CONVENTIONS Interior decorating enthusiasts will want to swing by the Cyclorama this weekend, where they can see displays from 40 exhibitors represents historic, modernist and contemporary design. You might just get some smart ideas for your apartment—and your spouse will probably get completely different ones! The show opens tonight with a gala benefitting Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS. GAMES This “escape the room” game takes you aboard a spaceship supposedly headed for a resort planet somewhere light years away—until something goes terribly wrong. You and your friends have to figure out what that wrong something is, or you’ll be lost in space forever. The clever folks at MakeWright have crafted a detailed set that should make it very easy to get immersed. THEATER It may be a little weird to see someone other than Will Ferrell playing Buddy, but “Elf” is just too dang charming a holiday tale to need any particular star power. It’s arrived a little early, but the Broadway version might be the perfect way to get stoked for the holidays—not as stoked as Buddy, of course. That’d be a bit much. ‘A Crack in the Blue Wall’ This play by local actress and playwright Jacqui Parker reflects on recent killings of unarmed black men by police by imagining a fictional instance close to home. The victim is Trey, a young activist gunned down in Boston Common. Emphasizing the personal side of such events, Parker shows us the story through multiple perspectives, from Trey’s family to the police. DANCE These two local institutions team up for an intimate evening of chamber music and dance, featuring Dag Wiren’s Quartet, op 31, Astor Piazzolla’a La Calle 92, Hasenohrl’s arrangement of Strauss’ tone poem Till Eulenspiegel and Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, each paired with original choreography by Williams, Gianni Di Marco, Janelle Gilchrist and Marsha Parilla. Polly Motley This dancer will perform “the Glyph,” by Katherine Litz. Litz, whose choreography emphasizes the physics of the body over emotional release, taught at Black Mountain College, a unique mid-20th century school that fused a fine arts education with a liberal arts education. In keeping with the school’s spirit, Motley will perform in a gallery, facilitating a dialogue between painting and dance. MUSIC
Project Fusion: A Collision of Music and Technology The jetpack-toting 21st century, as envisioned by folks in the middle of the 20th, never quite came to fruition, but there are traces. At this concert, for example, Juventas New Music Ensemble will perform with actual robot musicians. Also on the program: a work for “flute and computer”, a composition involving the audience’s smartphone and a piece integrating DNA sequences. Kingsley Flood The Americana-influenced act Kingsley Flood, who broke through in 2013, is one of Boston’s most prominent gifts to the national music scene in the last few years. Riding a wave of buzz a mile high, tonight they release their latest, EP “To the Wolves,” and if the record’s raw, stomping energy is any indication, fame hasn’t intimidated them at all. Together Pangea Together Pangea are prime exponents of the deceptively laid-back, in-the-red garage pop that’s been emanating like pot smoke from California for the last half decade, but they can also become a fully engaged, crazy-soloing rock monster when they feel like it, projecting an infectious power worthy of those decidedly un-chill pioneers of Californian punk, Black Flag. Their last album was 2014’s “Badillac.” Lights/The Mowglis Canadian electronic pop queen Lights (real name Valerie Poxleitner) has an almost cheesy but irresistible digital sound that finds its perfect visual analog in her comically low-budget sci-fi video for “Drive My Soul”. She shares this bill with the Mowgli, a Californian band whose feel-good anthems ought to be sent into space to show aliens what Millennials are all about. OUTDOORS This synchronized light and music display returns to Faneuil Hall for its fourth year. It also boasts the largest Christmas tree in the northeast, which will get lit up before the official Boston tree. The display, featuring over 350,000 LED lights and the music of the Holiday Pops, opens Saturday, with festivities starting at 2 p.m. ART This is the first event at the newly renovated KnowNoTruth Gallery, and the organizers promise to “take you away from the distractions of the outside world.” With food from Black Cat Culinary, music selected by DJs STATIC and Howie D. Rivet, photography from Jason Baker and Anthony Grassetti, paintings from Landon Richman and live body painting by Adam Canvas Giangregorio. COMEDY Coffeehouses in our artisan-roasted era don’t seem to have as much live performance as in their 90’s heyday, but the hip cafe Pavement is doing its part to change this, hosting a monthly comedy night at their Comm. Ave. location. November’s lineup includes Laura Burns, Jere Pilapil, Kenice Mobley, Kwasi Mensah, John Dennis, Andrew Mayer and your headliner, Gary Petersen. MOVIES This 2014 documentary by Tim Grabham and Jasper Sharp is all about slime molds and the people who work with them, who range from scientists to artists. The crazy thing is scientists believe the mold has a crude sort of intelligence. Jim O’Rourke provides an eerie score reminiscent of classic science fiction, playing up the otherworldly weirdness of the fungal universe. BOOKS At this double feature reading, poet J. Mae Barizo will read from “The Cumulus Effect,” with its themes of travel and memory, and journalist Susana Moreira Marques will read from “Now and at the Hour of Our Death,” recounting her experiences with a palliative care team in a remote area of Portugal, where a culture is dying along with its aging members.
Boston Home Decor Show
Friday through Sunday
Cyclorama
539 Tremont St., Boston
$15, 617-363-0405
www.bostonhomedecorshow.com
Escape Velocity
Through Sunday
Artisan’s Asylum
10 Tyler St., Somerville
$20
www.eventbrite.com
‘Elf the Musical’
Through Dec. 6
Citi Wang Theater
270 Tremont St., Boston
$35-$145, 800-982-2787
www.citicenter.org
Through Sunday
Hibernian Hall
184 Dudley St., Roxbury
$15-$25, 617-849-6322
www.hibernianhall.org
Symphony Nova with Tony Williams Ballet
Friday, 7:30 p.m.
Old South Church
645 Boylston St., Boston
$10-$25, 781-381-3300
www.symphonynova.org
Saturday and Sunday
Institute of Contemporary Art
100 Northern Ave., Boston
Free, 617-478-3100
www.icaboston.org
Saturday, 8 p.m.
Killian Hall, MIT
160 Memorial Dr., Cambridge
$12-$18
www.juventasmusic.com
Friday, 9 p.m.
The Sinclair
52 Church St., Cambridge
$15, 18+, 800-745-3000
www.ticketmaster.com
Saturday, 7 p.m.
Middle East Upstairs
472 Mass. Ave., Cambridge
$12, 18+, 866-777-8932
www.tickeweb.com
Saturday, 7:30 p.m.
The Paradise
967 Comm. Ave., Boston
$25, 800-745-3000
www.ticketmaster.com
Blink!
Saturday through Jan. 3
Faneuil Hall Marketplace
Boston
Free
www.faneuilhallmarketplace.com
Interference
Friday, 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.
KnowNoTruth Gallery
228 Newbury St., Boston
Free, 857-317-4139
www.knownotruth.com
Pavement Comedy Night
Friday, 6:30 p.m.
Pavement Coffeehouse
736 Comm. Ave., Boston
$4, 617-277-8737
www.eventbrite.com
‘The Creeping Garden’
Friday through Tuesday
Brattle Theater
40 Brattle St., Cambridge
$9-$11, 617-876-6837
www.brattlefilm.org
J. Mae Barizo and Susana Moreira Marques
Friday, 7 p.m.
Porter Square Books
25 White St., Cambridge
Free, 617-491-2220
www.portersquarebooks.com
What to do in Boston this weekend: Nov. 19 – Nov. 22, 2015
Amy Boyle
