Our music critics have already chosen the 28 best concerts 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 Creepy-Crawly Cocktails to Coriolanus: Fight Like a Bitch, and from Lit Crawl to the second week of TWIST, the Seattle Queer Film Festival. See them all below, and find even more events on our complete Things To Do calendar.

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


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

MONDAY

FOOD & DRINK

Rain City Chefs Alliance Dinner
The Rain City Chefs Alliance (RCCA) is exactly what it sounds like: a group of chefs working toward a common goal. What, exactly, is that goal? To "unite the community of chefs in Seattle to offer diners truly unique and inventive dining experiences." In plain English, they're doing a collaborative pop-up series. Also, those pop-ups raise money for Big Table, a nonprofit that helps chefs dealing with mental-health and substance-abuse issues. Who are they, though? They're a pretty goddamn impressive lineup: Tarsan i Jane's Perfece Rocher, Eden Hill's Maximillian Petty, Chan's Heong Soon Park, Manolin's Alex Barkley, and No Anchor/Navy Strength's Jeff Vance, as well as the front-of-house talents of Suzi An and Alia Rocher. This dinner might seem spendy, but remember that it's brought to you by the closest thing Seattle has to an all-star team and it's raising money for a very good cause. It's also representative of a burgeoning trend in this city toward more daring in fine dining, which is something that we definitely need. Encouraging the culinary adventures of the RCCA is well worth your $275. TOBIAS COUGHLIN-BOGUE

READINGS & TALKS

Armistead Maupin
San Francisco-based novelist Armistead Maupin was one of the first authors to write about AIDS (in 1983) and is best known for his Tales of the City series. His latest book, Logical Family, is a photograph-filled memoir that Neil Gaiman described as "fascinating, as delightful and as compulsive as any of the tales he has made up for us.” Seattle Review of Books founder and former Stranger books editor Paul Constant will host.

Climate Science on Tap: Going to Extremes
Hear from School of Environmental and Forest Sciences' Joshua Lawler, Seattle Public Utilities' James Rufo-Hill, and Institute for the Study of the Atmposphere and Ocean's Rachel White in a panel discussion about the relationship between extreme weather events and the changing climate in our region.

MONDAY-SUNDAY

FILM

TWIST: Seattle Queer Film Festival
Local shorts, indie features, and national or international releases will stoke and satisfy your appetite for gay, lesbian, bi, trans, and otherwise queer-focused films, from hot romances to incisive documentaries to perverse suspense flicks. If you love queer movies and moviemakers, this festival is indispensable: Not only will you watch the pivotal LGBTQ+ films of the year such as The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin (playing on opening night), Something Like Summer, and The Lavender Scare, you'll also get the chance to rendezvous with filmmakers and take cinema workshops. (Pro tip: Queen of drag queens BenDeLaCreme is hosting a screening of the classic psychological terror The Haunting on Monday.)

FOOD & DRINK

Seattle Restaurant Week
I think Seattle Restaurant Week benefits all parties involved. For one, it provides access to a host of the city's best restaurants at a price comparable to what you'd pay to Postmates for some mediocre pad thai. You can go out to all the places you've been meaning to go, try a wide swath of their menu, and leave with your financial well-being intact. It's only $33 for three courses, and only $18 at lunch! At places like Lark, Tilth, and Terra Plata! For two, restaurants win because it brings in all those people who have been meaning to go but have never gone, and potentially converts them to return customers. Regulars are, as any restauranteur will tell you, the real meat and bread of the business. Lastly, the actual restaurant staff wins because, if you're not a bad person, you listen to the sage advice my predecessor Bethany Jean Clement used to give every year, "Tip well, these things are hell for servers." TOBIAS COUGHLIN-BOGUE
Seattle Restaurant Week deals do not apply on Friday or Saturday.

