Arts Fuse critics select the best in music, film, visual arts, theater, author readings, and dance that’s coming up in the next week.

By The Arts Fuse Staff

Film

Boston Area Film Schedules — What is playing today, Where and When

Art and Craft
Opens October 10
Kendall Square Cinema, Cambridge, MA

This film about Mark Landis, one of the most prolific art forgers in US history, is a riveting psychological portrait of a dysfunctional loner with a singular gift. It is a tribute to the subject and the film that it is playing at a mainstream theater. Arts Fuse review.

The Arlington International Film Festival
October 15 – 19
Regent Theatre, 7 Medford Street, Arlington, MA

This intimate festival features films from around the world. See the website for the full schedule.
The award winners this year include:

Elena – A personal documentary essay about the filmmaker’s older sister, a Brazilian dancer and aspiring actress who settled in New York City and eventually committed suicide. Narrated by Ms. Costa in a tone of dreamy sadness, the film proffers a surreal mix of artful images and sounds, a collage of accumulated fragments from home movies, newspaper clippings, diary entries and excerpts from letters and contemporary images shot in Manhattan. Winner of the Jury Award

Botso – The Teacher from Tbilisi: “Botso” Korisheli, musician, sculptor, and beloved teacher to generations fled his homeland, The Republic of Georgia, after the execution of his father. He immigrated to America with nothing but no money but plenty of hope. Winner of the Best Documentary Award

The Forgotten Kingdom (USA): Atang Mokoenya leaves the slums of Johannesburg to return to his ancestral land of Lesotho, where he must bury his estranged father in the remote, mountainous village where he was born. Stirred by memories of his youth, he falls in love with his childhood friend, Dineo, now a radiant young school teacher. Through her, Atang is drawn toward the mystical beauty and hardships of the people and land he had forgotten, and faces his own bittersweet reckoning. Winner of Best Narrative Feature

The Man Who Fed His Shadow (Greece) Best Narrative Short
Not Anymore: A Story of Revolution (USA) Best Documentary Short

Boston Palestine Film Festival
October 17 – 26
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

Co-presented with the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the series returns for its eighth year. This showcase of Palestinian-related cinema seeks to bring these films into the mainstream. One attempt to make this happen is the scheduling of several post-screening conversations with filmmakers. This year the festival features 2 World Premieres, 4 North America Premieres, 3 US Premieres, 2 New England Premieres, and 3 Boston Premieres. The opening film is May in the Summer, directed by Cherien (Amreeka) Dabis. The movie “breathes life into a world rarely depicted on screen – contemporary Jordan – where ancient traditions, burgeoning modernity, and Western imitation deliciously collide, and nothing is quite what it seems.” See schedule for times and features.

The Notorious Mr. Bout
October 19 at 3 p.m.
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA

This is the latest film from Maxim Pozdorovkin (co-director of Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer). It’s about notorious Russian arms smuggler Viktor Bout. When he was arrested in 2008 in Thailand as a result of a U.S. government sting operation, the career of this internationally known arms smuggler came to a decisive end. An entrepreneur, aviation magnate, and international bandit dubbed the “merchant of death” and was even the subject of a Hollywood film. In sharp contrast to the widely known, super-villain persona, however, was another Bout: a philosophical businessman who simply enjoyed travel, his work, his family, and filming it all with his video camera. (source: Sundance)

— Tim Jackson

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Roots and World Music

Blue Hill Ave MCs Anniversary
October 12
Global Ministries Christian Church, Dorchester, MA

Local gospel quartet revivalists the Blue Hill Ave MCs always celebrate their anniversary in a big way with the assist of tireless promoter Jeannette Farrell. This year is no exception as their guests include the late Tommy Ellison’s Singing Stars group and the explosive Little Sammy and his New Flying Clouds.

Chris Thile & Edgar Meyer
Sunday Oct. 12
Sanders Theater, Cambridge, MA

Thile always has a new trick up his sleeve. This time it’s mandolin/bass duets with Edgar Meyer, a musician who is also at ease in both the bluegrass and classical worlds. Note that at press time only obstructed view seats were still available for this Celebrity of Boston Series concert.

