Our music critics have already chosen the 31 best music shows this week, but now it's our arts critics' turn to recommend the best events in their areas of expertise. Here are their picks in every genre—from Rainn Wilson to a Salt & Straw Book Signing, and from Bite of Greece to Antoinette Nwandu's Pass Over. See them all below, and find even more events on our complete Things To Do calendar and our roundup of the 34 best movies to see at SIFF this week.

Found something you like and don't want to forget about it later? Click "Save Event" on any of the linked events below to add it to your own private list.


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TUESDAY-FRIDAY

VISUAL ART

Alessandro Gallo: Most of the Time
Alessandro Gallo’s clay sculptures are strange. There’s no denying this. A normal human body—in all its roundness, leanness, imperfections, behavioral dispositions—attached to a realistic animal head is like something pulled from the deepest recesses of the imagination. It’s a bit disconcerting, but also so satisfying. You may find yourself gravitating toward the hybrid you feel most embodies you—for me, it’s the flamingo woman sitting with her tote on the subway. The Italian-born, Montana-based artist will be showing new work at Abmeyer + Wood. Prepare to be amazed. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Closing Friday

Scribe of the Mysteries: Calligraphic Sigils by William Kiesel
Discover the power of calligraphic sigils, which William Kiesel creates through the "asemic writing" technique, which does not use recognizable words. The event description notes: "It is no coincidence that the gods of magic are also the gods of writing." Enter the gallery for some glimpses of the occult in ink.

TUESDAY-SATURDAY

VISUAL ART

Albert de Belleroche: The Lithography of Belle Epoque
A lithographer, painter, and one-time model for John Singer Sargent, Albert de Belleroche was born in Wales but spent most of his life in Paris and England. Retiring and modest, he's far from a household name, but his paintings and prints can be found in many museum collections.
Closing Saturday

Darren Waterston: Vistas
There’s a corroded quality to Darren Waterston’s paintings. They seem to be eaten away by some element or exposed to light for too long. The effect is kind of dreamy. Waterston’s work reflects the natural (think landscapes), but also maybe the otherworldly (like dreamscapes). Some of his paintings bring to mind a video I saw on Twitter of someone cracking open what looked to be a plain rock but then revealed layers of swirling, iridescent opal. His smaller watercolor and gouache pieces look like the insides of a geode. Take for example CURRENT STUDY NO. 4 with its large cloud-like white swirls and radiating pink light bursting from the right side—it’s quite literally heavenly. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Closing Saturday

Semi-occasional Secondary Market Exhibition of Excellent Pictures
See selections by celebrated Northwest artists like Guy Anderson, Whiting Tennis, Jacob Lawrence, Michael Dailey, and others.
Closing Saturday

Wylee Risso
Inspired by photography, Seattle painter Wylee Risso renders beautiful portraits of people in serene moments. There’s not much noise to his work, though this doesn’t mean that his edges are sharp. In fact, many of his subjects are a bit blurred, their image formed as if from an impression, a memory, a feeling. The self-taught artist will be displaying new and old work in the BLUR Gallery. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Closing Saturday

TUESDAY-SUNDAY

FESTIVALS

Seattle International Film Festival 2019
The 45th annual Seattle International Film Festival is the largest film festival in the United States, with more than 400 films (spread over 25 days) watched by around 140,000 people at nine theaters across the city. It's impressively grand and one of the most exciting and widely attended arts events Seattle has to offer. Some top films this week include Fight Fam, Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, In Fabric, El Ángel, the SIFF 2019 Centerpiece Gala, and A Tribute to Regina Hall.