TUESDAY

READINGS & TALKS

CAConrad and Dara Wier
“Crows are one of my favorite kinds of people on Earth and there are thousands of them in Seattle living as pigeons do in other cities,” writes the unimpeachably good CAConrad in what he calls a (soma)tic poem (which is a narrative of a ritual and its resulting poem) titled “Denise Levertov vs. Bruce Lee.” I quote this line to appeal to your municipal vanity, but also because it evinces some of the under-sung qualities of Conrad’s work, which are the subtly of the humor and the keenness of the eye. Lines like the one about crows are everywhere in his new book, While Standing in Line for Death, as is the unabashedly queer and righteous love that animates must-read poem-rituals such as “My Faggot Kansas Blood Confessions to the Earth” and “Power Sissy Intervention #1: Queer Bubbles.” RICH SMITH

John Freeman and Natalie Diaz
Join editor and poet John Freeman for a conversation with Mojave writer Natalie Diaz, whose work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod International, and North American Review.

TUESDAY-SATURDAY

ART

Shawn Huckins
Shawn Huckins is known for his humorous Pop Art and meme-inspired mixed media works that mash together images of early American figures and politicians with contemporary internet speak. On Huckins' website, he writes: "Imagine what Lewis & Clark could have done with the internet while exploring the American west."
Closing Oct 21.

PERFORMANCE

Coriolanus: Fight Like a Bitch
The all-woman cast of this infrequently produced Shakespearian tragedy stars Z Nation’s Nike Imoru, who showed off her ability to play King Lear and Lady Macbeth in her solo show Ode earlier this year. When she bellowed Lear's famous line, "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!" I felt a desperate urge to see her take on a kingly role of classical proportions, and the theater gods (who are taking the form of Rebel Kat Productions) have granted me this wish. Straight from the audition materials: “What happens when we smash our current political, gendered landscape onto the sacrosanct canvas of one of the greatest playwrights ever? If a man can destroy an entire city… can’t a woman do the same? We say they can.” RICH SMITH

TUESDAY-SUNDAY

PERFORMANCE

The Crucible
Arthur Miller's The Crucible is a powerful play that's also fun: the McCarthy-era communist witch hunts are communicated through the Salem witch trials, a device that enables Miller to combine themes of ideological and political paranoia with religious zealotry, teenage girl drama, and foreboding scenes of creepy witchery. Knowing ACT, they'll also manage to tie in relevant Trump-era mind games and intimidation.

Disney's Aladdin
Laugh if you must, but Disney's Aladdin is great. Any musical that has lyrics written by Howard Ashman is a masterpiece in my eyes. Granted, Ashman died (heartbreakingly, of complications related to AIDS, at the age of 40) before Disney produced Aladdin, so only a few of the songs in the final cut of the movie were his—specifically the linguistically dazzling tongue twisters “Prince Ali” and “Friend Like Me.” But as with The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, the stage version includes songs you may not know, and some of them have lyrics by Ashman, including “Proud of Your Boy.” CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

Ragtime
This musical is “rarely produced at the professional level due to the sheer size of it,” a source at 5th Avenue Theatre said. “It calls for a nearly 30-person cast and the orchestra is monstrous.” But after Theatre Latte Da in Minneapolis produced a stripped-down, streamlined version of Ragtime with very little in the way of a set, the 5th Avenue hired that same director, Peter Rothstein, to do a similar production for Seattle. The cast includes talented 5th Avenue all-stars like Joshua Carter, Louis Hobson, and Kendra Kassebaum. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

WEDNESDAY

FILM

The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville: LĂ©on Morin, Priest
If you do not understand French cool, if it is a mystery to you, if you have any doubts about it, then you must see the the action and crime films of Jean-Pierre Melville. Enough said. CHARLES MUDEDE

FOOD & DRINK

German Jewish Cooking Class
In this class taught by a mother-daughter duo, you'll learn how to make a traditional meal of handgrated potato dumplings, slaw, and krokerle (spiced hazelnut chocolate cookies). Gabrielle Rossmer Gropman and Sonya Gropman are the co-authors of their new book, The German-Jewish Cookbook: Recipes & History of a Cuisine. Cookbooks will be available for purchase.

