Books & Talks

Ha Jin

7:30 p.m. Fri, Powell's City of Books, FREE
The Chinese-American author, who won a National Book Award for his novel Waiting, returns with The Banished Immortal. The biography tells the story of eight-century poet Li Bai, whose popularity endures in China today. The New Yorker praised the book's "insight and empathy."

Comedy

Beth Stelling

8 p.m. Thu, 7:30 and 10 p.m. Fri–Sat, Helium Comedy Club, $17
From Conan to Jimmy Kimmel Live, Stelling is well-practiced on the late-night circuit, with conversational, often sarcastic stand-up that takes on gender expectations, female reproductive health, and the experience of leaving her home state of Ohio.

Dance

OPENING The Cutting Room

7:30 p.m. Thu–Sat, BodyVox Dance Center, $30–64
Playful dance-theater company BodyVox takes inspiration from cinema in its newest show, blending sci-fi, action, comedy, and drama to create "movement motifs." How will it all play out? Expect a "journey to an intersection of nostalgia, performance, animation, and innovation."

Music

Portland Cello Project

8 p.m. Fri–Sat, Revolution Hall, $22–25
The Portland Cello Project plays a double night of shows, joined by special guests at each performance. Friday serves as a release concert for Matters in Such a Manner by Shins keyboardist Patti King. Performing under the name Patrician, the album is a collaboration with the Portland Cello Project (and other local musicians), with the lush swoons of the cello providing an unexpected backdrop to her sweet yet haunting vocals. On Saturday, the ensemble teams with PDX Soul Collective and the likes of Moorea Masa, Ronnie Wright, Michalangela, and Jarrod Lawson.

Emily King

9 p.m. Fri, Doug Fir Lounge, $18+
The Manhattan-raised R&B queen and Grammy nominee has a voice that’s by turns soulful, funky, and wispy. Catch her at the Doug Fir before she drops her new album, Scenery, next month.

Travis Scott

8 p.m. Sun, Moda Center, $36.95+
The Grammy-nominated hip-hop star (and beau of Kylie Jenner), deemed "rap's consummate showman" by the Ringer, played the Moda Center last month, at a zany show that featured a roller coaster and huge astronaut-shaped balloons. If you missed it, here's your second chance.

Theater & Performance

Fertile Ground Festival

Various times and locations Thu–Sun, prices vary
The Fertile Ground Festival, now in its 10th year, is an 11-day buffet of new, locally produced performance. With fully staged world premieres running alongside bare-bones readings and very-much-in-progress workshop productions, things range from refined to very, very raw, but that’s part of the deliciousness (and chaos) of it.

OPENING The Delays

7:30 p.m. Thu–Sat, 2 p.m. Sun, Shoebox Theatre, $10–20
Portlander Sara Jean Accuardi's brand-new play, presented by Theatre Vertigo, is set at an airport—but the characters aren't going anywhere. As time travels backwards, their past lives come into focus.

Teenage Dick

7:30 p.m. Thu–Sat, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sun, Artists Repertory Theatre, $30–60
This modern-day Richard III takes place in a high school, where a bullied 17-year-old with cerebral palsy in the full winter of his discontent will stop at nothing to achieve his goal of becoming class president.

Visual Art

Field of View

11 a.m.–6 p.m. Thu–Sun, Wolff Gallery, FREE
Field of View—which places visual artists with developmental disabilities in three-month-residencies in spaces across the city—culminates with this exhibit. The work, by Portlanders Alma Bate, Job Erickson, John Griffiths, and Michael Sherman, cuts across painting, photography, and video.

Rebecca Reeve

11 a.m.–6 p.m. Thu–Sat, Upfor Gallery, FREE
In Sun Breathing, the New York-based British artist showcases new landscape photos, taken over the course of a single summer in upstate New York. Some feature Venetian blinds, which add a strict grid to the image, while in others Reeve paints new features—like fuchsia ferns—in the landscape.