Our music critics have already chosen the 31 best concerts this week, but now it's our arts critics' turn to pick the best events in their areas of expertise. Here are their picks for the best events in every genre—from the closing week of Here Lies Love to Peaches Christ: 9 to 5 Inches, and from Pride Film Fest to the Washington Brewers' Festival. See them all below, and find even more events on our complete Things To Do calendar.


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

Get all this and more on the free Stranger Things To Do mobile app—available now on the App Store and Google Play.

MONDAY

FILM

Collide-O-Scope
Created and hosted by Michael Anderson and Shane Wahlund, Collide-O-Scope is the cavalcade of curated video delights that takes over Re-bar twice a month. The show keeps getting better, with thematic suites, hallucinatory repetition, and inspired guests. Perennial bonuses: free popcorn and Red Vines, and multiple prizes waiting to be won via drawings throughout the show. Tonight is the "Nasty Ladies" edition, which will "be brimming with Strong Dames! Dangerous Women! Trend Setters! All Nasty Ladies from Eartha Kitt to Joan Crawford to Wendy O. Williams to Pia Zadora to Joan Blondell!"

READINGS & TALKS

Anthony Geist and Carolyn Tipton
Translators Anthony Geist and Carolyn Tipton will share their work, including Tipton's latest project: Returnings: Poems of Love and Distance by renowned Spanish poet Rafael Alberti, which won the Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation. Christopher Merrill, the judge who awarded the prize, wrote that "in Returning, the first translation into English of Rafael Alberti’s favorite book, we are treated to an essay on the imaginative possibilities of a great poet, long exiled from his native land, turning memory into verse, recovering from the past everything that counts: love and friendship and the landscapes that shaped him."

LGBTQ Hate Crimes: Seattle Isn't Immune
Horribly, hate crimes have increased across the board in recent times—and LGBTQ people (particularly those of color) were the most likely to be affected as of 2015, according to FBI reporting. Even in Seattle, despite our progressive and queer-friendly reputation, anti-LGBTQ hate crimes have risen. Find out from LGBTQ leaders what you can do to protect yourself and your neighbors from violence and oppression.

Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland
Stranger Genius Award nominee Neal Stephenson is known for writing big, brainy, brilliant science-fiction novels. Nicole Galland is known for writing big, brainy books of historical fiction and also humorous books about dogs. They combine their powers in The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., "a near-future thriller" whose premise recalls the shadow government intrigue of Men in Black, but with wizards instead of aliens. RICH SMITH

MONDAY-TUESDAY

ART

Push/Pull Book Club Annual Show
After several months spent discussing Nisi Shawl's steampunk sci-fi novel Everfair (which imagines an alternative history of the Congo, wherein utopian land bought from King Leopold II attracts native populations of the Congo and escaped slaves from around the world) artists are presenting work inspired by the book's themes.
This exhibit closes Tuesday.

FOOD & DRINK

Bastille Café & Bar Rooftop Dinner Series
Enjoy the warm summer weather (and clear views of the Ballard ship canal, mountains and the sound) at Bastille's twice-weekly rooftop dinner series. Each dinner starts with a rooftop garden tour and featuring a multi-course, family-style meal with wine pairings.

MONDAY-FRIDAY

QUEER

2nd Annual Dine with Pride
Pride is just over the horizon, folks, which means it's time for people to slap a rainbow flag on things they want to sell you. This lovely dining special, however, is not that. The Pride Foundation, which puts on the annual parade, has partnered with a bunch of awesome local restaurants to do a Dine Around–style prix-fixe special, with all proceeds going toward that big, crazy, festive parade we all love so much but rarely want to pay for. This two-birds-with-one-stone solution solves that problem, because we always want to eat delicious food from places like Pettirosso, Outlier, and Taylor Shellfish. Restaurants offer a $15, $25, or $35 option, depending on what fits their style, and the money goes to making sure that, come Sunday, June 25, your streets will be filled with marching drag queens, dykes on bikes, and all manner of other LGBTQ people whose loudly proclaimed existence makes stodgy Republican dudes and closeted bros go into a tizzy and start mumbling about "straight pride parades." TOBIAS COUGHLIN-BOGUE