READINGS & TALKS

Don Mee Choi: Translation Is a Mode=Translation Is an Anti-Neocolonial Mode
How can translating the great poet and professor Kim Hyesoon’s work from Korean into English be seen as an act of anti-colonialism? At this cozy, fireside Bagley Wright Lecture, Don Mee Choi will tackle that question while also discussing “Walter Benjamin’s bread, Korean corn bread, warships, Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence, and Kim Hyesoon’s mirrors,” according to press materials. Seattle readers might be familiar with Choi’s challenging but politically powerful collection of poetry Hardly War, wherein she reveals colonialism inherent within the English language and then undermines the living fuck out it. That inclination extends to her award-winning translations of Hyesoon’s work, whose humorous and grotesque feminist poetry aligns well with Choi’s general aesthetic. If this all sounds a tad academic, that’s because it absolutely is. But it’s also fascinating and necessary work. RICH SMITH

Loudon Wainwright
The existential soul cry of the white male baby boomer has only recently exited the center of attention in the culture it used to effortlessly dominate. Nevertheless, the sound it makes can often reverberate with intriguing, even lovely resonances. Which is to say: If you’re still trying to figure out why your parents never let their love for you interfere with their quest to love themselves, you could do worse than spending some time with Liner Notes, the new memoir by the staggeringly frank, reliably brilliant songwriter Loudon Wainwright. Along the way, he treats his relationships with his kids (including Rufus and Martha, both also brilliant), wives, and parents with candor but not sentimentality—the same heady, occasionally infuriating mixture he brings to his music. And if he doesn’t quite solve the puzzle of life’s meaning, he does give an excellent illustration of the human principle that no amount of privilege is so great that suffering can’t be extracted from it. The book is good, but I’m willing to bet that given Wainwright’s gifts as a performer, the reading will be even better. SEAN NELSON

Ron Chernow
I'm sure you're familiar with the Tony Award-winning smash hit musical explosion known as Hamilton? Well, I've been told Ron Chernow wrote the biography of Alexander Hamilton that Lin-Manuel Miranda used as source material for his wildly popular show. This year, Chernow will be touring with a new presidential biography about Ulysses S. Grant, probably the greatest writer ever to hold the office. RICH SMITH

WEDNESDAY-SUNDAY

ART

Common Pleasures: Art of Urban Life in Edo Japan
Edo Japan (a term describing the country's stable, economically healthy period between 1603 and 1868) saw a surge in urban cultural and artistic life, and art from the era responded with lovely depictions of townspeople and courtesans letting loose at festivals, enjoying the cherry bloom season, and generally indulging in lowercase-h hedonism. This exhibit highlights works from this period that celebrate the common people and their joys.
Closing Oct 22.

Cut Up/Cut Out
Organized by the Bay Area's Bedford Gallery, Cut Up/Cut Out is a traveling survey of international artists using decorative cutting and piercing to transform ordinary materials like paper, plastic, metal, and rubber into astonishing works of art. From the delicate Mexican folk art tradition of papel picado employed by Carmen Lomas Garza to the filigreed oil drums and land mines of Cal Lane, the range of scale, materials, and techniques exhibited make Cut Up/Cut Out a must-see for anyone who loves seeing impressive feats of creative labor. EMILY POTHAST
Closing Oct 22.

Tess Martin: Ginevra
Tess Martin's story-driven animations vary wildly in terms of medium, and include paint on glass, marker on glass, photographs and cutouts on paper, and paint and people on a mural at Cal Anderson Park. Her latest short film, Ginevra, is based on Percy Shelley's emotional and unfinished poem of the same name, and this time features paper cut-outs filmed on a multi-plane animation stand with lights and colored filters. Some speculate that Shelley's poem is based on the true story of a woman who appeared to rise from the dead after a plague swept 13th-century Florence. At this exhibit, see the film as well as a selection of cut-outs.
Closing Oct 22.

