Seattle Fall Arts Preview

A sculpture of a court jester presents a wrapped gift, its face sad—perhaps owing to the handful of knives sticking into its back. Los Angeles artist Davis (and daughter of actor Ben Vereen) relates the serious side of clowning around, dance, and performance in a show inspired by ancient Egyptian mummification. 

Miss the win-or-go-home stakes of the World Cup? The new comic competition kicks off in summer with more than 100 joke tellers in the preliminary rounds, but by mid-September the semi-finals winnow down to the best. Contestants get up to 10 minutes to make an impression in the finals. 

Everyone enjoys making fun of California, right? The Tony Award–winning play is set during vaccination battles at a Berkeley school. Its timeliness helped it become one of the most staged plays across the country, according to American Theatre. 

Dance

Ghost Stories

November 6–15 | McCaw Hall | website

George Balanchine’s La Sonnambula, a ballet about an alluring sleepwalker, fits the spooky season, and it’s paired with two pieces by choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo, one of which uses Dean Martin tunes. Keeping things dark, the PNB’s Kyle Davis debuts his own work inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven.” 

Concerts

Earshot Jazz Festival

October 7–25 | Various Venues | Website

In its 38th year, the city’s premiere jazz event welcomes saxophonist Branford Marsalis in a joint project with Dianne Reeves, celebrating the centennial anniversary of John Coltrane’s birth. The festival also salutes  a second legend born in 1926, Miles Davis. 

Tickets to Sara Bareilles (October 19) and the Chicks (October 25–26) went fast; the latter show immediately inspired four-figure resale prices. But Musgraves combines the songwriting chops—she’s known for a witty turn of phrase—and honkytonk feminism of those bigger acts with much more affordable seats. Invite your girlfriends. 

The South Korea group has the pinup lineup of a K-pop boy band, but their intense sound leans heavily on EDM. More than a decade after forming through a competitive reality show, they hit Seattle as part of a North American tour for their third English-language album, “Unfold,” and to bring a little style to sporty SoDo. 

He may have starred in everything from Sex and the City to Showgirls, but the Yakima-raised local holds his Agent Dale Cooper turn in Twin Peaks closest to his heart. In his new memoir Fictional Selves, he questions where his Hollywood persona ends and his real identity, the quirky wine aficionado, begins. 

The Seattle writer entered rarefied levels of the speculative fiction canon with his 1992 Snow Crash, then solidified his status with Cryptonomicon. He comes to the Lake Forest Park Third Place on publication day of his new spy thriller about atomic bombs in World War II—a topic that certainly seemed like sci-fi at the time.