Music

Michael Kiwanuka

8 p.m. Sun, Roseland, SOLD OUT
You might know Michael Kiwanuka’s titanic, string-drenched epic “Cold Little Heart” as the theme from Big Little Lies. The British singer’s new album Kiwanuka never rises to that level of bombast, but it’s no less memorable, its deceptively smooth arrangements permeated with a melancholy that leaves it sounding a little pricklier than your typical ’70s soul-revival fare. He’ll hit the Roseland on Sunday with Utah folk act Sammy Brue. 

Special Events

DREAMs Deferred

10 a.m.–5 p.m. Thurs–Sat, 12–5 p.m. Sun, Oregon Historical Society, FREE–$10
The folks at The Immigrant Story (Portland Monthly's 2019 Best New Nonprofit) present a new exhibit at the Oregon Historical Society. Part of their Things We Carried series, DREAMs Deferred marries personal narratives, portraits, and object photography to tell the stories of immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. 

Theater

CLOSING: Beckett Women

7:30 p.m. Thurs–Sat, Reed College Performing Arts Building, $20–30
The Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble weaves together four rarely produced, female-led shorts from the Irish master. It’s challenging, thoughtful, and a visual knockout—in other words, classic PETE. Read our review here. 

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

11 a.m. Thurs, 7:30 p.m. Thurs–Sat, 2 p.m. Sun, Portland Center Stage, $42.50–85
In a word ... duh. John Cameron Mitchell’s glitter-streaked masterwork, as funny and moving and mind-bending now as it was 20 years ago, will always, always (always) be worth seeing. Portland Center Stage’s production lifts the script from the 2014 Broadway revival, complete with bookable onstage tables and new (good) jokes about Hurt Locker: The Musical.

Sweat

7:30 p.m. Fri-Sat, 2 p.m. Sun, Imago Theatre, $20–40
Profile Theatre is in the middle of a two-season program exploring the works of Pulitzer winner Paula Vogel, her Pulitzer-winning protégé Lynn Nottage, and her Pulitzer-nominated protégé Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins. Sweat, which premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2015, is the play that netted Nottage her prize—a simmering Rust Belt drama the New Yorker called “the first theatrical landmark of the Trump era.”

Visual Art

Arvie Smith

12–5 p.m. Fri–Sun, Disjecta, FREE
Portland painter Arvie Smith’s provocative, many-hued show 2 Up and 2 Back is on at Disjecta through the beginning of February. One of the city’s sharpest talents, Smith explores bias, racism, cultural consumption and more, with welcome humor and breathtaking skill.

Donna Gottschalk

12–5 p.m. Thurs–Sun, Blue Sky Gallery, FREE
Gottschalk’s black-and-white photography, by turns tender and furious, documents the day-to-day life of radical lesbian organizers in ’70s California and New York. This retrospective collection includes images from Gottschalk’s 50-year personal archive, with a special focus on early work.

Hannah Altman

12–5 p.m. Thurs–Sun, Blue Sky Gallery, FREE
Altman, a Jewish-American photographer from New Jersey, explores memory and lineage through the lens of Jewish thought in her latest exhibition. Dreamy, surreal images mix with straightforward portraits, all of them lit with startling directness. She’ll hold an artist talk on January 4th at 3 o’clock. 

Spirits Rising: ひろしま/hiroshima

10 a.m.–4 p.m. Thurs–Sat, 10 a.m.–3:30 p.m. Sun, Portland Japanese Garden, $12–17
Acclaimed Japanese photographer Ishiuchi Miyako kicks off the Japanese Garden's "Year of Peace" with selections from her ひろしま/hiroshima series. The photos, large and haunting, showcase personal objects left behind after U.S. forces dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.