Our music critics have already chosen the 47 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—from the Short Run Comix and Arts Festival to the America's Test Kitchen Seattle EATS Cooking, Food & Wine Festival, and from the 14th Annual HUMP! Film Festival to the 20 Years of Pacific Voices exhibition. See them all below, and find even more events on our complete Things To Do calendar.

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

MONDAY

FILM

SAM Films: Indian Film Masterpiece: Song Of The Open Road
In honor of the Peacock in the Desert exhibition, the Seattle Art Museum will screen the late-'50s trilogy The Apu Trilogy by Indian writer-director Satyajit Ray. The series traces a boy named Apu’s spiritual path from his village origins to his urban university years, all the way through marriage and fatherhood.

Silent Movie Mondays Halloween Special: The Cat and the Canary
Pregame Halloween with this beloved horror-comedy from 1939. In a haunted mansion, an eccentric uncle's will is read, and an onslaught of murder and mayhem follows.

READINGS & TALKS

Maxwell King: The Good Neighbor
Learn about a genuinely good man and beloved public figure as Maxwell King introduces his book, the first full-length biography of Fred Rogers.

Sayu Bhojwani: The New Wave of Candidates at Democracy’s Door
In People Like Us: The New Wave of Candidates Knocking at Democracy’s Door, Sayu Bhojwani raises hopes for a deluge of budding politicians who differ from the "overwhelmingly white, male, moneyed, and Christian" officeholders at all governmental levels today. At this Town Hall talk, Bhojwani will make the case that "foreign-born, lower-income, and of-color Americans" are raring to transform national, state, and local administrations into something more truly representative of the citizenry.

PERFORMANCE

Sandbox Radio: Here Be Monsters
Seattle's oldest librarian, Nancy Pearl, will grace the live taping of this special Halloween episode of The Bathhouse on Green Lake. The program will also welcome back performance poet Daemond Arrindell, writers Rachel Atkins, Scot Augustson, Elizabeth Heffron, and Lisa Halpern, and many others.

MONDAY-TUESDAY

READINGS & TALKS

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

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

MONDAY-SATURDAY

PERFORMANCE

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

MONDAY-SUNDAY

FOOD & DRINK

Sagra di Radicchio
Cheers for chicories! Inspired by the Italian tradition of the sagra (a festival usually celebrating local food), this weeklong event dedicated to the refreshingly bitter radicchio kicks off with a Restaurant Week of specials from local restaurants, followed by a daylong festival at Palace Ballroom and a Radicchio Pizza Party at London Plane. For even more radicchio revelry, check out the Hot Stove Society's Lunch Club cooking class and a cooking demonstration with Jackie Cross and Lexi Ochoa. JULIANNE BELL

Seattle Restaurant Week
Frugal gourmands everywhere rejoice over this twice-yearly event, which lets diners tuck into prix-fixe menus at more than 165 different restaurants hoping to lure new customers with singularly slashed prices: Three courses cost a mere $33, and many restaurants also offer two-course lunches for $18. It’s an excellent opportunity to feast like a high roller at an accessible price point and cross some otherwise spendy establishments off your food bucket list, including critically acclaimed restaurants like Tilth, Agrodolce, and Lark. JULIANNE BELL
No special menus on Friday or Saturday

PERFORMANCE

Ghost Party
Dacha will stage another one of their site-specific, interactive productions, this one seasonally appropriate for Halloween: the story of a dead lost soul stuck in an eternal party.

TUESDAY

FOOD & DRINK

American Psycho-Inspired Dosia Pop-Up Dinner
You can pretend you're Christian Bale making a reservation at the fictional restaurant Dorsia in American Psycho when you call to reserve a spot at this opulent '80s-inspired dinner. Look out for investment bankers with radiant skin.