Cedric Watson & Les Amis Creole featuring Ed Poullard
October 15
Johnny D’s, Somerville, MA

Fiddler/accordionist Watson is keeping alive the fast-disappearing Creole musical tradition born out of the Cajun, African and Caribbean heritage of Southwest Louisiana.

Xylouris White
October 17
Cuisine en Locale, Somerville, MA

Sat. Oct 18
Columbus Theater, Providence, RI

Sun. Oct 19
Red Door, Portsmouth, NH

Dirty Three drummer Jim White teams up with Cretan lute master George Xylouris in this inventive duo.

SpokFrevo Orquestra
October 19
Berklee Performance Center, Boston, MA

The frevo Carnival tradition of Northern Brazil gets a radical reinvention from this 17-piece big band. The show will be its U.S. debut.

Otobus Trio plus David Tronzo & Jussi Reijonen
October 19
Arts at the Armory Café, Somerville, MA

Global improvisation is the theme as the duo of jazz maverick Tronzo and Finnish guitarist/oudist perform alongside the French/Turkish trio of Burcu Gülec (voice) , Eren Başbuğ (piano) and Sylvie Leys (saxophone, flute).

— Noah Schaffer

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Classical Music

Surround Sound
Presented by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project
October 12, 3 p.m.
Jordan Hall, Boston

BMOP’s season begins with a program devoted to music for orchestra and electronics. Pieces by Ronald Bruce Smith and David Felder sandwich the world premiere of Anthony Paul de Ritis’ Riflessioni.

Rudolf Buchbinder plays Brahms
Presented by the Boston Symphony Orchestra
October 16-18, 21 (8 p.m.)
Symphony Hall, Boston

The eminent Austrian pianist returns to Symphony Hall to perform Brahms’s Piano Concerto no. 1. Thierry Fischer conducts a program that also includes Carl Nielsen’s commanding Symphony no. 4 (The Inextinguishable).

— Jonathan Blumhofer

Roberto Poli: Late Chopin
October 12 at 8 p.m.
New England Conservatory, Jordan Hall, Boston MA
Free

A NEC faculty recital presents the esteemed Chopin pianist in an all-Chopin recital that includes Nocturne In B Major, Op. 62, No. 1; Polonaise-Fantasie in A-flat Major, Op. 61; Three Mazurkas, Op. 59; Berceuse in D-flat Major, Op. 57; Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Op. 60; and Sonata in B Minor, Op. 58.

Emmanuel Music
October 17 at 8 p.m.
Longy School of Music, Cambridge, MA

On the program: Mendelssohn’s Sinfomia No. 2 in D Major; Hugo Wolf’s Italian Serenade; Selected Morike Lieder with strings (Krista River, mezzo-soprano); John Harbison’s Crossroads (the East Coast premiere with Peggy Pearson, oboe and Kendra Colton, soprano); Stravinsky’s Concerto in D for Strings. A pre-concert conversation at 7 p.m. with composer John Harbison, poet Louise Glück, and composer, conductor, flutist, and teacher John Heiss.

Blue Heron
October 17 at 8 p.m.
At St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Weston, MA
October 18 at 8 p.m.
At First Church, Cambridge, MA. (Same Program — Pre-concert talk at 7:15 p.m.)

The sublime Renaissance choir, directed by Scott Metcalfe, is now in its 16th year. This performance will feature A Mass for St. Augustine of Canterbury.

Julliard String Quartet
October 18 at 8 p.m.
Presented by the Celebrity Series of Boston at NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA

The quarter will be performing Webern’s Five Movements, Op. 5; Berg’s String Quartet, Op/ 3; and Schubert’s String Quartet in D minor, “Death and the Maiden.”