PERFORMANCE

Pride And Prejudice
This high-energy new take on Pride and Prejudice, adapted by Kate Hamill and directed by Amanda Dehnert, blew me away. It takes a lot of risks, but it succeeds mightily, inventing a hundred new things to laugh at in the course of retelling Jane Austen’s comedy of manners. It includes slapstick humor (spit takes, pratfalls, men in drag, freestyle dancing), pop music (RuPaul’s “Supermodel,” Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke”), and perfectly calibrated acting that somehow never goes too far off the rails. The end is unexpectedly poignant. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

THURSDAY

ART

The Secret History of Feminist Self-Portraiture
Stranger art critic Emily Pothast will teach a class on the history of the body in feminist and women’s art, examining "how our experience of the gaze shifts when women are in command of their own images." There will also be a drawing session where students can practice abstract “automatic drawing."

FOOD & DRINK

German Jewish Cookbook Dinner
Eat a seven-course meal from the German Jewish Cookbook, featuring chicken wings, a snack plate of buttermilk-fried sardines, smoked oysters, collard green tartar, and much more.

PERFORMANCE

EMERG-iON
See Voodoo Nightshade and Miss Texas 1988 in a spooky show with music from NYC's Bernard Herman and James K, with support from local acts Charlatan, Bloom Offering, and MMMelt.

READINGS & TALKS

Lit Crawl Seattle: 2017
Seattle Lit Crawl is under new management! Four incredibly talented women now run what’s still an overwhelming affair that’s arguably not so great for writers, but they have done an incredible job of securing a lot of new and well-established talent for this city’s largest literary event of the year. It might sound impossible, but I’m going to try to split myself into three different people so I can see An Evening with Eileen Myles (one of the country’s best poets is coming through with a memoir about dogs and I am, as they say, here for that); An Evening with Anastacia-Renêe; the S.U.B.E Hour (the Seattle Urban Book Expo’s showcase, featuring Kristin Alana, Kamari Bright, Natasha Rivers, and Jeffrey Lee Cheatham II); the Made at Hugo House Fellows Alum reading (with Laura Da’, Anca L. Szilágyi, Ross McKeekin, and Quenton Baker); the great Northwest poets Sarah Galvin, Robert Lashley, and Timmy Straw; Poetry Northwest’s reading with Ellen Welcker, JM Miller, and Sarah María Medina; and Fragmented Transmissions (a group of lyric and hybrid essayists). Last but definitely not least: The Stranger’s Sydney Brownstone and Heidi Groover are doing a live recording of Trust Issues, a podcast where the two reporters hilariously unpack conspiracy theories and fake news stories. Subscribe on iTunes ahead of time, listen to the episode titled “Alex Jones Is a CIA Shill,” and you will be truly rewarded. RICH SMITH

THURSDAY-SATURDAY

ART

Terry Leness and Marion Post Wolcott
Architectural and landscape paintings by Terry Leness will be on display alongside historical images by renowned Farm Security Administration photographer Marion Post Wolcott.
Opening Oct 19.

PERFORMANCE

Ian Bell's Brown Derby Series: The Exorcist
Seattle has a venerable and undignified tradition of marvelously ramshackle bar theater. If Dina Martina is its queen, Ian Bell's Brown Derby Series—which adapts major motion pictures for raucous, boozy audiences—is the crown prince. For this edition, Brown Derby will adapt the pea-soup-vomit-soaked horror film The Exorcist. BRENDAN KILEY

THURSDAY-SUNDAY

ART

Andrew Wyeth: In Retrospect
Born in Pennsylvania 100 years ago, Andrew Wyeth is an American realist painter associated with regionalism. His paintings and drawings generally include figures—sometimes in a landscape, sometimes in contemplatively lit interiors—that simultaneously present drama and stillness. In the 1970s and ’80s, he painted more than 247 studies of a German-born woman named Helga Testorf, resulting in some of the most intimate and compelling examples of 20th-century portraiture. Organized in partnership with the Brandywine River Museum, Andrew Wyeth: In Retrospect presents more than 100 works by this quintessential American artist. EMILY POTHAST
Opening Oct 19.