FILM

‘The Shining’/ ‘The Conjuring’ Double Feature
If you see Patrick Wilson leading the cast of a horror film, you can probably count on some freaky shit going down (see: Insidious). The Conjuring is set in the 1970s, is “based on a true story” à la The Amityville Horror, and is inspired by the same paranormal investigations of real-life couple Ed and Lorraine Warren (played by Wilson and Vera Farmiga). Here, they’re called upon to help a family experiencing increasingly aggressive disturbances by a dark presence in their secluded Rhode Island farmhouse. The Shining is one of the greatest horror films of all time, and an all-time fave. Whenever I stay in an old, vaguely rundown hotel (and I’ve had my share), there always comes a time when I end up in a long empty hallway, alone, waiting for the appearance of those dead-eyed twins. Stanley Kubrick’s masterful film also finds Jack Nicholson at his psychotic best—wild-eyed, unhinged, grinning like a loon. “Heeeeere’s Johnny!”  LEILANI POLK

FOOD & DRINK

Yotam Ottolenghi: Ottolenghi Simple
Israeli British author Ottolenghi will present his latest cookbook, Ottolenghi Simple, with signed copies available at the event.

PERFORMANCE

Bard In A Bar: Hamlet
Dress like a flamboyant Elizabethan (or maybe a kingly ghost?) and read aloud from Hamlet in a round of "Shakespeare karaoke," then enjoy drinking games, trivia, and more fun.

Cult with Arson Nicki
Local avant-garde drag weirdo Arson Nicki will perform a wild and spooky Halloween show.

READINGS & TALKS

Anthony Leiserowitz: Climate Change in the American Mind
Do you know people who, somehow, still refuse to acknowledge global climate change? You most likely live in the US, so...probably. As part of the UW Public Lectures Series "Bunk," Dr. Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, will talk about perceptions and beliefs about climate change and strategies for building a climate-literate coalition for confronting the problem.

Dr. Adam Becker: What Is Real?
Science writer and astrophysicist Adam Becker will read from his provocative history and exploration of quantum physics, from its roots in the 1920s to current controversies, addressing the question: What does quantum physics actually mean for our world? Can we understand it as a series of useful formalisms, or can the entities it predicates exist in the usual sense of “existence”? How do we distinguish metaphysics from physics, or do we need to? What Is Real? doesn't offer a definitive answer, but Becker has a flair for explaining things that are very hard to conceptualize, and his book is stirring up a lot of interest (and controversy) among physicists. JOULE ZELMAN

TUESDAY-WEDNESDAY

PERFORMANCE

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

TUESDAY-SUNDAY

PERFORMANCE

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

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

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

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

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

WEDNESDAY

ART

Special Halloween Tour
Just in time for All Hallows' Eve, explore the Munich Secessionists’ obsession with sĂ©ances, the occult, and "primal human urges" at this special tour of the Frye salon. Plus, "confront your own demons" (scary!) by paying a visit to the Group Therapy exhibition.

FILM

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Removed as they are from the modern moviegoing experience, silent movies possess a special kind of hypnotic otherworldliness. Few are stranger than Robert Wiene's 1920 expressionist masterwork The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Characters creep and scurry through a demented painted landscape in this tale of a malevolent fairground "doctor" and the sleepwalker who murders at his command. Watch this unique film with a live score by Ray Larsen, Alex Guy, Beth Fleenor, Wayne Horvitz, and others.

Campout Cinema: A Nightmare on Elm Street
One of the most frightening villains of 1980s horror stalks innocent teens through their dreams in Nightmare on Elm Street. Watch it under the LED stars at this special 21+ screening, which will have trivia, giveaways, drink specials, and other surprises. Tickets include admission to Scared to Death: The Thrill of Horror Film.

Collide-O-Scope Halloween
Spend the holiday experiencing a delightfully freaky, swirly montage of music and mayhem made of found-footage phantasmagoria from the archives of the cheeky Collide-O-Scope duo Shane Wahlund and Michael Anderson. Come in costume—they may bestow one of their much-coveted prizes upon you! And keep your breath bated for their special surprise guest! After the show, head to an after-party at Bill's Off Broadway to process the trippy mayhem in your brain.

Schlock and Awe: Reagan-Era Horror
Deregulation and out-of-control greed were not the only horrors of President Ronald Reagan's reign. Northwest Film Forum celebrates slashers, mutants, and gore in a deep dive into the paranoia and excess (and mullets) of the era, and boy does that sound like a fun escape from our own hellscape. Catch the truly weird suburban-conformity horror Society on Wednesday and a new restoration of John Carpenter's chilling sea-ghost tale, The Fog, from Thursday to Saturday.

Vampire Planet: Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror
This is it: The vampire movie that established the monster as a pale, pestilent ghoul who'd hypnotize the ladies into his loathsome embrace...Until, that is, Bela Lugosi turned him into a suave fanged gentleman and Twilight did the Twilight thing. F.W. Murnau's 1922 classic is worth revisiting.

