Top Things to Do This Weekend: Nov 13-16
Books & Talks
Image courtesy Mathias Clamer for Stockland Martel
Megan Amram
Friday, Powell's Books
The Portland-born writer for NBC’s Parks and Recreation and one of Rolling Stone’s “25 Funniest People on Twitter” satirizes women’s-magazine style advice in her debut book, Science … For Her! Read our interview with her.
Chuck Palahniuk
Saturday, Powell's Books
The Fight Club author’s newest, Beautiful You, is a story about a shy young woman who becomes the erotic plaything of a billionaire. We promise Palahniuk isn’t phoning in Fifty Shades of Grey fan fiction—the billionaire turns out to be hatching a plan for world domination via incredibly effective sex toys and other products.
Theater
Image: Patrick Weishampel
Closing The Typographer's Dream
Thursday–Sunday, Portland Center Stage
A geographer, a typographer, and a stenographer walk into a theater... We'd tell you the punch line, but we don't want to ruin this spare drama by PCS favorite Adam Bock (he wrote last season's A Small Fire) about three professionals whose panel discussion skids into dangerously personal territory. The play gets a fiercely staccato, hilarious production at PCS.
Closing In The Forest, She Grew Fangs
Thursday–Saturday, Defunkt Theatre
Playwright Stephen Spotswood reinvents “Little Red Riding Hood” as a deeply unsettling take on teenage bullying. Tormented by her classmates, a social outcast starts to experience strange visions just as mangled deer carcasses begin to appear around her rural town. "This is a timely work, not because it comes on the heels of the cultural obsession with werewolves/vampires/what have you, but because it imaginatively confronts the cultural plague of bullying that, despite contributing heavily to teen suicides, remains inadequately addressed. Fortunately, the play is not just timely: it’s good, and Defunkt does Spotswood’s script more than justice... It’s crucial material, and Defunkt tackles it fearlessly." Read our full review.
Damon Kupper as Kenneth McCallister in Corrib Theatre's "A Night in November." Image: Owen Cary
Thursday–Sunday, CoHo Theatre
CoHo and Irish theater company Corrib Theatre revive this one-man show starring Damon Kupper as a Northern Irish Protestant who travels to New York for the 1994 World Cup—to support the Republic of Ireland national team. Back in February we said of Corrib's first showing, "Damon Kupper brings energy, personality, and humor to the role of McCallister. It takes a moment to adjust to Kupper’s impersonations of the people in his character’s life, but that adjustment is rewarded with caricatures that are both painfully funny and illustrative of Jones’ themes." Read the full review here.
Friday–Sunday, Lincoln Performance Hall
The small, innovative company Our Shoes Are Red collaborates with the PSU theater department to produce visionary British playwright Caryl Churchill’s dystopian drama, a surreal, harrowing warning about government propaganda and the dehumanizing effect of fear.
Friday, Jimmy Mak's
With a slew of awards, including a MacArthur “genius grant,” this alto saxophonist is widely considered one of the most innovative musicians working today. His polyrhythmic blend of contemporary jazz and traditional musical styles from his native Puerto Rico reaches almost symphonic heights in his newest album, Identities Are Changeable. He’ll talk about his Latin music heritage before the concert with the opening act, local Cuban favorite Jesse Marquez.
Friday, Roseland Theater
From a lo-fi YouTube video covering Fleet Foxes’ “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song,” these young Swedish sisters have gone on to play alongside Fleet Foxes, Bright Eyes, and others, not to mention win myriad Nordic music awards, with their haunting, soulful, and sometime playful blend of folk, bluegrass, and a touch of country twang. They recently dropped by CONAN to perform their new single, "Stay Gold."
Nobody anticipated the collaborative force of these two 39-year-olds. El-P's been New York's anti-hero for decades, igniting rap's indie label rennaissance with Definitive Jux in 1999. Killer Mike's cut from a Southern cloth, coming up in the age of UGK, with a Grammy on his belt for an OutKast feature. But opposites do attract, and these two veterans are in their prime, producing the sharpest hip-hop of the year.
FILM
Thursday–Saturday, Northwest Film Center
The 41st iteration of this annual celebration of the region’s best filmmaking will feature more than 40 films culled from close to 400 submissions, a festival of work from young filmmakers age 13 to 19, and a special Veterans Day program. Take a look at our critic's picks here.
Robert De Niro in Raging Bull
Sunday, Whitsell Auditorium
Portland-based film critic and biographer Shawn Levy published his latest work De Niro: A Life last week. The former Oregonian film critic's biography has been lauded as one of the most ambitious, insightful portraits of the celebrated and historically private actor. He'll be introducing Martin Scorsese's 1980 classic Raging Bull. Levy is sure to have some fascinating, never-before-told stories about De Niro and the book's process—don't miss it.
CLASSICAL
Saturday & Sunday, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
This German cellist’s first-ever live performance was Franz Joseph Haydn’s Cello Concerto in D Major with the Berlin Philharmonic. For this stop, the Portland favorite (back in town for his third and final artist residency) will play Haydn’s other Cello Concerto, in C.
Thursday & Saturday, Keller Auditorium
To kick off its 50th-anniversary season, the opera revisits its first-ever production, a comedy of intoxicated scheming and romantic intrigue set around a Venetian masked ball. Featuring soprano Mary Dunleavy as Rosalinde (last seen as Donna Elvira in 2012's Don Giovanni), Daniel Belcher as Gabriel von Eisenstein (last seen as Figaro in 2010's The Barber of Seville), and surprise Portland guest stars every night, including Body Vox, Tony Starlight, Michael Allen Harrison, Poison Waters, Susannah Mars, and Cascade from the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus.
Read our Long Story Short with Frances Britt, who started as a chorus girl at the opera in the 60's and has managed the costume shop for the past 30 years (plus see a slide show of some of the best costumes).
Thursday–Sunday, Cooley Art Gallery
The Supports/Surfaces Movement—a little-known generation of anti-conformist French painters in the 60s, 70s, and 80s—is having somewhat of a resurgence in 2014. A collection of works from 10 of the prominent deconstructionist painters was featured at New York's Canada gallery over the summer. Those piece, in cooperation with with Canada cofounder and exhibition cocurator Wallace Whitney, will be on display at Reed College's Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery for the next coming months.
Saturday, Disjecta Contemporary Art Center
Disjecta’s annual fundraising event returns, hosted by A. C. Dickson. Not only is it a smashing soiree, but it's a great place to start an art collection for the novice collector with a limited budget.
Hari Kondabolu
Saturday, Lincoln Performance Hall
The bi-weekly installment of your local radio variety show, Live Wire Radio, returns with Portland-born comedian and writer Megan Amram, whose debut book Science... For Her! skewers science books and Cosmo-style magazines both (read our interview with Amram, who Rolling Stone named on of the 25 funniest people on Twitter). Also on the guest list: Hari Kondabolu, a rapidly rising comic with a knack for the political. In the music department are Seattle-based indie pop outfit Deep Sea Diver and Portland folk trio Alialujah Choir.