Mary Ann Peters
When Mary Ann Peters was nominated for (and later won) a Stranger Genius Award in Art in 2015, Jen Graves wrote: "Early this year, she showed a breakthrough body of work in new mediums and new approaches. There were small, intimate paintings based on photographs taken from the internet (ranging from pictures of war to placid, mystical landscapes), capturing that duality of being close but not being there. There were cast-bronze pita pockets, the food burned away in the casting process, pitas now both bread and bronze, delicate and unbreakable, here and gone. There was a large, mesmerizing installation of a hidden garden, and a woven tapestry based on an old satirical cartoon. And still there were those classic, dust-stormy abstracts, which demonstrate yet again that Peters is, as has been obvious for a very long time, one hell of a painter. From here, she could do anything."
Opening Oct 19.

PERFORMANCE

BenDeLaCreme: Beware the Terror of Gaylord Manor
Someone got wise and gave BenDeLaCreme a Halloween show. The fact that that someone is ACT Theatre, a company not exactly known for big drag blowouts, is suspicious, but for BenDeLaCreme I'm willing to suspend my disbelief. This horrific tale begins—where else—at Gaylord Manor, where a team of "paranormal researchers" have found themselves on this fateful night. Soon they're beset by "vampire vixens, well-built werewolves, mischievous mummies and witches that WERK," and it only gets more fabulously frightening from there. RICH SMITH

Love, Chaos, and Dinner
Beloved circus/cabaret/comedy institution Teatro ZinZanni will return to Seattle for a dinner theater production of Love, Chaos, and Dinner. They promise "the same stunning, velvet-laden, and iconic Belgian spiegeltent Seattleites will remember from Teatro ZinZanni’s former location on lower Queen Anne." The cast is led by first-time "Madame ZinZanni" Ariana Savalas, and will feature a duo on aerial trapeze, a magician, a "contortionist-puppet," a yodeling dominatrix, a hoop aerialist, and a Parisian acrobat.

Onerus
This dinner theater production will explore a San Junipero-style fantasy: a world in which people live out their lives virtually, with their brains connected to the cloud. The machines at onērus™ offer "100% organic dreams harvested from Deviants"—see what that might look like at this Cafe Nordo spectacular.

The World of Extreme Happiness
This production follows the life of a young girl abandoned in rural China as a baby and forced to scrabble her way out of poverty as a teenager.

FRIDAY

COMEDY

wellRED: From Dixie With Love
See stand-up from three Georgian and Tennesseean comedians, including "the Liberal Redneck" Trae Crowder, Drew Morgan, and Corey Ryan Forrester, who are touring across the country to promote their book Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin Dixie Outta the Dark. Their take on the ideal South: "It’s about dancing to country music at a gay wedding. It’s about loving your neighbor whether you have the same religion, skin color, or sexual preference, as long as they cheer for the same college football team."

FOOD & DRINK

Alice B. Toklas Tour and Dinner
In 2016, Tobias Coughlin-Bogue wrote: "The Sorrento is, apparently, the most haunted place in Seattle. Including by Alice B. Toklas, author of an eponymous cookbook and lover of Gertrude Stein. Apparently Toklas briefly lived in Seattle as a teenager, and at some point lived in the neighboring apartments." Join the staff of the century-old hotel for a ghostly tour (filled with booze, apparently) followed by a prix fixe dinner inspired by the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook.

Behind the Table
Enjoy an evening of local art, live music, dinner, drinks, a silent auction, and more. Proceeds benefit The Market Community Safety Net, a fund that provides financial assistance to anyone working or living in Pike Place Market.

