Adrianne Lenker is playing two nights this weekend at Revolution Hall.

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Books & Talks | Comedy | Film |  Music

 Special Events | Theater | Visual Art

Books & Talks

Renée Watson 

2:30–4:30PM Sun, June 23 | World Stage Theatre, FREE

“Portland has a remarkable history of Black life,” Watson writes introducing I See My Light Shining, the collection of oral histories given by 30 prominent Black Portlanders that strives to serve as a record of the city’s Black culture. It’s a product of the Elders Project, which funded nine similar initiatives across the country. Watson’s subjects include Third Eye Books cofounder Michelle Lewis, former senator Margaret Carter, justice Adrienne Nelson, and cofounder of Portland’s Black Panther chapter Kent Ford. This event will feature listening stations playing excerpts from the digital archive and remarks from local figures. 

Jeff Alessandrelli 

7PM Sat, June 22 | Up Up Books, FREE

The Portland author, poet, and publisher of Fonograf Editions hesitates to call And Yet a novel. An unnamed protagonist quests through its nonlinear narrative for self-discovery, hoping to find answers to contemporary sexual and social mores from figures as diverse as Susan Sontag, Young Thug, and Young Jean Lee. Alessandrelli will be joined for readings by Ellena Basada, Veronica Martin, and Emmi Greer. 

Comedy

Robby Hoffman

7PM Sun, June 23 | Helium Comedy Club, $27–37

One of 10 kids raised by a single mother, Hoffman knows how to cut through a crowd: with force, as she made clear in our recent interview. Larry David comparisons flood the internet, and she does work in the tradition of incredulous observational comedy. But Hoffman goes to Interview Magazine parties and is dating a former Bachelorette contestant. She has cool where David has anxiety. She’s currently developing a series with Showtime and A24 that juxtaposes scenarios based on her adolescence as a closeted queer woman in a Hasidic Jewish household and her current life in Los Angeles. 

Film 

I Am: Céline Dion 

7PM Sat, Jun 22 | Tomorrow Theater, FREE (reservation strongly suggested)

Portland-based director Irene Taylor’s Céline Dion documentary follows the artist’s battle with a neurological disorder that causes extreme muscle rigidity and spasms. Dion’s life has been exceptional—13 siblings, plucked from obscurity at age 12, heartbreaking romances, and she’s Céline freaking Dion. This film is most concerned with that last bit. It’s not a collection of interviews with bigwigs and critics. It’s about Dion’s desperate fight to get back on stage. Taylor, who will be honored at PAM CUT’s Cinema Unbound awards Friday, will host a Q&A after the screening. 

Music

Adrianne Lenker

Thu & Fri, June 20 & 21 | Revolution Hall, SOLD OUT

Many critics position Lenker’s band, Big Thief, as leading the avant-garde of indie music. Their folk-rock songs swell with wild and sometimes austere guitar and vocal melodies, bending ostensibly straightforward compositions into an affecting sound. It's music capable of pushing the genre in an exciting direction, though none of its members would claim such grandiose influence. Lenker’s solo records are often stripped down to singing over an acoustic guitar, further spotlighting her famously vulnerable lyrics. She’s on tour promoting her latest album, Bright Future, which came out in March. 

Special Events

Portland Gay Men’s Chorus

7PM Sat, June 22 | Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, $32–56

Broadway tunes—George Gershwin to Stephen Sondheim to Lin-Manuel Miranda—make up both the inspiration and set list of the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus’s Pride show, “Our Corner of the Sky: Pride on Broadway.”

Theater

Clyde’s

thru June 30 | Portland Center Stage, $25–98

A note to Portland audiences that this is a Tony-nominated Lynn Nottage play and not the untold story of Clyde's Prime Rib on NE Sandy Boulevard. Rather, the Clyde's in Nottage's lively, heartwarming comedy is a roadside sandwich shop staffed by people who have been through prison, drug addiction, homelessness, and more.

Visual Art

Untitled by Jens Pettersen from Stick to Sports at Helen’s Costume

Jens Pettersen

2–5PM Sat, June 22; thru July 27 | Helen’s Costume, FREE

In an interview produced by the gallery, Pettersen mentions “the notion of images continuing after the interruption of ‘completion,’” as a reference for the feeling he’s after in his paintings, which range from fiercely abstract to delicately representative (see the pointed toe tossing a ruffled skirt in one of the show’s untitled works). The series of paintings, titled Stick to Sports, is paired with the release of a book of found photos, Lots of little steps make big dreams come true.

[Happiness](detail) by Yuyang Zhang from Dire Straights at Nine Gallery

C. Meier, M. Prull, Yuyang Zhang 

Thru June 29 | Nine Gallery (inside Blue Sky Gallery), FREE

Dire Straights is a queer-tinged group show pressing on the dialectic between photography and painting. C. Meier’s abstract Polaroids present photographs as distinct art objects, opposed to a reproduced image of something else. M. Prull’s black-and-white landscapes are printed on thick canvas and enriched with other media: clearly photographs, but with the physical makeup of a painting. Yuyang Zhang’s paintings work from the other end, self-consciously reproducing photographs of iconic figures—the Olsen twins, Carrie Bradshaw—without striving for “photorealistic” likeness, instead flaunting the brush strokes and compositional liberties of a painting, a painting of a photograph.