Willamette Weekend

13 things to do in Portland, Oct. 26-28

JONES
By WW Arts & Culture Staff
Friday, Oct. 26
Night of the Living Ales
Burnside Brewing Co., 701 E Burnside St. 8 pm. $10. Tickets at 28thstreetpubcrawl.blogspot.com. 21+.
NW Loop Fest
Backspace, 115 NW 5th Ave. 9 pm. $5. All ages.
Perfume Genius
[MUSIC] Dropped like a lifeboat into this past winter’s tormenting sprawl, Perfume Genius’ Put Your Back N 2 It has now enjoyed eight months as 2012’s most affecting work of consoling art, and I’m betting nothing is going to match its melancholy power before year’s end. As Perfume Genius, Seattle’s Mike Hadreas taps into the same fragile, haunted grief Antony Hegarty transforms into wrenching arias, but Hadreas never lets his lush and crushing piano-based compositions forget where they came from. The results are perfect sonic snapshots of the too-small, too-beautiful and way-too-fucked places where sadness lives. CHRIS STAMM. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. 9 pm. $15. Under 21 permitted with legal guardian.

Fall of the Band
 [THEATER] Forget The Real World: Portland. Action/Adventure Theatre stages a new, semi-improvised serial comedy about a Portland-based band whose lead singer decides to quit. Action/Adventure Theatre, 1050 SE Clinton St. Friday 8 pm and 10:30 pm, Saturday 9 pm, Sunday 8 pm. $12. 

The House I Live In 
[FILM] Eugene Jarecki’s excavation of drug criminalization in America is dense with jarring insight, but The Wire creator David Simon sums up the point in just a few words: “What drugs haven’t destroyed, the war against them has.” Jarecki weaves a complicated and revealing tapestry of this country’s long, misunderstood history of attempting to control the use of mind-altering substances, first through the experiences of his childhood nanny, and then through the tales of users, dealers, cops and scholars throughout America. It is by no means a sob story but rather an intelligently crafted, thoroughly researched and ferociously honest discussion. It is also, like the war on drugs itself, not actually about drugs. It’s about race, politics, poverty and taking a hard look at why America has criminalized drugs so zealously. EMILY JENSEN. Fox Tower, 846 SW Park Ave. Multiple showtimes.


Saturday, Oct. 27

KillerBeerFest
[BEER] BrewPublic’s Killer Beer Week wraps with its flagship event, the Killer Beer Fest. There will be collaboration beers from Breakside, Upright, the Commons, Vertigo, Gigantic, Walking Man and Rock Bottom, plus plenty of brews from other locals. See the full line-up here. Bailey’s Taproom, 213 SW Broadway. 2 pm. $5 entry, includes a commemorative glass.

 When That Rough God Goes Riding: A Van Morrison Liturgy
[MUSIC] As they did with Radiohead’s repertoire last spring, Joseph Rose with his Alt.Liturgy Band have assembled a “spiritual, but not religious” service around the music of Van Morrison, with donations benefiting Trinity Episcopal Cathedral’s programs for the hungry. They’ll perform such high-minded Morrison fare as Astral Weeks, Full Force Gale and the late-career masterpiece that christens the event. Interspersed with the music will be readings from poets and philosophers Morrison has referenced in his songs. While this music lends itself easily to the purpose, the group is giving up “easy” for Lent, when the next alt-liturgy will feature tunes by Nirvana and Pearl Jam. “Jeremiah spoke in class today,” anyone? JEFF ROSENBERG. Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, 147 NW 19th Ave. 6 pm. Free.