Creepy-Crawly Cocktails
UW's Burke Museum, as part of its NiteLife series, is hosting an event that features a bunch of creatures that are notoriously creepy. While I'm an inveterate arachnophobe, they've got some enticing arguments for attendance. For one, bats and snakes are pretty cool. For two, Westland will be there, dispensing their "signature creepy-crawly cocktail," a concoction of their American single-malt whiskey, black walnut bitters, orgeat syrup, and lime juice. There's also beer from Two Beers (specifically their seasonally appropriate Grey Skies Dark Pale Ale and their Immersion Amber), wine, nonalcoholic beverages, and snacks. Perhaps most importantly, this event provides you with two drink tickets for $15 (less for students and museum members!), which is about what you'd spend with tip at your average Thursday happy hour elsewhere. Need I say more? TOBIAS COUGHLIN-BOGUE

Twilight Noodle Slurp
In 2015, Stranger food writer Angela Garbes wrote, "On a cold, rainy afternoon a few weeks ago, I was at Phnom Penh Noodle House in the International District, slurping my way through one of my favorite soups in town—the special rice noodle bowl filled with seafood, pork, and crunchy bits of roasted garlic. As I ate, a gentleman from the Wing Luke Museum came in to make the final arrangements for one of the museum’s upcoming Twilight Noodle Slurps, where the museum guides people on a three-hour walking tour of the ID during which they sample some of the many noodles offered at the neighborhood’s mix of Asian restaurants and learn about the dishes. “Be sure to tell them your story,” the man told the restaurant owner. I wanted to sign up for the tour immediately." The tours are back for this fall—don't miss out.

PERFORMANCE

Poppy
Bizarro pop Barbie web artist Poppy has racked up hundreds of millions of views on YouTube for her many surreal Technicolor videos. She'll be gearing up to release her debut album this October.

READINGS & TALKS

Pat Thomas
Pat Thomas will discuss his book Did It! From Yippie to Yuppie: Jerry Rubin, an American Revolutionary, which offers an oral and visual history of the Yippies co-founder, anti-Vietnam War activist, and Chicago 8 defendant Jerry Rubin.

FRIDAY-SATURDAY

FOOD & DRINK

The American Whiskey Experience
Consider a "Northwest premiere showcase of some of the finest and rarest American whiskeys." Drink cocktails, sample whiskey, and eat "whiskey-centric food pairings" from local chefs.

Diwali Dinner
Celebrate Diwali with Chef Nirmal Montiero, who has crafted a special dinner in honor of the Hindu festival of lights that celebrates the triumph of light over darkness. The menu features Gobhi Mussalam (cauliflower braised in a fruit and nut sauce), Charga (grilled chicken breast seasoned with tandoori spice, topped with cilantro chili and fennel sauce), and Mithas (carrot pudding puffs and guava ice cream drizzled with orange caraway seeds) for dessert.

PERFORMANCE

Fresh: A Drag Show for New Talent
Just like we learned in Girl Scouts, it's good to make new friends and keep the old; one is silver and the other is gold. The same goes for drag artists. This showcase, curated and hosted by Arson Nicki, highlights new artists that have something different to bring to the stage.

FRIDAY-SUNDAY

ART

Walter McConnell: Itinerant Edens
Artist and ceramic art professor Walter McConnell is known for doing something unusual with his clay pieces: not firing them. His wet ceramic pieces are often intricate, complicated, and enormous, and anyone looking at them would never question how "finished" they are. His latest exhibit, Itinerant Edens: A Measure of Disorder, looks terrifying. McConnell took full-body scans of live models, made 3D plaster molds based on their bodies, and cast terracotta clay models from the molds. He then created nature-inspired pedestals, put the human figures on top, and sealed the scenes in tall, thin terrariums. The end result looks like a dystopian version of the Natural History Museum. To maximize uneasiness, visit at the end of the show's run—because the pieces are unfired, they will change and morph over the course of the exhibit.
Opening Oct 20.

