW professors and others invite you to this free community event, with activities, discussions, coffee, tea, and muffins. So as not to embarrass yourself in conversation, remember: Frankenstein is the doctor, not the monster. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

SATURDAY-SUNDAY

ART

Between Bodies
In February 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—an international body of climate scientists—issued a statement declaring that global warming is “unequivocal,” and the rise in global temperatures is “very likely” the result of human activity. At the time, this was the most strongly worded assessment the IPCC had ever issued. Since then, the warnings have continued to ratchet up, as has governmental complacency. We need to adopt new ways to address climate change before it really, truly, absolutely, unequivocally is too late. This exhibition includes queer, feminist, and indigenous perspectives that are absolutely critical to an expansive view. Participating artists include Caitlin Berrigan, Abraham Avnisan, Candice Lin with English artist Patrick Staff, micha cárdenas, Carolina Caycedo, Swiss artist Ursula Biemann, and German artist Susanne Winterling. KATIE KURTZ
Opening Saturday

FESTIVALS

GeekGirlCon
For the eighth year in a row, GeekGirlCon will host two days of fun, empowering, and inclusive events for geek girls (and all gender identities) of all ages, including panel discussions, games, science experiments, and vendors. In doing so, they'll also call attention to the underrepresentation of women in the tech and gaming world. There are tons of great events to look forward to this year, but some highlights include a Kick-Off Party at Optimism Brewing, a meet-and-greet with queer cosplayer Jay Justice, and a Build a Robot workshop with Black Girls Code.

SUNDAY

COMEDY

Improvised Chekhov
Once again evincing impressive ambition, this improv company will act out scenes based on your suggestions and classic Russian plays like Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard, or The Three Sisters. Since the drama of Anton Chekhov relies on deep character development, complex social mores, and lingering melancholy, these performances—if successful—will truly be coups de thèâtre.

Lindsay Taylor | Graham Downing | Dog Mom: Your Canine and Christ
This Solo Performance Month trio of comedians is a winner: Grace Penzell will inhabit her alter ego, the hyper-Christian Dog Mom; improv genius Graham Downing will do something unpredictable; and...actually we don't know yet what Lindsay Taylor will do, but we're sure it will be great.

READINGS & TALKS

Calvin Gimpelevich: Invasions
Seattle author Calvin Gimpelevich is out with a new collection of 15 short stories, Invasions, which cover "transness, class, bodies, and power within powerlessness." Hear the author read some selections.

C.J. Chivers: The Fighters
War correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner C.J. Chivers will offer perspectives from six of the 2.7 million Americans who've seen combat in Afghanistan and Iraq at this Town Hall presentation of his book The Fighters. Hear stories from a fighter pilot, a corpsman, a scout helicopter pilot, a grunt, an infantry officer, and a Special Forces sergeant.

National Geographic Live: Social By Nature
Broaden your horizons and discover social mammals close to us on the family tree, like chimps, or a little farther along the branch, like wolves. Join Ronan Donovan for a talk on animal observations.