Boston Symphony Chamber Players
October 19 at 3 p.m.
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA

The group will perform J.S. Bach’s Trio Sonata in G for flute, violin, and continuo; Nielsen’s Wind Quintet; and Brahms’s Serenade No. 1 in D for winds and strings, Op. 11 (arr. Boustead).

— Susan Miron

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Dance

Faint Promise Of Rain
October 13
Porter Square Books,
Cambridge, MA
Free.

Local kathak dancer Anjali Mitter Duva, reads from her first novel, Faint Promise of Rain, set in 16th century India where a temple dancer makes a choice that challenges her family’s traditions.

Fleur D’Orange
Studio performance
October 14
Cross Street Dance Studio
Wesleyan University
Middletown, CT
and
Identity/Identité
October 19
Center for Arts at the Armory
Somerville, MA

In traditional Moroccan culture, women do not dance publicly. Choreographer/dancer Hind Benali’s contemporary dance company, Fleur D’Orange, takes on and explodes the mores of Muslim and African cultures, dancing her way through their attitudes towards issues of religion, gender, and family behavior. Benali’s fully staged work Identity/Identite includes a collaboration with hip hop dancer Soufiane Karim and a soundscape of live and recorded music by Mohcine Imraharn. Presented under the auspices of by the State Department-sponsored initiative Center Stage, this tour includes a number of informal studio performances and workshops for dancers of various ages.

Anna Myer and Dancers: “Between the Lines, A Work In Progress”
Oct 18-19 and 24-26
Hibernian Hall
Roxbury, MA

Once again, Anna Myer’s dancers and the professional classical musicians collaborate with dancers, rap poets, musicians, and actors from the Boston community and the Lenox Street Project to portray three young people — a gay woman, a black man, and a Latino man — who grow up together and explore the contrasting paths they have taken towards maturity. These performances include feedback and a public conversation about race and identity with audience members.

Kairos Dance Theatre in Her
October 17-18
Boston University, MA

Choreographers DeAnna Pellecchia and Ingrid Schatz have worked with an ensemble of women and girls to create a dance/theatre piece that addresses the challenges of adolescent friendship, love, bullying, conformity, identity, and isolation. Her features set and lighting design by Lynda Rieman, digital projections by Alison Kotin, and original costumes by Carlos Villamil. I’ll be on hand to moderate a post-show Q/A after the Friday performance.

Tango Lovers Company
October 17
Berklee Performance Center
Boston, MA

A cast of twenty dancers, instrumentalists, and vocalists from Argentina and Uruguay headline this flashy evening of tango in various styles featuring lots of sparkly costumes, intense clutching, and changes of footwear.

Nino de los Reyes
October 17-18
Dance Complex
Cambridge, MA

Celebrating Ramon de los Reyes’ half-century of commitment to flamenco dance and music in Boston and beyond, his gifted adult son Nino headlines two different programs featuring dancers and musicians from Madrid, Mexico, and Hong Kong. In addition to Nino, his brother Isaac, and their mother, treasured former Boston dancer Clara Ramona, performers scheduled to appear include guitarist Juan Jose Suarez “Paquete”, singer Ismael Fernandez and dancers Alfonso Losa, Jesus Carmona, Sonia Olla, and Triana Maciel. In a special work created by Dance Complex ED Peter DiMuro, Nino and polio survivor, dancer, and activist Elver Ariza-Silva collaborate in a biographical modern dance/flamenco duet. Sean Fiedler is also on hand to amplify the program’s percussion with his street-smart American tap.

Tabula Rasa Multidisciplinary Experiment
October 16
The Unium
Somerville, MA 02143

Watch or jump in and improvise to live music in the recently converted Union Square “warehouse of your dreams,” alongside painter Linda Clave, videographers Julie O’Neal and Werner Grundl, and dancers Katherine Anderson, Joe Burgio, Katerine Gagnon, Michelle Huber, Erin Morell, Catherine Musinsky and Jared Williams. Musicians in the audience are invited to bring their instruments, dancers are invited to bring their jazz shoes, photographers their cameras, and artists their sketchbooks.

and further afield…

Paper City Mini-Fest
October 18th
Holyoke City Hall Auditorium
Holyoke, MA

New York’s SynthesisDANCE, Andover’s Deadfall Dance, and Reject Dance Theater from Brookline are featured in this showcase that includes both an indoor concert and site-specific presentations.

Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion
Oct 18-19
Mass MoCA
North Adams, MA

The very busy Mr. Abraham just appeared at the ICA with When the Wolves Came In but you can continue the journey with its companion piece, The Watershed, which marks 150 years since Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and 20 years since the legal abolishment of South African apartheid. This special event is an off-season co-presentation with Jacob’s Pillow.

— Debra Cash

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Visual Arts

Functional Abstraction
At the Beverly J. Tassinari Gallery, Newbury College, Brookline, MA, from October 15 through December 5

An exhibit featuring paintings and objects by the Arts Fuse‘s architecture critic Mark Favermann. The show references his “involvement with art and design, emotion and logic. Serving as expressions of his joy and intrigue with how objects are drawn, designed and constructed, each piece expresses gesturally an emotion or emotions.”

— Bill Marx

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Jazz

Darrell Katz and the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra
October 14, 8 p.m.
Berklee Performance Center

Composer Darrell Katz’s new CD, Why Do You Ride? (Leo Records), with the JCAO, features some of his strongest writing and, as always, great playing by the band. Bicycle lover Katz will feature his eight-part suite from the disc, “Wheelworks,” as well as an “improvisational concerto grosso” dedicated to his retired Berklee colleague Phil Wilson, entitled “How To Clean a Sewer.” The latter will feature the marimba/violin duo of Vessela Stoyanova and Helen Sherrah-Davies. Rebecca Shrimpton is the band’s more than capable vocalist, and the other players in the 20-piece crew include Boston stalwarts like Bill Lowe, Jim Hobbs, Phil Scarff Forbes Graham, Bob Pilkington, and Norm Zocher.

Lawnmower
October 14, 8 p.m.
Lily Pad, Cambridge, MA.

For Lawnmower, drummer Luther Gray said he wanted “rock musicians who improvise like rock musicians but listen to other kinds of music.” This edition of the band also deploys jazz players who listen to other kinds of music: alto saxophone genius Jim Hobbs (whose residency this is), guitarists Van Martin and Jeff Platz, and bassist Winston Brahmin.

Rebecca Parris with Ernie Andrews
October 16, 8 p.m.
Scullers Jazz Club, Boston, MA.

Rebecca Parris was the inaugural booking at Scullers Jazz Club 25 years ago, so it’s fitting that she’s coming in to celebrate the venue’s silver anniversary. One of Boston’s most esteemed jazz singers, she’s joined by special guest Ernie Andrews, now 86, who made a name for himself as a big band singer in the Joe Williams mode with the Harry James Orchestra and later recorded with Kenny Burrell, Gene Harris, the Hamilton Brothers band, and many others.

The Music of George Russell
October 16, 8 p.m.
Jordan Hall, Boston, MA.

George Russell (1923-2009) was one of a handful of musicians who changed the face of jazz as a composer rather than as an improvising soloist (count Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Sun Ra, Thelonious Monk, and — okay, another virtuoso instrumentalist — Charles Mingus, among the others). Russell taught at New England Conservatory for more than 30 years, and one of his NEC protégés, Ben Schwendener (an estimable composer in his own right), will lead the NEC Jazz Orchestra in excerpts from Russell’s extended works “Listen to the Silence,” “Vertical Form,” and “The African Game,” as well as his two best known pieces, “All About Rosie” and “Ezzthetic,” and a Schwendener-Russell collaboration, “La Folia.”

Regina Carter
October 17, 8 p.m.
Presented by the Celebrity Series of Boston at Sanders Theatre, Cambridge, MA

Detroit-born virtuoso violinist Regina Carter explores the roots of her father’s side of the family in her latest CD, Southern Comfort. She’s joined by guitarist Marvin Sewell, accordionist Will Holshouser, bassist Jesse Murphy, and drummer Alvester Garnett.