MONDAY-SATURDAY

THEATER & DANCE

Lydia
I am pleased to be one more critic acclaiming Octavio Solis's Lydia, a Mexican American border ballad about a family screaming and beating and nearly blowing itself up as everyone slowly discovers the tangled (and incestuous!) roots of their dysfunction. Lots of credit is due to the poetry of Solis's dialogue and monologues. But the incredible cast, under the direction of Sheila Daniels, deserves just as much credit. It's rare to see a cast as cohesive as this one—they could have produced this thing in a tin can, and they still would have had the audience crying weird tears. RICH SMITH
No performances Tuesday or Wednesday.

MONDAY-SUNDAY

THEATER & DANCE

Into the Deeps
Explore political and socioeconomic structures...at the bottom of the ocean, with an enthusiastic physical theatre ensemble set to impress you with their dancing, clowning, and design.
No performances Tuesday or Wednesday.

Seattle International Dance Festival
For 16 days, dancers from around the world (and some local stars) will perform in indoor and outdoor venues. Some events will be free and all-ages. In general, the focus is on innovation and diversity; in a Stranger article from 2013, Melody Datz Hansen observed the festival's "local spotlight" show and commended its wide range of choreography and costume, from "classical moves" made "new and rad" to "upsetting" lurching by a dancer in a potato-penis suit. If your June is shaping up to lack a certain amount of excitement, this might be one way to remedy that.

TUESDAY

RESISTANCE & SOLIDARITY

The Stranger's Resist/Recharge with Northwest Harvest
Is healthy food a right or a privilege? You’re invited to be a part of a lively and interactive dialog concerning the challenges our communities face regarding poverty, health and nutrition. Members of Northwest Harvest will set context for the barriers that low-income families and individuals face in terms of food and other basic needs. The panel will address the potential catastrophic effects the president’s budget has on our current social safety nets. Discuss the larger impact childhood nutrition has on our schools, our communities and our economies. Then showcase new and innovative local programs that actively promote health and nutrition to those most in need.

TUESDAY-SUNDAY

THEATER & DANCE

Cabaret
Cabaret is the best musical of all time, because Kander and Ebb were geniuses and because it neatly solves the problem inherent in musicals (why are these people breaking into song?). Its bawdy, funny, hedonistic songs aren't indulgent for indulgence's sake. What goes on inside the Kit Kat Klub, in Berlin in 1931, is ignorant bliss on amphetamines, a carnival of humanity not aware what's coming their way. In the U.S. of 2017, we seem to be living in the shadow of creeping autocracy, so what better time is there to go see a musical about characters living in the shadows of creeping autocracy? CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

Dreamgirls
Village Theatre presents Tony- and Grammy Award-winning musical Dreamgirls (not officially about the Supremes' rise to fame, but containing many parallels) which was made extremely popular by the 2006 film starring Jennifer Hudson, Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy, and the inimitable Queen B. Come for Motown tunes, commentary about celebrity, dramatic ultimatums, and flashy dance numbers.

Romy and Michele's High School Reunion
Rich Smith writes that Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (this year's world premiere at the 5th Ave) "should be as cult-y and funny as Robin Schiff's script."

WEDNESDAY

COMMUNITY & CIVICS

Seattle Candidate Jeopardy
Got some burning questions for our mayoral and city council candidates? Go to this forum organized by the Greater Seattle Neighborhood Action Coalition - Communities of Resistance as well as Seattle Weekly and MAPS AMEN and ask the political hopefuls what you need to know.

Stop That Plane! Challenging the Travel Ban
Trump's travel ban may not hold up in court, but it's already done plenty of damage to families, workers, students—and Americans in the tourist trades. These individuals surely haven't absorbed the brunt of the suffering, but it's worth noting that for every foreigner who decides to visit a friendlier country, the American economy loses a little bit of dough. Attorney General (and Stranger crush) Bob Ferguson and Port Commissioner Courtney Gregoire will be the guests of honor at this year's Greater Seattle Business Association tourism lunch. Network and learn.

