Books & Talks

Chris Gethard

7:30 p.m. Fri, Powell's City of Books, FREE
The comedian’s new book, Lose Well, is an anthem to those who can’t seem to catch a break yet somehow triumph over pitfalls. He'll follow his Powell's reading with a stand-up show at the Hawthorne Theatre at 10:30 p.m. We talked with Gethard in advance of his Portland visit.

Film

Night of the Living Dead

8:30 p.m. Thu, Holocene, $10–25
Prefer your live music with zombies? The Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble works with Holocene’s Fin de Cinema series and the Creative Music Guild to provide live accompaniment to George A. Romero’s 1968 classic, Night of the Living Dead.

Portland Film Festival

Various times and locations thru Sun, prices vary
Portland’s annual movie buff’s delight returns with a monster line-up—literally. This year, the festival doubles down on the horror theme, with daily showings of classic and new movies. There's also a special Spanish-language program, titled LatinX. (Read more about the Spanish-language Dracula, and other festival goodies here.) 

The Phantom of the Opera

2 p.m. Sat, Hollywood Theatre, $10–12
Maybe you like your operas light on singing and heavy on horror. This screening of Rupert Julian’s 1925 silent film version of The Phantom of the Opera features musical accompaniment by Portland concert organist Martin Ellis. Come in costume as your favorite phantom! (Seriously—they’re encouraging this.)

Music

Y La Bamba

9 p.m. Thu, Mississippi Studios, $15–17
Back in 2016, we rejoiced when front woman Luz Elena Mendoza returned to Y La Bamba after a two-and-a-half-year time-out. That contemplative record, Ojos Del Sol, featured Mendoza’s timeless vocals shining over folk-meets-indie-pop melodies. At tonight’s show, they’ll be joined for a few songs by women’s choir Resonate.

Dirty Revival

9 p.m. Fri, Mississippi Studios, $14–16
If you’ve caught this high-energy soul funk phenomenon live before, you already get it: Sarah Clarke’s swooping, textured vocals, backed by six full-time band members, including a saxophonist, trumpeter, and guitarist/MC; and the jazzy-rocking-hip-hop genre mash-up that ensues. Formed by a gang of Grant High grads, Dirty Revival marked five years together this year with new single “So Cold,” a booty-jiggling five minutes of joyous, soulful funk. The B-side? A slowed-down, smoky cover of Nine Inch Nails’s “Closer,” a fully sensuous, multi-instrument reimagining of the grinding electro-rock hit.

She Shreds 5-Year Anniversary

8 p.m. Sat, Oct 28, Revolution Hall, $10–20
Pioneering Portland-based magazine She Shreds—the world’s only print publication devoted to women guitarists and bassists—celebrates its fifth birthday with a killer concert featuring Nai Palm, Sávila, Black Belt Eagle Scout, and Francesca Simone. For more, check out our event preview.

Liz Vice

9 p.m. Sat, Aladdin Theater, $17–20
The powerfully piped Portland-raised singer fuses ’60s soul and gospel to mesmerizing effect. Her album, There’s a Light—released in 2012 and re-released three years later—is as much a feeling as it is a sound. She's performed with the likes of the Blind Boys of Alabama, the Temptations, and Cody Chesnutt—catch her headlining at the Aladdin, with mystery special guests. 

Theater

CLOSING The Color Purple

Noon and 7:30 p.m. Thu, 7:30 p.m. Fri, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sat, 2 p.m. Sun, The Armory, $25–77
Portland Center Stage opens its season with a musical version of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer-winning novel, set in the American South in the first half of the 20th century. The show, which originally ran on Broadway from 2005 to 2008, was revived in late 2015 to great acclaim.

CLOSING Hurl

7:30 p.m. Thu–Sat, 2 p.m. Sun, New Expressive Works, $20–25
To hurl in Ireland is to play an ancient Irish sport that’s a cross between field hockey and magic, and it’s from the popular game that this Corrib production gets its name. The hurling team in question largely comprises immigrants to Ireland, from Africa, the Americas, and Asia, who come together under the tutelage of an alcoholic priest and a has-been trainer to take on the national sport. Politics and identity, turns out, can occasionally take a back seat to the sliotar (that’s a hurling ball to you).

CLOSING Deathrap

7:30 p.m. Thu–Sat, 2 p.m. Sun, Vault Theater, $27–32
Ira Levin’s 1978 whodunit—a plot twist-filled play-within-a-play that ran on Broadway for four years—makes its way to Hillsboro’s Bag & Baggage Productions. Can't make it over the weekend? Performances continue Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings, with the show closing on Halloween.

How to Learn

7:30 p.m. Thu–Sun, Sunnyside Sanctuary, $15–20
Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble presents a world-premiere show musing on academia, imagination, and privilege, with inspiration drawn from Friedrich Nietzsche’s lectures about education. The piece, written and directed by the Obie-winning Robert Quillen Camp and starring PETE founding member Jacob Coleman, promises an “immersive sound environment [that] subverts the traditional lecture form.”

OPENING The Taming

7:30 p.m. Fri–Sat, 2 p.m. Sun, CoHo Theater, $25–32
Can a beauty queen revolutionize the American government—with some help from a conservative senator’s aide and a liberal blogger? If you’re in the world of popular playwright Lauren Gunderson, the answer is: maybe. Mariel Serra, a founding company member of the now-defunct Post5 Theatre, directs this CoHo show.

Visual Art

CLOSING Tommy Kha

Noon–5 p.m. Thu–Sun, Blue Sky Gallery, FREE
“My work is about the self in self-portrait, the portrait in self-portrait, the hyphen in self-portrait,” says Tommy Kha. In I’m Only Here to Leave, his face appears under a dentist’s chair, on a windowsill, on a male model, and on a bathroom floor, among other places, in an unsettling, affecting series of photographs.

CLOSING LeBrie Rich

11 a.m.–6 p.m. Thu–Sun, Wolff Gallery, FREE
In Felt Grocery, Portlander LeBrie Rich examines food as both political statement and cultural connector with a series of 20 felted food sculptures of products she grew up eating. Hostess Donettes, Ritz crackers, Jif peanut butter: she painstakingly renders each in fuzzy, tactile form as one-off, nostalgia-evoking representations of mass-produced products the artist says she sees as both sinister and representative of familial closeness.

CLOSING J. D. Perkin

11 a.m.–5:30 p.m. Thu–Fri, 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Sat, Russo Lee Gallery, FREE
The Portland native has worked with textiles, steel, and (life-size!) ceramics, and even in the field of performance art—a 1990 piece, Dirt Box, was supported by a grant from Portland’s Metropolitan Art Commission. Now, Perkin is back at Russo Lee with a new collection of screen-printed paper constructions, which he says “[reflect] upon the primal urge to create, destroy and then resurrect the human form.”