Daniel & Phil Rosenthal
October 18, 2 p.m.
Green Room, Somerville, MA.

Jazz trumpeter Daniel Rosenthal and his dad Phil — renown former singer and songwriter with the Seldom Scene — present their beguiling mix of folk, bluegrass, and jazz.

John Coltrane Memorial Concert
October 18, 7:30 p.m.
Blackman Theatre, Northeastern University, Boston, MA.

The 37th annual JCMC will pay tribute to the 50th anniversary of John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” by playing, among other pieces, that epochal suite in full. This year New Orleans saxophonist Donald Harrison joins the usual crew of Boston heavycats: saxophonists Carl Atkins and Leonard Brown, bassist Ron Mahdi, drummers Yoron Israel and John Ramsay, trombonist Jeff Galindo, and pianist George W. Russell Jr.

Dianne Reeves
October 18, 8 p.m.
Presented by World Music/Crash Arts at Berklee Performance Center, Boston, MA.

Reeves is a dependable diva — range, power, musicality, taste — as well as a charismatic improviser whose book ranges from blues and standards to Afrocentric originals.

Marcus Roberts Trio
October 18, 8 p.m.
Shalin Liu Performance Center, Rockport, MA.

At his best, Marcus Roberts combines singing, delicate lyricism that covers the whole range of the keyboard with an unpredictable, explosive sense of swing. He plays a Rockport Music event in his trio with bassist Rodney Jordan and drummer Jason Marsalis.

Brian Thomas/Alex Lee-Clark Big Band
October 19, 7 p.m.-11p.m.
Beat Hotel, Cambridge, MA.

Bustling subterranean boîte the Beat Hotel kicks off a Sunday big band series with a 16-piece big band fronted by trombonist Brian Thomas and trumpeter Alex Lee-Clark. The Thomas/Lee-Clark band will be alternating Sundays with Greg Hopkins’s big band.

— Jon Garelick

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Theater

Knock! The Daniil Kharms Project Directed by Matthew Woods.
Through October 18.
Staged by imaginary beasts at the Plaza Black Box Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA.

The world premiere production of “a carefully curated evening” of work by early Soviet-era surrealist/absurdist writer Daniil Kharms via “new translations (by Irina Yakubovskaya) of his micro-prose, short plays, and poetry in new adaptations by the imaginary beasts ensemble.” Kharms is a fascinating figure, a dreamer of marvelously anarchistic fantasies. American short story writer George Saunders, an avid admirer, has summed up his brilliance this way: “Reading Kharms makes us look askance at more traditional stories. We see more clearly what they are: beautiful reductions. They are more substantial, yes, more moving, more consoling. But his work constitutes a kind of noble boundary, the limit to which stories can go before succumbing to the necessary falsification — dozens of small crouching men, misshapen but dignified, refusing, forever, to jump.” This evening promises to be a real treat. Knock! will be presented in rep with First of all, Second of All, “a play for children and their families adapted from a story by Kharms and performed by the Wee Beasties ensemble.” Arts Fuse review

An Enemy of the People, by Henrick Ibsen, in a version adapted by Arthur Miller. Directed by Julianne Boyd.
Through October 19
Staged by the Barrington Stage Company at the Boyd-Quinson Mainstage, 30 Union Street, Pittsfield, MA.

I bow to no one in my love of the plays of Ibsen, and he is always worth seeing, even when his flinty complexity is softened by the liberalism of Arthur Miller. The script revolves around a public fight over acknowledging polluted natural resources. In Miller’s version, the nasty truth-speaking hero at the center of the original Norwegian fracas becomes an archetypal American do-gooder defeated by the forces of ignorance. Still, I have seen productions that have made something dramatically powerful out of this vision of the deadly spread of stupidity. Arts Fuse review

The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare. Directed by David R. Gammons.
Through October 19
Staged by the Actors’ Shakespeare Project at the Brighton High School, Brighton, MA

