COMEDY
Tig Notaro
Saturday, 7 p.m.
The Wilbur Theater
246 Tremont St. Boston
$25, 800-745-3000
Comic Tig Notaro has a cool, relaxed manner on stage, delighting in all the redundancies, statements of the obvious and manifest nonsense we use to pad out conversation. If she runs out, she’s always happy to add some of her own, such as recommending confusing your friends by texting them stuff like “What’s your ETA?” when nothing is going on. THEATER
The Real Thing
Saturday through Nov. 23
Calderwood Pavilion
527 Tremont St.
$18, 617-933-8600
Bad Habit Productions presents this play by Tom Stoppard, about a playwright, Henry, whose actress wife Charlotte goads him into producing a (bad) play by man she declares a “political prisoner” but whom Henry considers a mere scalawag. Through this play-within-the-play, Stoppard communicates some of his trademark existentialist ideas about appearance and reality with his trademark wit. ART
Tinsley Hammond: The Projection Series
Through Nov. 21
ARCH Gallery
52 Everett St., Allston
Free, 518-495-4111
This Alaskan-born artist’s first show in Massachusetts features a set of boxes with beautifully colorful Rorschach-like designs. Lit from within like Chinese lanterns, they are the gallery’s only light source. The project had a surprising genesis: the notorious Tulip Bubble in 17th century Holland, during which tulips became so valuable people would stake their fortunes on a single bulb. MUSIC
Ana Moura
Friday, 8 p.m.
Berklee Performance Center
136 Mass. Ave., Cambridge
$28-$37, 617-876-4275
Ana Moura is one of the biggest stars in the Portuguese fado genre, integrating poppier strains into fado’s blues-like lamentations. You don’t need to understand a word of Portuguese to discern the layers of emotional complexity she builds in her songs. She acts them as much as sings them, and her performances are as enigmatic as they are intimate. BOOKS
Megan Amram
Monday, 7 p.m.
Brattle Theater
40 Brattle St., Cambridge
$5, 617-661-1515
Amram (a “Parks and Recreation” writer) will discuss her book “Science… For Her!”, a snarky satire of “expert advice” articles that appear in women’s magazines. Amram’s parodies of these columns explode them—and the screwed-up social expectations that often lie behind them—from the inside, laying bare the insatiable anxieties on which they prey, and which they’re more likely to exacerbate than reduce.
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