READINGS & TALKS

Kei Miller: Augustown
Every 10 years since 1994, the Poetry Book Society (founded by T.S. Eliot and Sir Basil Blackwell, among others) selects 20 poets that they expect will occupy and define the literary landscape for the next decade. Among those chosen in 2014 was Kei Miller, who in the same year—for the collection The Cartographer Tries to Map A Way to Zion—also won the Forward Prize for Poetry and was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. There's a reason why so many notable figures are looking to Miller as the future of poetry: he reaches people. He has a rapt audience and many types of literature to explore. His latest work, Augustown, is his third novel. If it's anything like his other work, it will be at once personal, political, philosophical, spiritual, and historical.

Lit Fix 18: Anniversary Remix
Lit Fix is Seattle's "dive-friendliest" reading and music series, which brings together books, bars, and bands all in one place. This time, hear from four notable local writers: essayist and fiction writer Kathleen Alcala, novelist Laurie Frankel, poet Robert Lashley, and the former program director of Hugo House, Brian McGuigan. The proceeds will benefit ReWA, the Refugee Women's Alliance.

Pundamonium: Pun Slam Competition
Puns are the highest and lowest form of humor: They somehow refresh the materiality of language, reminding you that a word is a figure, a thing that can be looked at from several different angles. So whoever wins the pun competition Pundamonium will likely be one of Seattle’s great crafters of language, both in a Renaissance fair kind of way but also in a literary genius kind of way. The contestants will be chosen from the audience on a first-come, first-served basis, so the title could go to anyone. RICH SMITH

Sherman Alexie: You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me
When Sherman Alexie received the news of his mom's death, he collapsed with grief. "But to tell the difficult truth," he writes in a chapter from his new memoir, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, "I also collapsed with relief." The literary titan and consummate, multidisciplinary entertainer brings every one of his considerable talents to bear in this poetic and candid portrait of his "beautiful, mercurial, abusive, intelligent, and complicated" mother and of his own career. I'm only halfway through it at the moment, but it's clear to me that the book—part prose, part poetry, all humor and pain and historical anguish—will go down as one of the world's great elegies. RICH SMITH

THEATER & DANCE

Suicide Girls: Blackheart Burlesque
The naked talents of the Suicide Girls have formed a nationally touring burlesque show that promises to "make your inner nerd explode with glee."

WEDNESDAY-SUNDAY

THEATER & DANCE

Barbecue
Lambda Literary Award–winning playwright Robert O'Hara offers up two different families—one white, one black, both named O'Mallery—staging an interventions for their respective drug-addicted family members. Up-and-coming director Malika Oyetimein, who managed a wonderful production of O'Hara's Bootycandy two years ago, will likely squeeze every ounce of cringe-inducing comedy from this very strong cast. Also of note: This play kicks off Intiman's 2017 season, which was co-curated by the extremely multitalented Sara Porkalob. RICH SMITH

Here Lies Love
David Byrne’s critically adored disco musical about the life and times of Imelda Marcos, disco-obsessed wife of Ferdinand Marcos. She danced by his side (and by Richard Nixon’s—look it up on YouTube) while his dictatorial ass terrorized the Philippines. Unlike other musicals, you don’t have to forgive this one for its melodramatic, sappy songs. The fast numbers are groovy disco bangers and the slow numbers are touching, tropically inflected twee rock/pop. Production-wise, this show will be unlike anything you’ve ever seen at the Rep. The installation of mobile dance floors will significantly change the theater’s seating situation, and the audience will be dancing (according to the demands of the dictator, of course) throughout the show. RICH SMITH
Closes Sunday.

Lost Falls
Celebrate the return of Twin Peaks, after more than 25 years off the air, with this food- and performance-based homage to David Lynch, with all the small-town charm and creepy suspense you'll find in his work. They'll investigate the question: "Who killed Chef Nordo Lefesczki?" Enjoy a score by Annastasia Workman, script by Terry Podgorski, direction and menu design by Erin Brindley, and performances by Devin Bannon (on lead vocals—fun fact: he's a performer, director, and Stranger sales rep), Evan Mosher (trumpet, vocals, sound effects and more), Matt Manges (drums), Dave Pascal (bass), Ryan Higgins, Ayo Tushinde, Opal Peachey, Carol Thompson, Ronnie Hill, and Laura Dux.