PERFORMANCE

Nina Simone: Four Women
As the title suggests, playwright Christina Ham has created a contemporary dramatization of "Four Women," one Nina Simone's most popular protest songs. Like the song, the play features four women: Sarah, a dark-skinned black woman with a back "strong enough to take the pain"; Sephronia, a mixed-race woman who belongs "between two worlds"; Sweet Thing, a tan-black sex worker with a "mouth like wine"; and Peaches, a brown-black woman with a "tough manner," a double for Simone herself. After a powerful and evocative opener, the play becomes a discussion of the way class, gender, and skin tone created tension within the civil rights movement. Peaches/Simone uses these conflicts as inspiration for the song she's trying to write, which ends up being the indisputably amazing and defiant "Mississippi Goddam." Eventually, the characters come to learn that the shared pain and pleasure of black cultural experience unites them despite their differences.  RICH SMITH

Tiny Beautiful Things
Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) has adapted Cheryl Strayed's story of writing an advice column under the pseudonym Sugar, yielding a play about empathy, healing, tough love, and kindness.

VISUAL ART

Gretchen Frances Bennett: Air, the free or unconfined space above the surface of the earth
Somehow, Gretchen Frances Bennett's drawings shimmer. The artist pulls from personal photos, film stills, and the deep, ever-replenishing well of YouTube and Instagram to base her drawings off of, preserving glitches, fuzziness, accidental tears, and worn edges in the final product. With colored pencils, she elevates photos and pixels from the mundane to a spiritual level. The resulting compositions—complicated by the visual equivalent of the sound of static in a radio transmission—look almost like holographs appearing before you underneath the soft museum light. The pencil strokes are short and layered, seemingly vibrating, as if quietly humming or beaming in from another planet or consciousness. The show consists of Bennett's key works from the past 10 years, plus five new large-format drawings. There is also a slideshow by Seattle photographer Paulo Castillo.  JASMYNE KEIMIG
Closing Sunday

WEDNESDAY

FOOD & DRINK

Jean Josselin at the Whale Wins
At this event hosted by Sharone Tsubota of Jean Josselin Champagne, try fare from the Whale Wins' roaring wood-fired oven alongside cuvées from Gyé sur Seine, a champagne village crossed by the Seine River.

Salt & Straw Ice Cream Pop-Up
Witness a live ice cream demonstration with the Portland-based artisan ice creamery Salt & Straw's co-founder and head ice cream maker Tyler Malek, then sample the results. He'll also sign copies of the newly released Salt & Straw Ice Cream Cookbook.

READINGS & TALKS

John Waters: Mr. Know-It-All
The theme of the month, thanks to the Met Gala, seems to be "camp." Not camp as in flannel shirts and hiking boots, but camp as in John Waters and Divine. Appropriately, our filthy master of camp (although he is many things other than camp, too) is coming to Seattle to promote his new book, Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder, about his experience "fail[ing] upward in Hollywood." He will be joined onstage by David Schmader. Waters is one of the best conversationalists America has, and we should hang on every word this Filth Elder has to vomit.  CHASE BURNS

WEDNESDAY-FRIDAY

VISUAL ART

Odd Jelly Out: Introversion
The latest sculpture project from Missy Douglas and Kim Rask, Odd Jelly Out was apparently a big hit at Burning Man last year. It’s easy to see why. Encountering one of these giant puppies while you’re off your tits on acid, ’shrooms, or some other psychedelic in the middle of the desert must engender some sort of spiritual awakening. Though perhaps not instantly recognizable to Americans, these large-scale sculptures draw inspiration from Jelly Babies, a type of British candy. Hand cast and created from fiberglass, normal glass, mirror, and steel, each sculpture contains an internal LED light that makes it glow in the dark. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Closing Friday

WEDNESDAY-SATURDAY

VISUAL ART

Lindsey Carr
Carr's sumptuous animal paintings draw on natural history illustration, European chinoiserie, and medieval art.
Closing Saturday