FOOD & DRINK

Death by Dinner
Chef Daniel Currier will host "a culinary adventure into the unknown" by creating a menu with each dish inspired by different Taoist elements: water, fire, earth, metal, and wood.

Dino's Halloween Dance Party with Amateur Hour
The Jersey-style pizzeria on Capitol Hill promises zombie slushies, pizza, dancing, and "epic recreation" with DJ duo Amateur Hour.

PERFORMANCE

Beware the Terror of Gaylord Manor
The world-famous Seattle-based drag queen BenDeLaCreme has written and performed three acclaimed solo shows, but Beware the Terror of Gaylord Manor is the artist's first foray into writing, directing, and starring in an original play of her own. It's a spooky, campy twist on the horror flick genre, featuring ghosts, dancers, music, and special effects. It first premiered last year for a sold-out run at ACT, and returns this year surely with a few of its kinks worked out. The chemistry between BenDeLaCreme and Scott Shoemaker alone is worth the price of admission. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

Cucci's Spooky Weed
What could be spookier than spending Halloween stoned with Cucci Binaca? Binaca, a mischievous ringleader in Seattle’s drag scene, is potty-mouthed, perpetually stoned, and the conservative right’s worst nightmare, which makes her a favorite here at The Stranger. In Cucci’s biannual Spooky Weed, she invites drag performers to create numbers that are both spooky and stoned, and it’s a riot (sometimes literally). Get hella high before you go, and be prepared for performers who are more likely to spend their number bleeding onto a canvas than lip-synching to Britney Spears. CHASE BURNS

Halloween Party!
Beloved local bingo queen Sylvia O'Stayformore will host this Halloween party with a costume contest and scary movie screenings.

QUEER

Sisters of the Corn: A Halloween Spooktacular
Join the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence for a delightfully gluttonous All Hallows' Eve party. Come dressed to kill (and impress) and enter a costume contest promising juicy cash prizes.

WEDNESDAY-SATURDAY

PERFORMANCE

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

WEDNESDAY-SUNDAY

ART

Elizabeth Murray and Anne Waldman: Her Story
Elizabeth Murray and Anne Waldman's long collaboration produced a collection of drawings, prints, and poems reflecting on femininity, freedom, and interior and exterior life. Their symbiotic creation, consisting of 13 folded pages, will be on view, a testament to their friendship.
Closing Sunday

PERFORMANCE

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

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

THURSDAY

ART

20 Years of Pacific Voices
The 20-year-old Pacific Voices exhibition was codesigned by representatives of 17 different communities of the Pacific Rim: Korean, Inupiaq, Maori, Tlingit, and more. There, you can learn about Chinese New Year’s traditions or Lushootseed language preservation or Sundanese shadow puppetry, knowing that the artifacts you’re admiring were chosen by insiders to reflect their cultures. The museum will fete its collaborators and celebrate their cultures with a talk by these “community curators” and Suquamish Tribe chairman Leonard Forsman, movement and music by Muckleshoot Canoe Family and Tsimshian Haayuuk Dance Group, and food truck fare. No matter your background, you’ll discover a gorgeous variety of traditions you never knew about. JOULE ZELMAN

Pioneer Square Art Walk
Once a month, Seattleites flock to the streets in Pioneer Square for a chance to stroll, sip on booze, and attend as many art openings as possible at First Thursday. It's the city's central and oldest art walk, and takes place in a historic neighborhood known for its abundance of galleries. Wine and hobnobbing will steal the scene for some, but at its core, it's an impressive communal unveiling of new artwork. In November, check out opening receptions for Cappy Thompson's 90-foot-long window mural, Kristen Ramirez's exhibition of silkscreen, neon, and sandwich boards, Margie Livingston: Extreme Landscape Painting, Raven Skyriver: Confluence, Saul Becker: Uneven Terrain, Tara Booth: Everybody loves a clown, so why can't you?, and Matthew Dennison: Knowledge of Other Places.

FILM

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

FOOD & DRINK

Drunk Dial Congress
At this Ladybar-hosted event, you'll be rewarded with a free shot when you call or write to a local representitive (and you can also sip cocktails). They'll provide a list of addresses, phone numbers, and scripts, so all you have to do is choose which issue you want to focus on.