Welcome to Braggsville
T. Geronimo Johnson's novel Welcome to Braggsville is an award-laden bestseller that Rich Benjamin at The New York Times described as a mixture between "a satirical The Indian Princess, James Nelson Barker's 1808 libretto about Pocahontas" and "a macabre E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial"—and this summer, it's being performed as a stage play presented by Book-It Repertory Theatre. Adapted by Josh Aaseng and Daemond Arrindell; directed by Josh Aaseng. Arrindell is mainly known as a poet, and according to former Stranger theater editor Brendan Kiley, Aaseng "found the skeleton key to Vonnegut's brilliantly tangled bowl of literary spaghetti" while directing Slaughterhouse-Five, and his production of Jesus' Son played "this sad parade of losers with glimmers of human decency."

THURSDAY

ART

Daniel Minter Reception and Talk: A Layered Narrative
Don't wait to discover the exhibition Daniel Minter: Carvings at the NAAM: Go on this night to meet the artist, admire his interpretation of rural Southern African American iconography, and hear his talk, A Layered Narrative.

FILM

Dark Lodge: The Man Who Fell to Earth: Remixed!
An extremely Tilda Swinton-esque David Bowie stars in this erratic but extremely watchable sci-fi film from 1976. At this screening, presented as part of the Dark Lodge series, they’ll replace the existing soundtrack with an all-Bowie compilation arranged and performed live by DJ NicFit.

FOOD & DRINK

Guest Chef Night
FareStart is a fantastic organization that empowers disadvantaged and homeless men and women by training them for work in the restaurant industry. Every Thursday, they host a Guest Chef Night, featuring a three-course dinner from a notable Seattle chef for just $29.95—this week, it's chef Zoi Antonitsas of Little Fish.

Happy Hour Food Walk
Every third Thursday, participating restaurants in the Chinatown-International District will have $2, $4, or $6 bites.

Summer Punch Mixology Class with Bartender Matt
Join E. Smith Mercantile and its bartender, Matt, for a special punch class just in time for summer. Get there early for a pre-class cocktail and a snack. The class itself includes a demonstration, recipes to take home, snacks and a tasting of spirits traditionally used in punch. You'll also receive lessons on how to build for a crowd and how to use the proper tools to execute a summer punch that packs a punch.

W Seattle: Everything's Coming up Rosé
Celebrate the start of summer at W Seattle with rosé—lots of it. In addition to the wine, you'll enjoy a three-course seated dinner created by TRACE Chef Steven Ariel, featuring pan-seared scallops over baby lettuce with a green goddess dressing, grilled halibut and local asparagus with a garlic prawn butter sauce, and berry pavlova topped with basil chia seed sauce. Each course will be paired with a local rosé by Woodinville winemakers.

Yellowtail Filleting Show
Join Queen Anne's Ten Sushi for its popular filleting demonstration show. The class will use premium yellowtail/hon hamachi for this session, and will discuss how to properly fillet the fish from start to finish.

READINGS & TALKS

Brady Walkinshaw and Bill Ruckelshaus: The Trump Challenge to Environmentalism
Yes, our governor has declared that Washington will honor the Climate Pact, but that's not much comfort with a green-trampling, coal-trumpeting climate change denier in the White House. What's an environmentalist to do? Former state representative and Congressional hopeful Brady Piñero Walkinshaw, who recently dropped out of politics to take on the role of publisher at the environmental news outlet Grist.org, will have some insights for you. Join him and Bill Ruckelshaus, the onetime head of the EPA, to learn more. We can't promise it'll be uplifting, but you'll be in good company.

Town Hall Ed and The Seattle Times present #EducationSoWhite
After #JournalismSoWhite comes #EducationSoWhite, an event that aims to discuss and draw attention to the fact that teachers are overwhelmingly white (while their students are not). How can schools change their practices to include more teachers of color? How can teachers become more culturally competent? This talk and panel will begin with a presentation by Town Hall's Community Programs Curator, Kristin Leong, who will speak about Roll Call (a TED-Ed Innovation Project) that aims to connect students and teachers through commonalities. Afterwards, hear from a panel featuring Garfield High School's Jesse Hagopian (a nationally-recognized education activist), UW College of Education's Joy Williamson-Lott (whose research focuses on "the reciprocal relationship between social movements—particularly those of the middle twentieth century—and institutions of higher education"), Sharonne Navas from the Equity in Education Coalition of Washington, and Seattle World School's Saraswati Noel.