WEDNESDAY-SUNDAY

PERFORMANCE

The Arsonists
In gearing up for The Horse in Motion's latest piece of immersive theater, The Arsonists by Max Frisch (translated by Alistair Beaton), director Bobbin Ramsey has been posing a moral quandary to her company members. "You're holding a burning match in your hand," Ramsey says. "What are you going to do? Put it out? Point it out and do nothing? Ignore it until it burns you? Or are you going to hold it to a drum of gasoline and blow everything up?" Each of the characters in Frisch's absurdist "morality play without a moral" assumes one of those positions in response to the incendiary activities of a group of political activists. Decades before the phrase "burn it all down" gained a certain ironic popularity in social-justice circles, Frisch, a Swiss playwright who wrote The Arsonists in 1953, was putting the idea to the test. Ramsey says this play asks, "Okay, if we're actually going to burn it down, then how do we hold the responsibility of that?" RICH SMITH

Bonbon
The slinky dancers of Pike Place's kitschy cabaret return with another tasty show. Ever wanted to ogle athletic dancers twirling from chandeliers inches from your face? Go. There's also a family-friendly brunch version that you can guiltlessly take your out-of-town relatives to.

VISUAL ART

Chingonas
This "all-Mujeres" art exhibition focusing on Latina identity is curated by Angelina Villalobos, Judy Avitia-Gonzalez, Cecelia Deleon, and Raquel Garcia.
Closing Sunday

Edgar Arceneaux: Library of Black Lies
Enter Edgar Arceneaux’s unassuming wooden structure—a low, irregular-sided wooden shack—and find yourself in a parallel-world library of sugar-crystal-clouded books. Their titles may be or merely recall the Western canon, like a sequence including the clearly referential Birth of a Nation and the murkier Birth of a Night, Nation Goodnight, and finally, Goodnight Moon. According to museum materials, this installation—first exhibited in Paris in 2016—concerns Arceneaux’s preoccupations with history, memory, and our subjective human reconstructions of both. The result looks like a cramped, mazelike hideaway, a metaphor for the limits imposed on our views of the past by our own need for containment. By amassing references to many different narratives, Arceneaux constructs an anti-narrative of history. JOULE ZELMAN

THURSDAY

COMEDY

Rainn Wilson & Friends
He's much more than Dwight Schrute from The Office. He's also an author and philanthropist, and he's been a voice on Adventure Time! He'll appear with pals Joel McHale, Chris Ballew, Rachael (of Lake Street Dive) and Vilray, Jack Lenz and the Montreal Diversity Youth Choir, and others to benefit the Mona Foundation, an organization that "[provides] education to all children, [increases] opportunities for women and girls, and [encourages] service to the community."

FILM

Indigenous Showcase: Embrace of the Serpent
The forum and the indigenous art movement yəhaw̓ will present a screening of Ciro Guerra (Birds of Passage)'s astounding Embrace of the Serpent, which upends the "white man discovering the jungle" narrative by focusing on the shaman who guides him. Based on a true story, Embrace follows Karamakate, an indigenous man who encounters two white scientists 40 years apart, both searching for a powerful psychedelic plant. Trippy, awe-inspiringly gorgeous, and elegiac, Guerra's film casts a fierce gaze on the arrogance of white colonialism and the damages it wreaks. The film starts at 7:30; show up early to shop an Indigenous art market. JOULE ZELMAN

FOOD & DRINK

Cafe Campagne's Champagne Party!
CafĂ© Campagne’s will be pouring three different CuvĂ©es from Louis Roederer at their champagne party. Enjoy a glass by itself or try a flight of all three.

Salt & Straw Book Signing
When they first founded their Portland-based artisan ice creamery Salt & Straw, cousins Tyler and Kim Malek had no recipes to speak of. That changed when they developed a revolutionary base to provide a canvas for their flavors, which range from traditional (Sea Salt with Caramel Ribbons or Chocolate Gooey Brownie), to playful (Pots of Gold and Rainbows, made with Lucky Charms), to the downright outlandish (Salted Caramel Thanksgiving Turkey and Dracula’s Blood Pudding, a Halloween special made with pig’s blood), and which frequently incorporate ingredients from local businesses. Now you can re-create the experience at home (sans lengthy queues!) with the Salt & Straw Ice Cream Cookbook, which features recipes as well as ways to harness inspiration to concoct oddball flavors of your own. Tyler will visit Williams Sonoma in University Village and the Ballard location of Salt & Straw to demonstrate his process, along with offering ice-cream samples and signing copies of the cookbook. JULIANNE BELL