Farm House Dinners
Chef Micah Mowreym has previously spent time at some of the world's top-rated, Michelin-starred restaurants, like Mirazur in France, Osteria Francescana in Italy, and the beloved Gramercy Tavern in New York. At this hyper-local dinner, he'll prepare a six-to eight-course meal on Matthews Farm using produce sourced from the farm itself and organic suppliers no more than 10 miles away, paired with library wines plucked from the depths of the Matthews and Tenor wine cellars.

READINGS & TALKS

Ballast: an intimate reading
Celebrate Quenton Baker's exhibition of erasure poems with a special evening of readings by Amanda Johnston, an award-winning Texas-based poet who co-founded Black Poets Speak Out and Torch Literary Arts; Dante Micheaux, who's been shortlisted for the Benjamin Zephaniah Poetry Prize and the Bridport Prize; and L. Lamar Wilson, a Publishers Group bronze medalist and a 2013 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry finalist.

THURSDAY-SATURDAY

COMEDY

Piff the Magic Dragon
Piff the Magic Dragon is (1) British, and (2) a performer of very impressive and hilarious magic, while (3) dressed as a dragon. In a way, it’s like: What more do you want, jam on it? But in another way, his performance elevates what might and should have been pure gimmickry into something approaching the exalted state of high lowbrow, something that transcends this unbearable world by being utterly of it. Or maybe it is just pure gimmickry, but if so, the emphasis is on “pure,” which makes him a must-see. SEAN NELSON

PERFORMANCE

Barber Shop Chronicles
Black men around the world gather in barber shops for politics, chat, preaching, and sports talk in this Fuel, National Theatre, and West Yorkshire Playhouse co-production that takes place in Harare, Accra, London, Johannesburg, Kampala, and Lagos.

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

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

Schoolhouse Rock Live
My guess is there are more people who get the fond nostalgic feels about Schoolhouse Rock than there are people who hate it or don’t even know about it at all. Granted, the animated, educational series of musical shorts touching on history, grammar, math, science and politics might have had its original run from 1973 to 1985, but it was revived for a while in the ’90s, and grade school teachers are likely still showing it to their students. A quick poll of millennial staffers finds that “I’m Just a Bill” (1976) and “Conjunction Junction” (1973) are the top two faves, which just goes to show you this shit is timeless. ReAct Theatre will present both of the aforementioned jams, along with various others (like “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly” and “Interplant Janet”) during their 90-minute stage production. LEILANI POLK

THURSDAY-SUNDAY

FILM

14th Annual HUMP! Film Festival
The 14th Annual HUMP! Film Festival, the world's biggest and best porn short film festival, premiers in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco this November! After the opening festival concludes its run, HUMP! will hit the road in 2019 and screen in more than 50 cities across the U.S. and Canada. HUMP! invites filmmakers, animators, songwriters, porn-star wannabes, kinksters, vanilla folks, YOU, and other creative types to make short porn films—five minutes max—for HUMP! The HUMP! Film Festival screens in theaters and nothing is ever released online. HUMP! films can be hardcore, softcore, live action, animated, kinky, vanilla, straight, gay, lez, bi, trans, genderqueer—anything goes at HUMP! (Well, almost anything: No poop, no animals, no minors, no MAGA hats.) DAN SAVAGE

PERFORMANCE

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

A Bright Room Called Day
Because we're all such rugged American individuals, it's easy to dismiss the rising tide of fascism in this country and across the globe as a troublesome but ultimately passing fad doomed to be washed away by the incoming blue wave. A group of Berlin artists had a similar thought, too—in 1932. In Tony Kushner's 1985 classic, A Bright Room Called Day, those artists wrestle with all the same questions we're all wrestling with now—Do we stay or do we go? Do we stage a revolution? Or do we try to fight it from the inside? Like all of Kushner's plays, it's an intelligent and gripping story that will make you feel like you live in a vibrant, thriving city that matters. And if the play spurs you to get off your ass and actually do something for that city—or for the country at large—the show's producer, The Williams Project, says they'll put you in touch with local activists in order to facilitate civic action. RICH SMITH

Disney On Ice: Dare to Dream
Okay, this is a bullshit ice show for kids. But the world is—as this past August in Seattle showed us—literally on fire. You deserve to drop out and gawk at some glittery dresses floating around an ice rink for an afternoon. Eat some edibles beforehand and pretend you’re watching Fantasia IRL. CHASE BURNS