Transit Talks: Moments in Motion
This live storytelling event will feature tales from public transit, told in three to five minutes. Focus on the uplifting gems rather than the horror stories—they want to highlight "the unique way that transit connects us to people, places, and community."

Writers & Poets of Washington State: Gary Lilley, Ann Tweedy, Sharma Shields & Erin Pringle
Port Townsend poet Gary Copeland Lilley is reason enough to go this reading. His latest book is The Bushman’s Medicine Show, and it's full of the vivid, cinematic blues-inflected narratives we've come to expect over the course of his woefully undersung career. But the fact that he's sharing the bill with so many other of Washington state's great writers, including Ann Tweety, Sharma Shields (author of the 2016 Washington State Book Award-winning novel The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac), and Erin Pringle, makes this event a must-see. RICH SMITH

THEATER & DANCE

Peaches Christ: 9 to 5 Inches
To be honest, I'm a little nervous to learn that Peaches Christ, Heklina, BenDeLaCreme, and Pandora Boxx are all starring in a drag version of 9 to 5. Like administration officials at a State of the Union address, should any wig-related disaster befall the venue, we stand to lose some of the most vital comedy-queens currently appearing on stage. And oh dear, they're joined by Isabella Extynn, Tipsy Rose Lee, Fraya Love, the invincible Sparkle Leigh, and many more—all of our local favorites in one place! It's going to be all hands on deck for this production, but then again, nobody said it would be easy to smash the patriarchy. MATT BAUME

THURSDAY-SUNDAY

MUSIC

Northwest Terror Fest
Gather your wits for Northwest Terror Fest, a three-day exploration of dark, gritty music that will make you scream for mercy. Shows will happen on the Neumos, Barboza, and Highline stages.

THEATER & DANCE

(Im)pulse
The great and talented and Tony-nominated choreographer Donald Byrd has a knack for translating complex historical texts into visceral dance pieces that help us reckon with the present. Last year's A Rap on Race, a jazzy interpretation of an important conversation between Margaret Mead and James Baldwin, stands out in my memory as a tremendous testimony to that fact. This world premiere sees the mass shooting at Orlando Pulse Nightclub through the lens of the brilliant/brutal David Wojnarowicz, whose Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration should be on everyone's syllabus, and also playwright Brian Quirk. RICH SMITH

The Realistic Joneses
The Realistic Joneses is a precisely-titled realist play about two neighboring couples with the last name Jones, written by playwright Will Eno (whom Charles Isherwood at the New York Times called "a Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation"). The Realistic Joneses earned a number of accolades and some rave reviews on Broadway in 2014 for its humorous, character-driven take on illness, marital life, and intimacy. This production is presented by New Century Theatre Company and directed by Paul Budraitis.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
ArtsWest presents Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, a musical offering murder, cannibalism, and barbershops—plus songs that are creepy, catchy, quick, and witty.

FRIDAY

FOOD & DRINK

Little Saigon Food & Cooks Tour
Join Ethnic Seattle for a tour of Little Saigon, complete with tastings at a tofu factory, a visit to a popular Vietnamese market, and more. You'll also have lunch at one of the city's best-kept secret restaurants and you'll receive an Ethnic Seattle goody bag with recipes and more to take home.

MUSIC

2017 Vans Warped Tour
Vans Warped Tour is back again, with more mid-'00s throwbacks than you could shake a longboard at. Experience true Hot Topic-laced nirvana with headliners sure to deliver a drawn-out bacchanalia of all the emo-punk, pop-punk, post-punk, and regular punk you could ever want. This year's headliners include CKY, GWAR, The Adolescents, Strung Out, Emmure, and The Ataris, with more contemporary artists like Andy Black, American Authors, Dance Gavin Dance, Jule Vera, I Prevail, Neck Deep, New Years Day, Memphis May Fire, War On Women, and many more.