THURSDAY-FRIDAY

PERFORMANCE

Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street
What has an overabundance of cannibalism jokes, a Game of Thrones-esque body count, and some of the wittiest, prettiest songs you’ve ever heard? Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s gory slice of melodrama Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The 1979 musical took a 19th-century penny-dreadful monster and transformed him into the embodiment of class-based trauma, framed in a cheerily horrific story of “man devouring man.” The small but impressive Reboot Company’s non-traditional casting upends the “man” while intensifying parallels to our own overheated pop culture. Aside from heightening the camp at times, the casting choices mainly gave excellent actors like Mandy Rose Nichols (Sweeney)  a crack at killer roles that would normally be denied them. Nichols, coldly magnetic, plays up Sweeney’s trauma, flinching when unexpectedly touched, glowering at a creeping societal rot no one else sees. JOULE ZELMAN

VISUAL ART

FORGE Currents 2019
This is the final show that Mount Analogue will be hosting in its current form. The interdisciplinary publishing studio, small press bookshop, installation gallery, and community space will be closing in June, turning into a more amorphous artistic project by founder Colleen Louise Barry. This is a sad fact, but the send-off show is sure to be “dynamic, celebratory, variegated, and vibrant,” helmed by last curator-in-residence Matthew James-Wilson, editor in chief of FORGE. Art Magazine. The exhibition will feature artists from across the nation and include textile art, comics, video, digital art, and more. I heard Molly Soda’s work might even make an appearance! JASMYNE KEIMIG
Closing Friday

THURSDAY-SATURDAY

COMEDY

Helen Hong
If you keep up with your public radio, you've probably heard comic Helen Hong on NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! or on her trivia podcast Go Fact Yourself. She's also guest-starred on lots of TV shows, from Parks & Rec to Jane the Virgin. Catch her live in Seattle.

VISUAL ART

Coiffed
This group show with Betty Bowen Award-winning Jono Vaughan, Serrah Russell, Sara Osebold, Sharon Norwood, and others is all about hair—its capacity for power, decoration, disguise, and glamor. 
Closing Saturday

THURSDAY-SUNDAY

PERFORMANCE

Blackbird
This drama by aptly named playwright David Harrower premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2005. A 27-year-old woman, Una, arrives unexpectedly at the office of Ray, the man with whom she had a sexual relationship 15 years earlier. Ray has embarked upon a new life, but Una is beset by rage, confusion, trauma, and her past feelings. Paul Budraitis will take up the director's mantle for this Seattle premiere, produced by White Rabbits Inc and Libby Barnard.

Don't Call It a Riot!
Local playwright Amontaine Aurore's new work, Don't Call It A Riot!, takes audiences on a tour of black activism in Seattle—from the beginnings of the Black Panther Party up to the WTO protests—as seen through the eyes of a character named Reed. Reed has to figure out how to raise a kid, maintain a relationship with her new husband, and build a burgeoning movement, all while the culture at large conspires against her at every turn. RICH SMITH

Love, Chaos, & Dinner
Beloved circus/cabaret/comedy institution Teatro ZinZanni will reboot their successful variety show, which they describe as the "Kit Kat Klub on acid." They promise to fill their spiegeltent with "world-class acrobats, musicians, divas, illusionists, madmen, and aerialists," plus ping-pong-playing comedian Tim Tyler, trapezists Duo Rose, opera singer Kelly Britt, and the Anastasini Brothers, Lady Rizo, and Frank Ferrante.

Urinetown: The Musical
The themes of scarcity, greed, populism, and capitalism running amok make the triple Tony-winning post-apocalyptic musical Urinetown, with music by Mark Hollmann, lyrics by Hollmann and Greg Kotis, and book by Kotis, a perfect satire for our times. This is a co-production with the 5th Avenue Theater.

