COMEDY

Nikki Glaser
Thursday at 8 pm, Friday & Saturday at 7:30 pm and 10 pm, Helium Comedy Club
As a college student, Nikki Glaser got her break on season four of Last Comic Standing. Since then, she's given love advice on podcast series We Know Nothing, had television appearances on shows including Conan, The Tonight Show, @Midnight, and Inside Amy Schumer, co-hosted MTV late night talk show Nikki & Sara LIVE, and stolen beers from Rainn Wilson. Not bad...for an English major! Bri Pruett opens. 

BOOKS & TALKS

28th Annual Oregon Book Awards
Monday at 7:30 pm, Gerding Theater
For nearly three decades, Literary Arts has honored Oregon’s top writers and publishers in the genres of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, young readers, and drama. Former Portlander Mitchell S. Jackson, author of The Residue Years, hosts this year’s ceremony—which, we know, doesn't technically occur during the weekend. But, literary glitz! Bookish glamor! Go!

MUSIC 

Belle and Sebastian
Thursday at 8 pm, Roseland Theater
In January, sensitive indie pop band Belle and Sebastian (voted Scotland's greatest band in 2005) released their ninth studio album, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance. The new album—the first in five years—continues a trend toward the upbeat and clubby, with the odd dance beat peppering the twenty-year-strong band's signature introspection. 

Stephanie Schneiderman
Saturday at 8 pm, Jimmy Mak's
Breathy and sweet, local singin' guitarist Stephanie Schneiderman rocks a soft vibrato with the backing of an acoustic quartet. Backing Schneiderman as she plays tunes from new(ish) release Live at the Old Church—along with songs more recent— are fellow vocalist Bre Paletta, bassist Sam Howard, and Tony Furtado on slide guitar and ukelele. Sandwiching the playbill are Little Sue and classic honky-tonk act The Earnest Lovers. 

Dvorák's Slavonic Dances
Sunday at 7:30 pm, Monday at 8 pm, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Conductor Carlos Kalmar leads this performance of the 19th-century Czech composer’s animated set of 16 orchestral pieces, which was originally inspired by Brahms’s Hungarian Dances but stands on its own as a particularly lively example of nationalist music. 

DANCE

Urban Bush Women
Thursday–Saturday at 8 pm, Newmark Theatre
For this performance, the formidable woman-centric dance company from Brooklyn—founded by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar in 1984—draws on themes of spiritual struggle and black life in America. Highlights include an original score from Grammy-winning pianist George Caldwell inspired by John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. 

THEATER

OPENING Cyrano
Friday–Sunday at 7:30 pm, Saturday & Sunday at 2 pm, Portland Center Stage
Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac gets a facelift (a new translation and slicked-up verse sensibilities—think slam poetry) from playwright Michael Hollinger with an assist from Aaron Posner. Seattle's Andrew McGinn plays the large-beaked lover of Roxane (Jen Taylor). Warning: according to PCS, the production "contains heart-stopping swordplay and swoon-inducing romance."

OPENING The School for Lies
Friday & Saturday at 7:30 pm, Shoebox Theatre
In Theatre Vertigo’s The School for Lies, lauded playwright David Ives takes on Molière's The Misanthrope, in which a beautiful, sharp-tongued widow in 1666 Paris meets her match in badinage, with rhyming couplets that dance circles around your head.

The Price
Thursday–Sunday at 7:30 pm, Sunday at 2 pm, Artists Repertory Theatre
Arthur Miller’s 1968 play centers on that painful but necessary process of dealing with a loved one’s material belongings after they have died. Directed by Adriana Baer, the production explores diverse notions of value and assessment in a year that would mark the 100th birthday of the Pulitzer-winning New York playwright. Read our review here. 

CLOSING Ministry of Special Cases
Thursday–Saturday at 7:30 pm, Milagro Theatre
The novel from Nathan Englander follows a grave-defacing man named Kaddish, who struggles, with his insurance adjuster wife and teenage son, to survive the insecurities of Argentina's Dirty War. Sasha Reich and Jamie M. Rea of the Jewish Theatre Collaborative bring Englander's satirical work to the stage in an original Page2Stage adaptation.  

VISUAL ARTS 

Clint Brown and Rory ONeal: Implicit Ambiguities
Thursday–Saurday from 11 am to 5 pm, Blackfish Gallery
Is an unclothed person always naked? This is a question asked by mixed media artist Clint Brown, whose works explore, blur, and challenge the line between clothes and nudity. Sculptor/painter Rory ONeal, a recent fixture of Portland's drag scene, runs with the concept of clothes as performance, displaying new headpieces made of paper. 

CLOSING Richard Mosse: The Enclave
Thursday & Friday from 10 am to 8 pm, Saturday & Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm, Portland Art Museum
Irish visual artist Richard Mosse spent several years in the Democratic Republic of Congo documenting its deeply entrenched conflict using a discontinued infared film technology that renders the landscapes in Technicolor hues of crimson, pink, and lavender. (It was invented to negate camouflage during World War II.) The exhibition includes six simultaneous projections and a soundscape, immersing the viewer in the haunted landscape. Public reaction has been intense—see what visitors have said here.