An early laughfest from the Bard that aims for capers rather than complexity. The ASP cast includes stalwarts Richard Snee, Sarah Newhouse, and Jessie Hinton. Arts Fuse review

Reconsidering Hanna(h) by Deirdre Girard. Directed by Bridget Kathleen O’Leary.
Through October 19
Staged at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, Boston, MA

An intriguing dramatic premise: “Hanna, a brutally blunt international journalist, is struggling to come to terms with her husband’s violent death. After accepting a seemingly tame assignment, she becomes increasingly obsessed with uncovering the history of another Hannah: the infamous Hannah Dustin who was kidnapped by a Native American raiding party in 1697.”

King Lear by William Shakespeare. Directed by Bill Buckhurst
Staged by Shakespeare’s Globe
Presented by Arts/Emerson at the Paramount Theater, Boston, MA, October 15 through 23.

Joseph (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) Marcell stars as Lear in what critics are describing as a streamlined (“an ensemble of eight actor-musicians play multiple characters and instruments”) and determinedly “informal” take on the Bard’s tragedy. Hey, we just had a production of The Tempest that featured card tricks. What’s next? The Bard performed with performers lying in hammocks?

The Bagman or the Impromptu of Muswell Hill by John Arden. Directed by Jonathan Solar. Staged by the Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Theater at the Copeland Black Box Studio 354, October 15 through 17.

I usually don’t recommend student productions. But John Arden (1930-2012) is a major post-war playwright (of the Brechtian variety) whose work is rarely produced in Europe (though that is beginning to change) and is never staged here. His Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance (1959) is one of the great anti-war plays of the last century, on the level of Mother Courage. This is a 90-minute radio play that was first broadcast by the BBC in 1970 — directed by Martin Esslin. It is a serio-comic fable that dramatizes the artist’s passive-agressive relationship to a rapacious society.
Arden felt that the irony of the conclusion could be misinterpreted, so he made clear in an afterword to the published version where he stood: “I recognize as the enemy the fed man, the clothed man, the sheltered man, whose food, clothes, and house are obtained at the expense of the hunger, the nakedness, and the exposure of so many millions of others; and who will allow anything to be said, in books or on stage, so long as the food, clothes, and house remain undiminished in his possession.” Arden also wrote some marvelous historical fiction, including the Booker Prize-nominated Silence Among the Weapons, Cogs Tyrannic (winner of the Macmillan Silver Pen Award for Fiction), Books of Bale, and Jack Juggler and the Emperor’s Whore. His volume of essays on theater — Awkward Corners — is well worth reading.

Poe, written and directed by Eric Hill
Through October 26
Staged by the Berkshire Theatre Festival at the Unicorn Stage, Stockbridge, MA

A world premiere production of a script about the final days of Edgar Allan Poe. David Adkins stars as the doomed writer, who was “found nearly dead outside a 14th Ward polling station in Baltimore on the evening of election day in 1849 … his last wanderings in the city he made famous are the subject of a play that examines the man behind the poems and stories.”

Assassins, Music & lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Book by John Weidman. Directed by Jim Petosa. Musical direction by Matthew Stern. Choreographed by Judith Chaffee. Staged by New Repertory Theatre at the Charles Mosesian Theater, the Arsenal Center for the Arts, Watertown, MA, through October 26.

In 2012 at Boston University, New Rep artistic director Jim Petosa directed a fine production of this unusual musical (even for Stephen Sondheim), which focuses on the men and women who, over the past two centuries, have killed or tried to kill America’s Commander-in-Chief. At the time, The Arts Fuse presented a Judicial Review (a round-up of critiques and conversations) on the staging: the judges included Hugo Burnham, drummer and a founding member of England’s post-punk band Gang of Four, and Jeff Melnick, an associate professor of American Studies at UMass Boston, where he specializes in twentieth-century US history. Let’s see what Petosa does with the piece this time around.