FRIDAY

COMEDY

The Seattle Process
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. The guests in May include City Councilmember Kshama Sawant and Council candidate Tammy Morales.

Sober Virgin: Short Stories
Sober Virgin is wicked Elena Martinez and innocent Anthony Householder. In this sketch show, they'll traverse topics like addiction, sexual experiences, and growing up in a series of four vignettes. 

FOOD & DRINK

Rosé Spring Happy Hour
Quaff pink wine, including sparkling, local, and champagne varieties, on Maximilien's patio and snack on small plates and shared appetizers like smoked salmon, charcuterie, and steak tartare.

PARTIES & NIGHTLIFE

Hippos and Mojitos
Northwest wildlife leaders will convene for an evening of silent and live auctions, reception activities, live entertainment, a fancy sit-down dinner, and schmoozing at the annual Jungle Party. This year's theme is "Hippos and Mojitos."

PERFORMANCE

Last Podcast on the Left: Back in the Habit
Delight your ghoulish sensibilities with a live edition of this frighteningly addictive comedic podcast dedicated to freaky and violent real-life events (or events that a lot of people believe in), including cultish shenanigans, demonic apparitions, alien abductions, and more. Join Marcus Parks, Henry Zebrowski, and Ben Kissel to "laugh at things you will probably feel guilty about later." (True enough, but the humor is at the expense of killers and charlatans—and the occasional Slender Man erotic fanfic—so let that temper your shame as you will.)

READINGS & TALKS

The Seventh Wave
The social justice-focused arts magazine The Seventh Wave will celebrate their latest issue, "What We Lose," with a night of readings and conversation with contributors, including Quenton Baker, Dujie Tahat, Keetje Kuipers, and Leija Farr. 

VISUAL ART

Exhibitions Opening Reception
As they're wont to do, the Frye Art Museum will throw a fun party to preview their newest exhibitions (Cauleen Smith: Give It or Leave It and Jane Wong: After Preparing the Altar, the Ghosts Feast Feverishly). There will be a cash bar.

FRIDAY-SATURDAY

COMEDY

Mary Lou Gamba
Fiery-souled Pacific Northwest comic Mary Lou Gamba will tell mostly-dirty jokes.

FESTIVALS

Summer Solstice Night Market 2019
Revel in over 150 booths and a Summer Solstice Beer Festival with live music.

PERFORMANCE

They/Them: The Festival
Drag king and former Intiman Emerging Artist Sam I'Am presents They/Them: The Musical, a solo show. Sam I'Am plays an expecting mother imagining the ways the life of their child would change depending on gender. Though their character explores the slipperiness of gender, the music will be "kinda more traditional," according to Annex. Each night of the festival will kick off with a little cabaret featuring stand-up comedy, burlesque, and musical performances from trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming performance artists. RICH SMITH

VISUAL ART

Anna Macrae and David Traylor: Garden For Daisy
Increasingly recognized Northwest artist Anna Macrae builds landscapes through frenetic, colorful lines, "awkward marks," and blotches of color. David Traylor is a visual artist and landscape architect who's enamored with chaos and patterns.
Closing Saturday

Peter Gronquist: Searcher
Portland sculptor/painter/taxidermist Gronquist employs infinity mirrors, painting, found objects, and lights to call attention to "American consumerism, excess and escapism."
Opening Friday

FRIDAY-SUNDAY

FOOD & DRINK

Bite of Greece 2019
At this free festival, stuff yourself with gyros, slow-roasted lamb sandwiches, grilled souvlaki, Greek salad, spanakopita, and other authentic Mediterranean delights prepared by the community of the Greek Orthodox Church of the Assumption. Pair your eats with a cold Mythos beer or Greek wine, and enjoy a marketplace, dancing, music, and special performances. Cap it all off with pastries like baklava with hot coffee or a Greek-style iced frappe. JULIANNE BELL