FILM

Seattle Polish Film Festival
This festival of Polish cinema is marking its 25th year, to which we (attempt to) say: Wszystkiego najlepszego! Some film highlights this year include the gorgeous-looking Loving Vincent, a film about Van Gogh told entirely in painted animation; the thriller Amok, based on a true story about a novelist whose book may harbor clues to a hideous cold case; a drama set in a Commmunist-run prison camp for Polish "traitors" after the Liberation called Reconciliation; and what will surely be an unmissable event, a 70-year retrospective of Polish animation.

PERFORMANCE

The Barber of Seville
Gioachino Rossini's classically humorous and high-energy opera The Barber of Seville, known as the prequel to Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, will be given a slightly modernized tweak by Seattle Opera. The sets and costumes have been created squarely under the influence of the worlds of Wes Anderson and Pedro AlmodĂłvar, and each performance will feature a special appearance by Juilliard-trained burlesque sensation Marc Kenison (as his alter ego Waxie Moon) in the role of Ambrogio. This production will of course still be in Italian with English subtitles.

This is Halloween
Can Can's creepy yet cheery musical is back! Last year, Rich Smith wrote: "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 Luminous Pariah, Paris Original, Marissa Quimby, and Baby Kate, 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."

SATURDAY

FOOD & DRINK

Chicken Mole Making Class
Find out how to prepare mole, a southwestern Mexican sauce that sometimes incorporates cacao, tomatoes, and raisins, but varies among family recipes.

Oyster Classes
Taste bivalves from across the land, enjoy wine pairings, compare "oyster culture" in various regions, and learn how to properly shuck and prepare oysters.

Pumpkin Carving Party
Cozy up on a heated patio, spill some pumpkin guts, and exhibit your coveted carving talent at this all-ages party.

QUEER

American Horror Story Drag Show
Local acts will perform as their favorite American Horror Story character in a spooky evening hosted by Irene DuBois. Performers include Americano, Fraya Love, Jade Dynasty, SHE, and other special guests.

READINGS & TALKS

Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, Part I, Chapter 2
Seattle composer, musician, and substitute teacher Neal Kosaly-Meyer will continue his amazing feat of reciting Finnegan's Wake from memory, chapter by chapter—as if reading the modernist monster wasn't hard enough. Intimidated? Never fear: according to Kosaly-Meyer, Chapter 2 "is among the shortest chapters (about an hour to perform), the characters and narrative are relatively clear (at least compared to the rest of the Wake), and it includes a climactic song, composed by Joyce. "

Thalia Field: Experimental Animals Book Launch
Professor and author Thalia Field will launch her new historical novel, Experimental Animals: A Reality Fiction, a thoroughly-researched exploration of the life of 19th-century naturalist and vivisectionist Claude Bernard and his marriage to the animal-loving Fanny Martin. Beryl Clark and Gabrielle Bates will read from the work as well as sharing selections from their own writings.

SUNDAY

READINGS & TALKS

Humans of New York: Brandon Stanton
Brandon Stanton gained international fame for his Facebook page "Humans of New York," on which he posted his street photography documenting the interesting outfits, poses, and activities of NYC residents. But what made his work really interesting were the captions, often quotes from the people being photographed, that allowed glimpses into their inner lives and most traumatic struggles. There have been quite a few smart take-down pieces of Stanton that point out the potential dangers of his empathetic ethnography, but ultimately, Stanton has achieved his goal of humanizing strangers and giving audiences practical examples of the (newly minted) word "sonder" (the realization that strangers have as rich and complex a life as you do). At this event, Stanton will share "his own personal story, and the perspective he has gained since embarking on his journey to help others tell theirs."

National Geographic Live: Into The Arctic Kingdom
Follow along with photographer Florian Schulz as he takes the audience and the Seattle Symphony on a story evolution of his global journeying across the mostly untracked wilds of the deep Arctic.

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