In the Summer House by Jane Bowles
Directed by Caitlin Lowans
Presented by Fort Point Theatre Channel at Atlantic Wharf (290 Congress Street), Boston, MA, October 16 through 26

Jane Bowles’s play is a fascinating excursion into American modernism, with an accent on the female psyche. The play’s admirers include Tennessee Williams (“a piece of dramatic literature that stands altogether alone, without antecedents and without descendants, unless they spring from the one and only Jane Bowles. It is not only the most original play I have ever read, I think it also is the oddest and funniest and one of the most touching), Truman Capote, John Ashbery (“one of finest modern writers of fiction in any language), and Claire Messud. The script is damned difficult to stage, but it is well worth the effort.

It Felt Empty When the Heart Went at First But it is Alright Now by Lucy Kirkwood. Directed by Maureen Shea. Staged by Theatre on Fire at the Charlestown Working Theatre, Charlestown, MA, through November 2.

Theatre on Fire kicks off its tenth season with the American premiere of a script from East-London born playwright Kirkwood, who has been a writer in residence with Clean Break, a company that for 30 years has been working with imprisoned women and ex-offenders. According to The Guardian, this script takes us inside the mind of a prostitute, “a the young Croatian trapped in an east London room with 22 used condoms (it’s been a quiet day) knows exactly what she’s worth. She was sold for 1,000 euros (the price of two and a half iPhones, she wryly informs us) and is now only one client away from making the £20,000 that she believes will win her freedom from her pimp, Babac.”

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare. Directed by Joey Frangieh.
Staged by the Boston Theater Company at the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts (527 Tremont Street), Boston, MA, October 17 through November 2.

One of my great critical cronies, Arthur Friedman, held this elemental belief about theater — “Short is good and long is bad.” He would probably liked this 90-minute version of Shakespeare’s romance from the BTC, which has “the goal of restructuring classic plays for young and modern audiences.” Thus this staging will mix “tablets and Photoshop into Shakespeare’s play about trickery, honor and shame. The production explores the detriments and benefits of technology and its influence on how we communicate.”

Dear Elizabeth by Sarah Ruhl. Directed by A. Nora Long. Staged by the Lyric Stage, 140 Clarendon Street, Copley Square, Boston, MA, October 17 through November 9.

“Told through the extensive and imaginative correspondence between two of the 20th century’s most important and celebrated American poets — Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell — Dear Elizabeth is a different kind of love story, of artists and friends.” Ed Hoopman and Laura Latreille star.

— Bill Marx

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Rock

J Mascis
October 18
The Sinclair, Cambridge, MA

Massachusetts’ own J Mascis is best known as the singer/guitarist of indie/alternative godfathers Dinosaur Jr., but he comes to the Sinclair this month sans bandmates Lou Barlow and Murph. Mascis is touring behind his solo album Tied to a Star, which is an acoustic affair. That means that unlike nearly every other time you’ve gone to see him perform, you don’t need to worry about suffering major hearing loss.

The Thurston Moore Band
October 22
The Sinclair, Cambridge, MA

Few occurrences in rock this decade have been sadder than the dissolution of Thurston Moore’s marriage to Kim Gordon and the resulting breakup of the band they co-led, Sonic Youth. While we continue to hope that those splits are only temporary (not that the marriage-part is really any of our business), we can at least enjoy the newly formed Thurston Moore Band and Moore’s solo album The Best Day, set for release the week of his Sinclair show.

Upcoming and On Sale…

Temples (10/24/2014, Paradise Rock Club); Drowners (10/29/2014, Great Scott); Chrissie Hynde (11/1/2014, Orpheum Theatre); Peter Hook & the Light (11/8/2014, Royale); Stevie Wonder (11/11/2014, TD Garden); Bob Dylan (11/14/2014, Orpheum Theatre); Bob Dylan (11/15/2014, Providence Performing Arts Center); Johnny Marr (11/16/2014, Paradise Rock Club); Randy Newman (11/19/2014, Wilbur Theatre); Film Screening: “Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets” (11/19/2014, Brattle Theatre); Daniel Lanois (11/22/2014, Brighton Music Hall); Greg Trooper (11/23/2014, Atwood’s Tavern); Julian Casablancas + The Voidz (11/26/2014, House of Blues)

