CLASSICAL & MORE

Thru Oct 31
The Pearl Fishers
Like many great operas, Seattle Opera’s rendition of The Pearl Fishers by French composer Georges Bizet (Carmen) serves as a reflection on the power and danger of love. While two friends harbor feelings for the same woman—a celebrate priestess—they vow to never purse her for fear of it ruining their friendship. Unsurprisingly, complications arise with this potential love triangle. The Pearl Fishers excels at more than just the music, placing heavy emphasis on the show’s visual design with engaging choreography and stunningly colorful staging (including costumes by British designer Zandra Rhodes). McCaw Hall, $63–$295

FILM

Sun, Oct 22
Shock and Awe: A Secret No-Budget Thriller Fest
In the early days of home video cameras opened the world of filmmaking to the masses, but most of the amateur production values were... horrific. But hey, horrific is a desirable trait during Halloween season! Get in the spirit as Scarecrow Video culls its massive library and hosts Shock and Awe, five-film marathon of schlocky scares and weird thrills that were committed to video in the mid-to-late ’80s. Grand Illusion Theatre, $15

SPECIAL EVENTS

Sat, Oct 24
R Day
As part of KEXP’s never-ending quest to raise funds for its new Seattle Center home, the station heads to the Old Rainier Brewery in Georgetown to celebrate R Day. The free festivities include live music from Northwest favorites Beat Connection and the Helio Sequence, an ice skating rink (which feels a little seasonally early), and a beer garden that will be pouring plenty of Rainier all night long. The Old Rainier Brewery, Free

THEATER

Thru Dec 20
Café Nordo: Sauced
Café Nordo’s latest piece of culinary entertainment comes in the form of hardboiled film noir caper and stiff drinks. Sauced delivers four flights of mixology mastery from bartender superstar Murray Stenson and pairs it with a pulpy tale of intrigue complete with period-appropriate jazz numbers. Theo Chocolate, $60–$85

Oct 23–Nov 22
Buyer and Cellar
Did you know Barbara Streisand has a mall in her basement? That’s a real thing. Playwright Jonathan Tolins latched onto this detail and crafted the one-man show Buyer and Cellar. The comedic tale finds a struggling actor and ex-Disneyland employee Alex More (Scott Drummond) working in one of the shops of Streisand’s underground shopping center. While Babs never makes a physical appearance, Alex’s interactions with her flesh out a story that looks at being surround by the height of the entertainment industry while residing on its lowest rungs. Seattle Repertory Theatre, $34–$57

COMEDY

Fri, Oct 23
Garfunkel and Oates: TV Special Taping
Musical comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates brings its playful brand of filthy twee to the Neptune to record the group’s latest TV special. There should be plenty of laughs and little timidity as the combo of Riki Lindhome (guitar) and Kate Micucci (ukulele) just released a new album entitled Secretions, which features tracks about cowardly breaking up by ignoring your partner (“Fadeaway”), experimentation (“The College Try”), growing old (“29 / 31”), and trying to skirt around religious sexual restrictions (“The Loophole”). Neptune Theatre, Sold Out

BOOKS & TALKS

Thru, Oct 22
Alison Bechdel
While she’s entered the pop culture lexicon as the name behind the Bechdel Test (to judge gender bias in films), that’s only a sliver of Alison Bechdel’s cultural impact. She’s also the MacArthur genius cartoonist who created the strip Dykes to Watch Out For, and her graphic memoir Fun Home was adapted into 2015’s Tony-winning Best Musical. Town Hall, Sold Out

Thur, Oct 22
Lit Crawl Seattle 2015
Sample the local literary scene in one night on Capitol Hill and First Hill as Lit Crawl Seattle returns. Female voices take the spotlight with Vida Women of Color at Fred Wildlife Refuge and in headliner readings at Town Hall by memoirists Sarah Hepola and Melissa Febos, who respectively recount their blackout drinker and dominatrix pasts. Various venues, Free

VISUAL ART

Thru Dec 13
Rebel, Rebel
Seattle artist Matthew Offenbacher and his wife Jennifer Nemhauser weren’t the first ones to notice Seattle Art Museum’s collection is severely deficient when it comes to female and queer artist, but they actually did something more than vocally critique it. When Offenbacher won Cornish’s Neddy Art Award in 2013, he and Nemhauser used the accompanying $25,000 in prize to purchase works by local female and queer artists and donate it to SAM’s permanent collection. It became their own conceptual project entitled Deed of Gift, which brings light to the museum’s lack of diversity from the inside. A portion of that donated collection makes up the small exhibit Rebel, Rebel, which pushes against stereotypes and gender norms (rebels, if you will) with its array of feminist works that range in period and medium from 1970s drawings to modern paintings. Seattle Art Museum, $20