Juan Palmieri
In the 1960s, Uruguay’s economy was in crisis. An urban guerrilla group called the Tupamaros rose up and began redistributing the wealth by robbing banks and giving food and money to the poor. A right wing military dictatorship took power in a coup d'etat and started putting the kibosh on all that. Shortly thereafter, the United States swooped in and trained local police to interrogate and torture dissidents, which led to hundreds of disappearances and thousands of incarcerations. Uruguayan playwright Antonio Larreta dramatizes this story of political upheaval and US intervention in Juan Palmieri, which ACT will present for the first time in English. Arlene Martínez-Vázquez translates and directs. RICH SMITH

FRIDAY

FOOD & DRINK

The Feast: A Symphony of Food
Music, food, and film converge for this unique synesthetic feast, in which the Northwest Symphony Orchestra will score five short documentaries starring a farmer, a winemaker, a baker, a server, and chef Tom Douglas, examining the labor of love each puts into their respective crafts. Before the performance, VIP guests will sit down to a multicourse meal prepared by Douglas himself. Donations support Seattle Children’s Hospital. JULIANNE BELL

Fried Chicken + Moscow Mule Party
To celebrate Ma'ono opening a new fried chicken counter inside the Capitol Hill Rachel's Ginger Beer, the spicy-sweet soda shop will offer $6 fried chicken sandwiches and $6 Moscow mules.

PERFORMANCE

The Great Perdita | Michael Cercado | Gregory Kleciak | Chelsea Blackwell
See Olivia Ochoa as she resurrects the now-forgotten actress and author Mary Robinson in the year 1785; accomplished local actor Michael Cercado (Welcome to Arroyo's, American Hwangap); Chelsea Blackwell; and Gregory Kleciak, all for Solo Performance Month. 

READINGS & TALKS

Abbi Jacobson: I Might Regret This
You probably know her as Ilana’s bestie and as the cocreator of the hit Comedy Central series Broad City. In the show, Abbi Jacobson comes across as the more introverted, less flexible (literally) of the treasured comedy duo. As the show began to wind down (its fifth and final season is set to air next year), Jacobson took off on a journey all her own, driving across the country solo, spending time in cities and towns across the way, and trying, like all good millennials, to figure her shit out. It’s On the Road for the modern era, but with fewer drugs, less ego, and a hell of a lot more charm. KATIE HERZOG

Cave Canem Writers Showcase
Seattle civic poet and one-woman literary powerhouse Anastacia-Reneé curates and headlines a group of fellows from Cave Canem, a literary organization founded in 1996 to support black poets all over the country by hosting workshops, fellowships, and readings. If you've been reading The Stranger like you should be, you already know you love Anastacia-Reneé and Quenton Baker. This is your chance to catch up with their work and also familiarize yourself with Amanda Johnston, Dante Micheaux, and L. Lamar Wilson, who are traveling into town from Texas, England, and North Carolina, respectively. RICH SMITH

Jabari Asim: We Can't Breathe
Jabari Asim will present a wide-ranging book of eight essays that "reclaim the narrative of Black history and culture in America, focusing on how Black bodies, Black words, and Black culture and society have been policed, punished, and stolen for hundreds of years." Topics include black fatherhood, black literature, and the resilience of black culture.

Sierra Nelson: The Lachrymose Report
Sierra Nelson's work combines the scientific with the lyrical in ways that inject wonder back into both disciplines. And it's looking like her new book, The Lachrymose Report, will be more of the same greatness. Nelson's book will be the first of hopefully many from brand-new Seattle press PoetryNW Editions. RICH SMITH

FRIDAY-SATURDAY

PERFORMANCE

All Premiere
This is a set of one world premiere, Kyle Davis's solo work A Dark and Lonely Space, and two Pacific Northwest Ballet premieres: resident Hubbard Dance Company choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo's Silent Ghost and Alexander Ekman's acclaimed parody of contemporary dance, Cacti.