— Adam Ellsworth

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Books

Bob Ryan
In conversation with Bill Littlefield
Scribe: My Life in Sports
October 14 at 6 p.m. (doors open at 5:30)
Presented by the Harvard Book Store at the Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA
Free

The veteran Boston Globe sportswriter comes to Harvard Square to read from and discuss his new autobiography. He will trace his passion for sports, dating back to his youth spent going to games at the Polo Grounds all the way through the Celtics’ championship years with Bill Russell and up to the Red Sox finally winning a World Series.

Naomi Klein
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate
October 16 at 7 p.m.
Harvard Book Store, Cambridge MA
Free, though registration required

Naomi Klein has established a strong leftist pedigree as a corporate whistleblower and important social critic with her previous books No Logo and The Shock Doctrine. This week she read and discuss her latest investigatory tome, which will address the topic of climate change in the harsh light cast by free-market ideologies.

Sarah Kreps and John Kaag
Drone Warfare
October 16 from 3- 5 p.m.
The Harvard Coop, Cambridge MA
Free

The always-contentious issue of drone strikes deserves more of a debate than the nightly news provides. Luckily, we have Kreps, a political scientist and Kaag, a philosopher, coming to the Coop to discuss and sign their new book about the political, legal and ethical dimensions of drone strikes from the Cold War up to the present.

Mark Songini
Boston Mob: The Rise and Fall of the New England Mob and its Most Notorious Killer
October 16 from 7-8 p.m.
The Harvard Coop, Cambridge MA
Free

Local author Songini comes to the Harvard Coop to tell the history of the New England mafia, immensely powerful in its heyday, and especially how it used the psychopathic hitman Joseph “The Animal” Barboza as its most feared enforcer.

Eric Nelson
The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding
October 17 at 7 p.m.
Harvard Book Store, Cambridge MA
Free

Generations of Americans have been told that the founding fathers rebelled against English monarchy. The Harvard Historian has written a revisionist account that explains why this is not so. Nelson explains that many of our founding figures rebelled explicitly against the British Parliament, not the Crown. Nelson will discuss and sign copies of his book.

Neil Patrick Harris
Choose Your Own Autobiography
October 17 at 7 p.m.
Brookline Booksmith, Coolidge Corner MA
Signing Only, tickets free with purchase of book

The former Doogie Howser, M.D. has come out with a delightfully inventive spin on the celebrity autobiography. Harris presents his zany and unique life as if you, the reader, are living it. Imagine you are a TV star as a youngster, you do things like attend summer acting camp, struggle with your sexuality and get into nightclub confrontations with Scott Caan, only to eventually debate as to what kind of caviar you would prefer on Elton John’s yacht. Now, wasn’t that fun?

Concord Festival of Authors
Tomie dePaola
October 18 at 7 p.m.
Concord, MA
Most events are free, register for tickets to dePaola lecture.

Beloved children’s author dePaola will give the Leslie Reidel Memorial Lecture for young readers at the Concord library for its 22nd annual Festival of Authors. The two weeks of discussion, readings and talks celebrates the written and spoken word and features such luminaries as Nathaniel Philbrick, David McCullough Jr, Ann Hood and the venerable dissident Noam Chomsky.

Peter Bebergal
Season of the Witch: How the Occult saved Rock n’ Roll
October 20 at 7 p.m.
Brookline Booksmith, Coolidge Corner, Brookline, MA
Free

Music scholar Peter Bebergal will come to Coolidge Corner to read and discuss his latest work on the occult influence on Rock history. What occult influence on rock, you ask? Think Zeppelin’s psychedelic take on Tolkien, Elvis’s hoodoo hillbilly shake, and Beatles-esque trips to the far East. Bebergal will outline how the mystical arts have shaped your record collection in bewitching ways.

–Matt Hanson