PERFORMANCE

Pass Over
Antoinette Nwandu's Pass Over combines Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot with the biblical story of Exodus, and sets the whole thing in a world where two black guys, Moses and Kitch, cannot hang out on a sidewalk without getting harassed by a white cop. Spike Lee liked the play so much that he filmed a performance and screened it at Sundance to great acclaim. Chicago Sun-Times critic Hedy Weiss had a different take, which led to an uproar in the theater world. She generally praised the acting but slammed Nwandu for her "simplistic, wholly generic characterization of a racist white cop (clearly meant to indict all white cops)." She then criticized Nwandu for ignoring "black-on-black" crime. The theater world rightly flipped, and Nwandu responded in American Theatre, saying Weiss's review "perpetuates a toxic discourse in which black lives do not matter and white lives remain unburdened by the necessary work of reckoning with white privilege and the centuries-long legacy of violence by which it is secured." You'll get the chance to see Pass Over in Seattle under Tim Bond's direction. RICH SMITH

Reconstruct
For the first installment of this new dance series, Jaime Waliczek of Jerboa Dance and Stella Kutz of Yaw Theater will team up for a piece inspired by the theme of "reconstruction."

Take Me Out
A star outfielder for the "New York Empires" (more Yankees than Mets in appearance) named Darren Lemming comes out of the closet—or, I guess, the locker—in this Tony-winning comedy from Richard Greenberg, put on by Strawberry Theatre Workshop. His straight teammates have a lot to say about it, and they mostly do so while barely covered in towels, a sartorial situation where homophobia and hypocrisy are so often laid bare. Lamar Legend, who has been great in everything I've seen him in, especially in Intiman's production of Barbecue and most recently in Strawshop's production of Everybody, plays Lemming. In addition to being a hilarious exploration of masculinity, the play also offers an opportunity for the audience to take part in a drinking game based on ball puns. How you could pass that up, I do not know. RICH SMITH

Themes and Variations
See masterpieces by George Balanchine (Theme and Variations and Tarantella), Jose Limon (The Moor's Pavane), and Price Suddarth (Signature) at this Pacific Northwest Ballet production.

West Side Story
One of the most famous musicals of all time—the first major work Stephen Sondheim ever wrote lyrics to—West Side Story is getting the Bill Barry treatment at 5th Avenue Theatre. The director is known for exuberant takes on classic American musicals and for brilliant casting choices. Excitingly, this production will also feature Jerome Robbins’s original choreography, which ought to be a delight for the eyeballs. West Side Story didn’t win best musical at the Tonys the year it came out (The Music Man did), but it did win best choreography. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

SATURDAY

COMEDY

Hot Seat
Erin Ingle will host this new comedy night, which is starting extremely well—with comics Monisa Brown, Evelyn Jensen, and Howie Echo-Hawk. See them!

FESTIVALS

Inscape Arts Bash
Join Inscape—the former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service building that was turned into artist studios—for a night of live music (with acts like Whitney Ballen, Ah God, Spesh, Drama Bahama, and the Fabulous Downey Brothers), local beer on tap, and food trucks. 

FOOD & DRINK

Anna Banana Milk Fund Fundraiser
Molly Moon's Ice Cream founder and CEO Molly Moon Neitzel's younger sister Anna, who loved milk, passed away in 2009. In her memory, the local ice cream parlor chain created the Anna Banana Milk Fund in 2011 to provide milk and dairy to the FamilyWorks food bank. Now, the fund is becoming an official nonprofit and will support food banks in all six neighborhoods with a Molly Moon's locations. To celebrate, they're throwing a "milk and cookies" party with ice cream, milk, and cookies from Hello Robin, Hood Famous Bakeshop, Trophy Cupcakes, Theo Chocolate, Sugar + Spoon, Nuflours, Dahlia Bakery, and Smith Brothers.