Reel Music Festival: Wagner and Me 
[FILM] Nearly 130 years after his death, composer Richard Wagner remains one of the most revered and controversial figures in classical music. His operas—most notably his Ring Cycle—are beyond reproach; his anti-Semitic views and his music’s long association with the Nazi Party are reprehensible. It is amid these contradictions that, in 2009, British TV personality Stephen Fry and a documentary crew traveled to Bayreuth, the home of Wagner’s specially built opera house, to attend the annual festival of the composer’s work. The resulting film, saddled with the unfortunate title Wagner and Me, is a moving portrait of Fry’s own joy and sorrow at being surrounded by some of his favorite music alongside memorials to atrocities that his Jewish relatives faced during World War II. ROBERT HAM. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 4:30 pm Saturday, Oct. 27. See nwfilm.org for a complete Reel Music schedule.

Portland Erotic Ball
[SEX & MUSIC] When you’re mingling with a sea of generally horny folks who have gathered together to be generally horny, you’d damn sure better have a solid soundtrack. Once again, the Portland Erotic Ball's got a schizo lineup—featuring Copacabana throwback Pepe & the Bottle Blondes and synth-rockers the Slants—that should get juices flowing. If not, that dwarf with the French tickler has got it on lock. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 225-0047. 8 pm. $39-$69. 21+.

Classical Revolution PDX: Decomposers 
[MUSIC] Wanna hear something really scary? Classical music suitable for zombie attacks by Shostakovich (String Quartet No. 3), Schubert, Saint-Saëns, Portland composers Beth Karp, Galen Huckins (the evil genius behind Filmusik) and Kevin Elmore, plus more—including silent film, aerialists, spoken-word artists and more fun frights. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., 719-6055. 8 pm Saturday, Oct. 27. $10.


Sunday, Oct. 28

Balmorhea, Dragging an Ox Through Water
[MUSIC] Austin group Balmorhea creates the kind of soundscapes perfect for wandering imaginations. The narrative between quiet minimalist guitar phrases, swelling classical string sections, ambient synthesizer and propelling rhythms forces the mind to travel through riveting and wordless stories for which the perception of sound plays a big role. EMILEE BOOHER. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.

You’ve Been Trumped 
[FILM] Once upon a time, there was a tiny shire in the land of Scotland called Aberdeen, where hardworking farmers and fishermen lived peacefully. They built their homes into the idyllic green hills along the icy blue sea, and spoke in a glorious brogue so thick it needed subtitles. But then one day, a wicked, slimy monster slithered ashore, spewing a bounty of lies from beneath the shaggy follicular outcropping atop his crap-filled noggin. The monster was named Donald Trump, and he had come to build a multimillion-dollar golf course for himself and all his scary, slimy monster friends. Everyone feared him, but no one had the power to stop him. Donald Trump cut down trees and destroyed water sources and flooded the land. He terrorized a delicate ecosystem akin to the Amazonian rain forest, and shat upon the lifestyles of the people who lived in the countryside. This is a story of good versus evil; Scotland versus America; and the average man versus Donald Trump. Put plainly, it’s an awesome underdog story set to the tune of bagpipes, in which brave Scottish people fight back against a certified douche whose true colors are clearer than ever. EMILY JENSEN. Living Room Theaters, 341 SW 10th Ave. Multiple showtimes.

“Master Harold”..and the Boys
[THEATER] “Master Harold”…and the Boys, set in 1950, is South African playwright Athol Fugard’s most autobiographical play. It’s a fitting place for Profile Theatre, which devotes an entire year to a single playwright, to begin the season: It introduces Fugard as a writer of political but not polemical works that probe apartheid-era prejudice and inequality in his home country. This quietly provocative production takes place on a rainy day in a quaint tearoom in Port Elizabeth, where the shop’s two black employees, Sam and Willie, have been practicing their ballroom steps. Fugard is a bit didactic, and the plot’s metaphors perhaps too tidy, but director Jane Unger (who stepped down as Profile’s artistic director last season) allows the production to burble gently—all the way through its cruelly explosive turns and to its potent conclusion. Theater! Theatre!, 3430 SE Belmont St., 242-0080. 7:30 pm Wednesdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Oct. 28. $16-$30.

WWeek 2015

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office. Support WW's journalism today.