FRIDAY-SUNDAY

ART

Peter Ferguson: Mock Robin
Peter Ferguson, a Roq la Rue regular, paints rich, imaginative, warmly hued pop surrealist works that evoke Northern Renaissance strangeness. 
Opening Friday

Short Run Marathon Exhibition
Prolong the excitement of the year's biggest indie comics event in Seattle, Short Run, with this exhibition of festival guests Mimi Pond, Carol Tyler, Anna Haifisch, Olivier Schwauren, Antoine Maillard, Rina Ayuyang, Ali Fitzgerald, Eroyn Franklin, and November Garcia.
Opening Friday

FILM

The Romanian Film Festival Seattle
This brief but mighty film festival screens features from one of the most fertile, innovative, intellectual film industries in Europe. This year's edition of ARCS's annual event, the fifth, is subtitled "Uncanny Worlds," which sounds awfully promising. Alongside the festival, artist Danny Ursache will have a show called Uncanny Figments at Art/Not Gallery.

SATURDAY

ART

The Harvest
Following their summer 2018 exhibition Veils, Seattle artist Sequoia Day O'Connell has curated The Harvest: An exploration of how systems of power "restrict evolution, silence survivors and marginalized voices, and continue erase cultural and spiritual practices in favor of power and control" through the lens of fall. See small works by Ko Kirk Yamahira, Markel Uriu, Taylor Hanigosky, and Charlie Crowell, along with offerings from BBMagda and Emma Kates-Shaw, and performances by TUSK and Alex Mari.

Kim Van Someren: Into Its Own Echo
Kim Van Someren’s earth-toned collages evoke clumsy brick or wood architecture on the verge of collapse, or defying gravity to remain in improbable stasis. Van Someren, who is a printmaking instructor at the University of Washington, uses abstraction to create impressions of heaviness, misshapenness, even comical maladroitness, but her process is almost painfully meticulous. She uses prints on Japanese paper that she then cuts and reassembles into these weird forms. Though the shapes themselves may be awkward, they’re born out of discipline and delicacy combined with formal experimentation. JOULE ZELMAN
Closing Saturday

COMEDY

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

Nipun Mahajan | Matt Olson | Kevin McVey
This Solo Performance Month showcase includes the hilarious Kevin McVey (of the groups Yeah Okay, Rock Bottom, Lowbrow, Doesn’t Even Rhyme), who promises "carefully researched, high effort nonsense"; Matt Olson, of the uninhibited sketch duo SMAT!; and Nipun Mahajan.

FILM

Hep Cats
Cats in movies have symbolized everything from elegance to curiosity to evil, but sometimes—like in the films of the French experimentalist Chris Marker—they are simply their wonderful selves. Hep Cats delivers a handful of these ailurophilic flicks, beginning with Marker's cine-essays The Case of the Grinning Cat and Cat Listening to Music, Kaneto Shindo's shivery tale of ghostly vengeance, Kuroneko ("black cat"), Paul Mazursky's charming Harry and Tonto in a 35 mm print, and—the riskiest choice—Paul Schrader's bloody remake of the classic Cat People.

Puget Soundtrack: Sailor Moon R
Puget Soundtrack invites musicians to create and perform a live score for a film of their choosing. Sundae Crush, the Seattle-by-way-of-Denton, Texas, dreamy pop electronica band, have aptly chosen Sailor Moon R: The Movie for their turn at the series. The sweet, sentimental, stubbornly spacey band is a perfect fit for the cult anime. CHASE BURNS

FOOD & DRINK

America's Test Kitchen Seattle EATS Cooking, Food & Wine Festival
America’s Test Kitchen remains a perennial PBS staple for a reason: Its recipes are rigorously tested to within an inch of their life, and they’re proven to work. At this festival, you’ll get to mingle with the show’s cast, including hosts Bridget Lancaster and Julia Collin Davison, and have them sign books, plus watch cooking demonstrations and nosh on unlimited samples from Seattle restaurants, including Ba Bar, Central Smoke, Little Fish, Lady Yum, Heartwood Provisions, Molly Moon’s, La Spiga, and more. JULIANNE BELL

Ballard Brewed Winter Beer Festival
Can't wait for winter brews? Try 11 of them from different local breweries like Bad Jimmy's, Hales Ales, Lagunitas, and Lucky Envelope. While you're enjoying those, sway to live music from the Gus Clark Trio and Planet Fly, and fill up on food from So Good Food Truck and Big Mario's, knowing that proceeds will benefit local nonprofit Bellwether Housing.