Charles Smith's Third Annual Jet City Rosé Experience
Taste varieties of pretty-in-pink wine from 25 different wineries, including Charles Smith's CasaSmith ViNO Rosé, K Vintners Rosé, and Charles & Charles Rosé, dance and thrash to tunes from vet psychobilly trio Reverend Horton Heat, soulful experimental performance artist/rocker Har Mar Superstar, and KEXP DJ Kid Hops, and enjoy noshes from five food trucks. JULIANNE BELL

Le Grand Aioli & Pink Wine Fair
Pair your glass(es) of pink wine—you'll have 32 varieties to choose from—with provençal village fare from the Grand Aioli, including raw spring vegetables, "ice-cold" shellfish, fresh salmon, grilled meats, and naturally risen bread. Kids can feel included with free hot dogs and pink soda.

Summer of Rosé
This event will offer over 25 selections of rosés from around the world so you can properly toast to an emerging summer with everyone's favorite pink drink.

Throw an Egg on It Pop-Up
Everyone knows most foods can be improved with the addition of an egg on top. This pop-up celebrating "brunch around the globe" will feature burgers, Mexican food, and more.

PERFORMANCE

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard: Live!
At least one Stranger staffer totally thought Dax Shepard and Zach Braff were the same person, but they're not—one major difference between them is that, unlike Braff, Shepard (who played Crosby on NBC's Parenthood) hosts a podcast called Armchair Expert, wherein he explores "the messiness of being human." Join him in Seattle for a live taping.

READINGS & TALKS

Shankar Narayan, Doyali Islam, Azura Tyabji
ACLU civil rights attorney and poet Shankar Narayan, a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the winner of the 2017 Flyway Sweet Corn Poetry Prize, will read alongside Doyali Islam and Azura Tyabji.

VISUAL ART

Peter Scherrer: Nightcrawler
Established Seattle artist Robert Yoder, owner of the Season home gallery, has curated this show by Peter Scherrer. Former Stranger art critic Jen Graves praised Scherrer's "big, juicy paintings [...] crawling with trippy detail."
Closing Saturday

SATURDAY-SUNDAY

FESTIVALS

Glazer's Photofest!
PhotoFest boasts a weekend-long bill of photography events including talks from a few dozen speakers, free workshops, interactive demonstrations, photo walks, and sales.

VISUAL ART

Cauleen Smith: Give It or Leave It
In her latest show, Give It or Leave It (which riffs off the phrase “take it or leave it”), black feminist multimedia artist Cauleen Smith emphasizes generosity and selflessness. She weaves together films, banners, and site-specific light installations from four distinct historical universes: Alice Coltrane and her Californian ashram, Bill Ray’s 1966 photo at Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers, Noah Purifoy and his desert assemblages, and spiritualist Rebecca Cox Jackson and her Shaker community in Pennsylvania. To Smith, these spaces embody a “spirit of speculation, self-determination, and radical generosity between artist and community.” JASMYNE KEIMIG
Opening Saturday

Jane Wong: After Preparing the Altar, the Ghosts Feast Feverishly
I love how poets use space. I think it has something to do with the way their minds wrap around words, arranging them into something familiar yet strange, that lends itself well to curating spaces. This will be poet and artist Jane Wong’s first solo exhibition. Exploring the themes of hunger and waste and their meaning for immigrant families, Wong’s show will consist of altars, sculpture poems, and belongings alongside texts that evoke her childhood in New Jersey where her parents ran a Chinese American restaurant. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Opening Saturday

Look How Far We've Come: A Queer Art Show 902 Feet in the Air
Photographer, curator, and Stranger contributor Timothy Rysdyke has chosen works of art by fellow talented queers to grace a gallery high over the city. Check out pieces by the celebrated Anthony White, Billy Bacacalii, Casey Curren, Clyde Peterson, Coco Spadoni, Frank Correa, Gordan Christenson, Julian Pena, Kade Marsili, Lamb, Loren Othon, Mary Ann Carter, Sequoia Day O’Connell, Ralph Houser, and Stephen Miller.
Opening Saturday