READINGS & TALKS

Al Franken: Giant of the Senate
Former Saturday Night Live comedian and current junior senator from Minnesota Al Franken has a new book out humbly titled Al Franken: Giant of the Senate. His previous books (many of them skewering right-wing politics) have been bestsellers. Franken has been a vocal and active opponent of Trump, questioning the administration's ties to Russia and pressing for an investigation into his tax returns. Franken is generally busy being a senator and trying to stop the United States from bursting into flames, so take this opportunity to hear about his work (and his new book) firsthand.

Bloomsday Reading of James Joyce's Ulysses
Calling Irish literature nerds: What are you doing for Bloomsday? If you haven't made plans yet to mark the date on which James Joyce's mammoth novel Ulysses takes place, during which the protagonist Leopold Bloom travels picaresquely through Dublin, don't sweat it. The Wild Geese Players will stage a reading of chapter seven, "Aeolus" and chapter 8, "Lestrygonians." Whether you've read the great 20th-century classic or not, this is a great way to commune in love for the possibilities of the English language. (We're not sure we should add this, but apparently Joyce set the book on June 16 to commemorate a particularly significant real-life handjob. Just so you know what you're celebrating.)

Jacques Rancourt and E. J. Koh
This evening, hear from two poets: E. J. Koh, winner of the Pleiades Press Editors Prize for the forthcoming collection A Lesser Love, and Jacques J. Rancout, winner of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd prize for the newly released collection Novena.

Race, Identity and Culture in the Pacific Northwest
This event promises a multidisciplinary (artistic, cultural, historical) take on culturally rooted community celebrations, with a panel that asks: "What role do ethnic gatherings have in strengthening identity?"

THEATER & DANCE

Tricked: A Mostly Male Burlesque Show
This series of drag, burlesque, and boylesque shows is not necessarily limited to men. The theme: those wily, alluring Tricksters, from Loki to Coyote to Bugs Bunny. With Waxie Moon, Namii, Jaxin Yoff, Vee Chattie, the Marquis Façade, and EmpeROAR Fabulous!!!

FRIDAY-SATURDAY

ART

Robert Hardgrave: Pulp
If you've been following visual art in Seattle for any length of time, chances are you've come across the work of Robert Hardgrave, even if you didn't know it. He works in a variety of 2-D media—painting, drawing, toner transfers, the leftover "pulp" from those transfers—to create a body of work that is as colorful and effusive as it is distinctive. Visually, Hardgrave's style hovers somewhere between ancient petroglyphs and something you might see in a high-end skateboard shop, but like most images, these are things that are better seen than described. Pulp, an exhibition of new work at Studio E Gallery, is your chance to see them for yourself. EMILY POTHAST
Closes Saturday.

COMEDY

Outer Rim: An Improvised Space Western
Improv artists will take you on a long-form trip through deep space. No two performances will be the same, but every night the crew will have to employ all their hyperdrive and wiles to survive as they hop from planet to planet "on the fringes of civilization."
Closes Saturday.

FESTIVALS

Fremont Solstice Fair
Celebrate summer at the Fremont Solstice Fair, an event known primarily for its elaborately painted (and sometimes just wild 'n' free) nude bicyclists—but also offering tons of food, crafts, activities, performances, great people-watching, and a beer garden.

FRIDAY-SUNDAY

FOOD & DRINK

Washington Brewers' Festival 2017
This 12th annual festival, timed perfectly for Father's Day weekend, offers more than 500 beers from 130 Washington breweries. Admission includes eight four-ounce tasting tokens and a souvenir glass; once inside, you can sample hundreds of beers, taste wine and cider, listen to live music, and purchase food from a variety of food trucks.