Oyster New Year 2018
The apotheosis of the Pacific Northwest’s unofficial regional pastime, slurping oysters, is the eco-friendly Oyster New Year at Elliott’s Oyster House. The all-out briny bash features more than 30 varieties of bivalves shucked to order at a 150-foot oyster bar, a fresh seafood buffet, and local microbrews and wine from more than 60 wineries. Be a little superficial and cast your vote for the People’s Choice “Most Beautiful Oyster,” and don’t miss the oyster luge, in which a shucked oyster glides down a frozen slide in an ice sculpture, into your mouth, and down your gullet. JULIANNE BELL

READINGS & TALKS

Short Run Comix and Arts Festival
Short Run is eight years old this year and, once again, it’s bigger than ever. You’re going. You’re bringing at LEAST $50 cash. You’re picking up new art books, zines, buttons, and little strips of beautiful screen-printed ephemera from more than 270 internationally/nationally/locally-renowned comics creators. Look for Jason Lutes, who’s debuting his gorgeous, sweeping, incredibly drawn book Berlin—which is about the rise of fascism and socialism in Germany before WWII. You also don’t want to miss Mimi Pond (Over Easy), Olivier Schrauwen (Arsene Schrauwen), Anna Haifisch (The Artist), Whit Taylor (The Anthropologists, Ghost), Carol Tyler (Late Bloomer), France’s Antoine Maillard, and Rina Ayuyang (Blame This on the Boogie, a Drawn & Quarterly–published book debuting at Short Run). Local stars like Spicy Metal, Cold Cube Press, and Colleen Louise Barry will also be peddling their wares. Okay, maybe bring $75. RICH SMITH

SATURDAY-SUNDAY

ART

Daniel Ursache: Uncanny Figments
Daniel Ursache, a Romanian-born, Montreal-based artist who created the beautifully eerie poster art for the Romanian Film Festival Seattle, will show his stark, detailed, surreally charming pen and ink drawings all month.
Opening Saturday

Robert Hardgrave and Jeremy Eaton: hARDGRAVeATON
“It’s more like challenging each other to work off what’s in evidence,” Jeremy Eaton said when I asked if his process with Robert Hardgrave was like that of the Dadaist exquisite corpse game. Their growing rapport as friends and respect for each other as art collaborators can be seen in the works on paper they’ve co-created over the past four years. Eaton’s background as a comic illustrator brings narrative into Hardgrave’s Xerox transfers and bold mark making. There is a tentativeness in their early pieces, while recent works show their two styles fully enmeshed. It doesn’t hurt that they’re neighbors, too. KATIE KURTZ
Opening Saturday

COMEDY

Seattle International Comedy Competition
For nearly all of November, a lengthy last-comic-standing battle rages. Thirty-two comedians (split into two batches, each of which performs every night for one week) start the contest, and one will finish a champion. Celebrity judges and audience reactions determine who passes the preliminaries and who becomes a finalist.

SUNDAY

COMEDY

griot | Steven Tran | Manalogue | The Great Perdita
The Gregory Award-nominated Aishe Keita, who was in Seattle Rep's excellent Familiar and Book-It's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, will do something as yet unspecified but probably worth watching. Other actors/comedians at this Solo Performance Month showcase will be Steven Tran; Sam I'Am with a monologue about dumb things men say; Shakespearean director, dramaturg, and actor Olivia Ochoa in "The Great Perdita," Hannah Rae with a contemporary-dance-infused exploration of public and private in "inside out"; and Adrian Fragola Kljucec with a queer- and self-discovery-themed piece called "You're Always Home: Listening Looks Like Asking Different Questions."

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

FILM

Israeli TV Dinners: Your Honor (Kvodo)
The highly regarded Israeli TV series Your Honor is a riveting drama about an upright judge whose inflexible moral code is undermined when his son accidentally kills a member of a mob family. Watch a marathon of the award-winning show in advance of its American release and eat some tasty Middle Eastern food.

READINGS & TALKS

Mimi Pond and Rina Ayuyang in Conversation
In partnership with Short Run, local artist and animator (and Stranger favorite) Clyde Petersen and cartoonists Mimi Pond and Rina Ayuyang will discuss such topics as musicals, classic movies, and celebrity autographs. Oh, and all their recent graphic novels.

Renata Lubinsky: Around Seattle in 80 Dates
Author and stand-up comic Renata M. Lubinsky writes about her post-divorce romantic misadventures on online dating sites after 32 years as a married woman.