SUNDAY

FOOD & DRINK

Author Talk: Pok Pok Noodles by Andy Ricker
Portland- and Brooklyn-based chef (and Instagram cat whisperer) Andy Ricker—whose Thai restaurant Pok Pok was named the eighth most important American restaurant by Bon AppĂ©tit in 2013 and whose empire has since expanded to include drinking vinegars and charcoal logs—has earned a devoted fan following for his insightful voice. In his newest book, Pok Pok Noodles, he shares recipes for comforting, slurpable dishes like fried noodles, noodle soups, and khanom chin alongside beautiful photography from his travels. JULIANNE BELL

PERFORMANCE

12 Minutes Max
This show, which debuted in 1981, features 12 minutes ("surprisingly quick or unfortunately long"—Rich Smith) of brand-new work from Pacific Northwest performers in many genres, chosen this time by Sruti Desai and Sean Lally. It's always an opportunity to find out what's fresh in the theater and dance community. See short 'n' snappy pieces by Sarah Alaways, Liam Hardison + Brooke Morrison, Ben Goosman, Amy-Ellen Trefsger, Bruce Greeley, Monica Kerr, and Bri Wilson. 

Fierce Voices: An Anti-Ban Pop Up
In this edition of the women-focused series—its first benefit show—speakers will share stories about their own reproductive health care. Proceeds will be donated to Cedar River Clinics (which is suing the Trump administration) and the Yellowhammer Fund for people who need abortions in Alabama.

The Greatest ShowQueen
More than two decades ago, former Seattle Times critic Tom Orr staged a one-man musical revue called Dirty Little Showtunes!, a gay coming-of-age story that then-Stranger critic Adrian Ryan called "one heck of a fun show." Now, Orr returns with a three-time Bay Area Theatre Critic Circle Award-winning "multitude of new perverted twists on classic showtunes." Songs include "I Feel A Thong Coming On!," "A Crass Act!," "The Devil Wears Nada!," "Aging Bull!" and "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To His Forearm!"

READINGS & TALKS

Sharma Shields, Simeon Mills, Megan Kruse
Apollo cursed Cassandra with the ability to accurately foretell the future but have no one believe her. Spokane-based speculative fiction writer Sharma Shields, author of The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac (which was great), afflicts her protagonist in The Cassandra with the titular character's curse. But instead of foreseeing the destruction of Troy, she foresees a much larger catastrophe. Shields sets her riff on this Greek myth at the Hanford Research Center in South Central Washington during the early days of World War II. While the young woman at the center of the story, Mildred, is happy to be living on her own in a new place, she's not so happy to be dreaming about the destructive capacity of a secret weapon being developed right under her nose, and she's less than thrilled about all the causal workplace harassment she's been enduring from coworkers. Reviews of the book look generally positive. One Amazon reviewer called it "fascinating if not pleasant," which is maybe my favorite description of novels in general. RICH SMITH

Surreal Storytelling with Strange Folx.
Kate Berwanger's Surreal Storytelling series will this time be devoted to enby and non-binary storytellers, including visual artist Amelia Lea, poet Lin, author Sari Krosinsky (Courting Hunger, A Gods Life: a story in poems and god-chaser), and reporter/poet Sonya Vatomsky (whose work can be seen in the New York Times, Smithsonian, and Rolling Stone).

VISUAL ART

Kook Teflon: Church of the Poison Mind
Seattle is about to lose a team of kooky artistic leaders: Kook Teflon, a High Priestess who has produced over 100 live shows during her time in Seattle; and Jackie Hell, a drag queen so strange and wonderful she's hard to describe, like if Dina Martina were haunted by a fun demon. The duo is moving to New Orleans at the end of June, but Kook will be creating a final installation at Virago Gallery. Kook's last hurrah should be a spectacle. Expect a ceremony. CHASE BURNS
Opening Sunday