BOOKS & TALKS

Live Wire! Radio feat. Ruth Reichl
Saturday at 7:30 pm, Revolution Hall
With nearly 40 years of food writing behind her, Ruth Reichl knows a thing or two (million) about dining. The former Editor-in-Chief of Gourmet and restaurant critic at the New York Times is prolific (PoMo food critic Karen Book dishes on Reichl's new book here). Reichl headlines this episode of our local NPR-syndicated variety show alongside Cheryl Strayed, Jackie Kashian, and others. 

Mark Sten: All Ages: The Rise of Portland Punk Rock
Thursday at 7:30 pm, Powell's City of Books
Author Mark Sten catalogs this gritty chapter of city history in new book All Ages, which covers the years 1977 through 1981 in Portland art, fan zines, press reprints, and urge to mosh. (From the Stiph-Noyds to the Wipers, we've got the accompanying playlist for you here.)

MUSIC

ZZ Ward
Thursday at 8 pm, Roseland
Zsuzsanna Eva Ward was raised in Oregon, though LA is now home base for her cracked, bluesy pop. Hints of Etta James snuck into 2012’s surprise hit Til the Casket Drops; now the radio-friendly singer returns to Oregon with This Means War.

Oregon Music Hall of Fame Awards
Saturday at 7 pm, Aladdin Theater
This year’s statewide hall of fame induction will celebrate the inclusion of artists like rock band Heatmiser and blues singer Bill Rhoades—capped with a concert by the notorious Storm Large. Since moving to Portland in 2002, Large has starred on Rock Star: Supernova, penned a memoir titled Crazy Enough, and, as of 2011, joined up with Pink Martini as a co-vocalist, alongside China Forbes.

DANCE

White Bird Presents: Momix
Thursday–Saturday at 7:30 pm, Saturday at 2 pm, Newmark Theatre
For “Alchemia,” artistic director Moses Pendleton takes his visually tricked-out, highly athletic company—featured everywhere from Hanes commercials to this year’s Alpine Ski Championships in Vail—into the realm of fire and water, earth and air.

OPENING Amore Italiano
Saturday at 7:30 pm, Sunday at 2 pm, Keller Auditorium
Oregon Ballet Theatre’s 26th season opens with a double bill: Napoli Act III, an 1842 work by Danish choreographer August Bournonville—and a world premiere, from “Almost Mozart” choreographer James Kudelka, based on the music of Carlo Gesualdo.

COMEDY

Keith and the Girl
Saturday at 9:30 pm, Curious Comedy Theater
Talk show comedians Keith Malley and Chemda Khalili have been hilariously opining on current events (El Chapo's bounty on Donald Trump, recently) every weekday for the Past 10 years; now they bring their 2015 live tour to Portland, with special guests including Katharine Heller and Ray DeVito.

THEATER

OPENING Cock
Friday–Sunday at 7:30 pm, Defunkt Theatre
The first in a series of Portland premieres for Defunkt’s 16th season, Mark Bartlett’s romantic triangle has strictly gay John, on break from his boyfriend, conflicted by a surprise liaison with (gasp) a lady. Dinner is served!

OPENING The Homecoming
Friday & Saturday at 8 pm, Sunday at 2 pm, Imago Theatre
Director Jerry Mouawad has made the staging of Harold Pinter’s tense, minimalist early works something of a specialty. For The Homecoming’s fall run at Imago, Mouawad animates what some critics have called the best of Pinter’s “plays of menace.”

Cuba Libre
Thursday–Saturday at 7:30 pm, Sunday at 2 pm, Winningstad Theatre
Artists Rep’s “Broadway-scale” world-premiere musical counts as its house band none other than blistering, Grammy-nominated Latin act Tiempo Libre. For more on the crack team behind the 21-person show, see our anatomy of a production with Pan-American aspirations from our October print issue.

Passion Play Part III
Thursday–Sunday at 7:30 pm, Shaking the Tree Studio
In Sarah Ruhl’s homage to medieval Christendom’s Eastertime passion plays (Parts I and II played in September), we find ourselves in Spearfish, South Dakota, at the onset of the Vietnam War. Reagan shows up, as do lots of fishies.

VISUAL ART

OPENING Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection
Saturday & Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm, Portland Art Museum
The Microsoft billionaire is a known collector of sports teams and rock memorabilia; his family has also amassed a vast trove of European and American landscape paintings (Monet, Cézanne, O’Keeffe, even Ruscha). Thirty-nine of these masterpieces—including the Klimt pictured left—premiere here in the first show of a national tour that pairs many elite artists never before shown together. (Slideshow sneak peek here.)

Portland Open Studios 2015
Saturday & Sunday, from 10 am to 5 pm to various locations
This weekend and next, 100 artist studios across the city open their doors for PDXOS 2015. Grab the map (which also serves as your ticket) and immerse yourself in the creative worlds of Portland's working artists—from Shawn Demarest and his luscious oils of the city's far-out East–Southeast to Thérèse Murdza's rainy abstracts.

OPENING Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen
Thursday–Saturday from 11 am to 6 pm, Hap Gallery
The Antwerp-based duo work in Plexiglas and s-brackets for solo show In a Rhythmic Fashion; their "modular veils" shimmer, distort, and shear the gallery space for an interactive exercise in abstraction.