THEATER & DANCE

NW New Works Festival 2017
It's your 34th annual NW New Works Festival, Seattle! This year, 16 contemporary performing arts companies from around the region (Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia) will freakify the stages of On the Boards over the course of two weekends. I guarantee at least two of these ~20-minute pieces will grow into full-length shows that will take this town (and maybe the world) by storm in the coming years. Don't believe me—ask zoe | juniper, Sarah Rudinoff, and Tim Smith-Stewart/Jeffrey Azevedo, all of whom developed impressive pieces of work on OtB's summer stage. Lots to love at this iteration, but I'd recommend Petra Zanki: Pleasant Place and Earth and Ceremony's I Want to Hear the Sea. RICH SMITH

SATURDAY

ART

Artists Damien Davis & C. Davida Ingram in Conversation
Brooklyn-based artist Damien Davis explores representations of Blackness by unpacking the ways issues of race have historically been coded in design and the digital realm. For this conversation moderated by METHOD gallery cofounder Mary Cross, Davis will enter into dialogue with Seattle artist and Stranger Genius Award winner C. Davida Ingram about the commonalities in both artists' practices: using storytelling, identity, and the collaborative process to illuminate the multifaceted ways in which images of Blackness surface in contemporary art, touching on how art can play an empowering role in creating a culture of social justice. EMILY POTHAST

From Which We Rise Closing Day
The current exhibition at the Alice includes a small sculpture of a bird, hand-carved and painted by Reverend Miyeko Kawata Uriu while she was in a Japanese internment camp. Uriu is the grandmother of Seattle artist Markel Uriu, and Beverly O'Mara is Markel's mother, both of whom also have works in the show. Together these three objects tell a story of family lineage and cultural survival through mediums that are often labeled "craft," and therefore devalued by a patriarchal white lens. Curated by Satpreet Kahlon, From Which We Rise presents 15 works by 15 artists representing seven powerful matrilineal histories. EMILY POTHAST

FESTIVALS

Block Party at The Station
Beacon Hill is Seattle’s best neighborhood. It’s changing, yes, but it remains what it has been for decades: an affordable place for Seattle’s diverse working-class, immigrant, and communities of color, complete with beautiful views, the fruit trees of orchards long past, and a “live and let live ethos” that encourages everyone to shine. Beacon Hill’s meeting place is the Station, a cafe where the baristas are artists, the artists are activists, the activists are customers, and the customers are neighbors and friends. Today the Station, along with the all-volunteer nonprofit Beacon Arts, is throwing the best neighborhood its best party. Local artists and performers include Nikkita Oliver, Dave B., Guayaba, DoNormaal, Da Qween, Raven Matthews, Taylar Elizza Beth, Massive Monkees, ZELLi, Astro King Phoenix, and many more. Food options include Chamorro, Southern, Filipino, and Jamaican fare. Unlike other so-called neighborhood block parties that bring in profits through corporate sponsorships and admission fees, this one’s supported by local businesses and is free. See you out there. ANGELA GARBES

SATURDAY-SUNDAY

QUEER

PrideFest Film Fest Featuring "Milk" with Activist Cleve Jones
Enjoy a series of (mostly) free screenings presented as part of Seattle PrideFest. They’ll showcase the best movies that local LGBTQ film organization Three Dollar Bill Cinema has shown in the past year—plus, they’ll host a workshop with Cleve Jones (an activist and author who conceived the legendary NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt) and a screening of the 2008 biopic Milk. David Schmader credited Milk’s success to its “comfortably unabashed sexuality” and Sean Penn’s “quietly amazing, simultaneously lived-in and spontaneous” performance.

SUNDAY

READINGS & TALKS

MK Czerwiec: Taking Turns
Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 is a graphic novel inspired by true stories told by HIV and AIDS patients to Czerwiec herself, who worked as a nurse at a Chicago HIV/AIDS Care Unit in 1994. Alison Bechdel (Fun Home) wrote that "through the lives and deaths of individual patients, written and drawn in documentary detail, we see the power dynamic between doctor and patient begin to shift. When cure is not an option, care takes on a new meaning."

THEATER & DANCE

The Kinsey Sicks: Things You Shouldn't Say
The Kinsey Sicks "Dragapella" quadrangle first banded together during the AIDS crisis in San Francisco, and they're here with a show to help see you through the Trump years. Experience catharsis with music about "Trumpism, racism, AIDS, extreme macramé, oblong vegetables and, of course, Bette Midler."

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