Weekly Entertainment Guide – RIZZO

Robin Bloom offers 21 suggestions for what to do this week.

What’s Happening

NextMove Dance at the Prince Theater

Dance Affiliates continues to present world-class performances in Philadelphia with the inaugural season of NextMove Dance, now in a new location at the Prince Theater. This season will feature eight companies in 54 performances and kicks off with Complexions Contemporary Ballet, under the direction of former Ailey superstars Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson, and three diverse premieres set to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Metallica, and Stevie Wonder. Six performances take place October 14-18 at 1412 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. Photo courtesy of Dance Affiliates.

PHeaSt

The 4th annual PHeaSt takes place Friday, October 16, 7pm-10pm, hosted by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society to benefit the PHS City Harvest program that feeds more than 1200 families in need each week during growing season. Sample seasonal dishes and wines from growers and top chefs in a garden-to-table celebration in the PHS Warehouse at the Navy Yard, home to recycled props from the Philadelphia Flower Show, 5201 South 13th Street, South Philadelphia. Photo courtesy of PHS.

Sex: A History in 30 Objects at Penn Museum

Penn Museum examines how gender and sexuality differs across cultures and through time with the new exhibit Sex: A History in 30 Objects. Gathered from the renowned museum’s international collection of art and artifacts and broken into several themes to offer a broad survey of some of the diverse ways that human beings in societies across continents and throughout the millennia have understood sex and sexuality, gender and gender diversity, October 17 through July 31, 2016. Featuring objects from Iran, Greece, Rome, New Guinea, Egypt, Sierra Leone, India, Tibet, North America and other places around the world, 3260 South Street, Philadelphia. Designed to coincide with the Penn Humanities Forum on Sex. Related programs and events include Second Sunday Culture Film Series and more. Saturday, October 17 is So You Wanna Be an Archaeologist? Pictured: Benghazi Venus, marble, 150-100 BCE (Hellenistic) Libya, Benghazi, Ancient Euesperides/Berenike.

Reading Terminal Market’s Harvest Festival

Celebrate fall and the Pennsylvania harvest at Reading Terminal Market’s 15th annual Harvest Festival, Saturday, October 17, 10am-4pm, with food, hay rides, pumpkin patch, corn stalks, hay bales, beer garden, live music, arts and crafts, and more, on Filbert Street by 12th & Arch Streets, Philadelphia. Photo courtesy of Reading Terminal Market.

Philadelphia Shell Show and Festival

The annual Philadelphia Shell Show and Festival, called the largest show of its kind in the Northeast, returns Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 17-18, featuring seashell hunts, dissections, live animal shows, sea story readings, displays in judged categories that reflect various aspects of shell collecting, international shell market, and tours of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University’s Malacology Collection of about 10 million shells, and much more, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia. Included with museum admission. Photo courtesy of ANSP.

Center City Residents’ Association (CCRA) Fall House Tour

The 57th annual Center City Residents’ Association (CCRA) Fall House Tour takes place Sunday, October 18, 1pm-5pm, rain or shine, offering the rare opportunity to take a look inside some of Philadelphia’s most interesting residences. The self-guided tour beings at Trinity Center for Urban Life, 2212 Spruce Street in Fitler Square or Beth Zion Beth Israel at 18th and Spruce Streets. Participants receive a booklet with complete tour information, house descriptions and route map. Restaurant and parking discounts available. Pictured: Lombard Street residence featuring an outside shower designed by mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar. Photo courtesy of CCRA.

Lighthouse Challenge

Tour the New Jersey coast from Sandy Hook to Cape May with the Lighthouse Challenge, Saturday and Sunday, October 17-18, and the opportunity to climb the Garden State’s maintained lighthouses to help fund their preservation. The event includes a number of participating lighthouses, including Barnegat Light (pictured) and many more. Fees or donations differ for each location.

Harvest Festival and River Adventure Day at Bartram’s Garden

Bartram’s Garden hosts a Harvest Festival, Sunday, October 18, 1pm-4pm. Held in conjunction with the National Park Service’s Canoe Mobile River Adventure Day featuring pumpkin carving, face painting, cooking and canning workshops, cider pressing, seed saving, and farm tours. The oldest botanical garden in the United States, Bartram’s Garden spans over 45 acres along the Schuylkill River in Fairmount Park, 54th Street and Lindbergh Boulevard, Philadelphia. Founded by father and son botanists John and William Bartram, the site includes the Bartram house, botanical garden, meadow, parkland and a wetland. Check out the “Franklinia” tree, the pair’s famous discovery, named for family friend Ben Franklin.

Fall Festivals and Freaky Fun

The Delaware Shakespeare Festival presents Shakespeare/Poe, a night of readings from “the dark side,” by two masters of the macabre, Friday, October 16 through Sunday, October 18 and Friday, October 23 through Sunday, October 25 now in three locations at the Rockwood Mansion in Wilmington, Stone Stable in historic Odessa, and the Read House and Gardens in New Castle. Only 30 seats available each night. This year, the event expands to include female authors like Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley.Enjoy a Halloween Hay Day Saturday, October 17, 10:30am-1:30pm, at Glen Foerd on the Delaware with hayrides, children’s crafts and activities, 5001 Grant Avenue, Philadelphia.Tyler Arboretum hosts Pumpkin Days Celebration, Saturday and Sunday, October 17-18, 10am-5pm, with family activities including crafts, games, hay wagon tours, food, live music, and pumpkins, 515 Painter Road, Media, PA.Batsto Village’s annual Country Living Fair is Sunday, October 18, 10am-4pm, with exhibits, music, crafts, antiques, quilting, old-time engines and cars, food, children’s activities and more, in the Wharton State Forest in the South Central pinelands of NJ, 31 Batsto Road, Route 542, Hammonton, NJ. Free admission and parking. Photo courtesy of Batsto Village.

Hagley Craft Fair

The Hagley Craft Fair is back this weekend, Saturday, October 17, 10am-5pm, and Sunday, October 18, 10am-4pm, featuring works on display and for sale in wood, pottery, jewelry, fibers, metal, and other media. Continuing this year is a specialty market featuring gourmet food vendors. Bring the kids and enjoy Hayrides at Hagley, and see the exhibit Driving Desire: Automobile Advertising and the American Dream, focusing on six traditional advertising themes used to see cars in the twentieth century, Hagley Museum and Library, Buck Road east entrance off Route 100, Wilmington, DE.

NowHere Festival of Free Improvisation in Sound and Movement

The Impermanent Society of Philadelphia (ISOP) hosts the NowHere Festival of Free Improvisation in Sound and Movement, October 19-25, dedicated to promoting the Free Improvisation art form with world-class movement and sound by local and national artists. The program includes 3 days of performance, adult master classes, youth education, a panel discussion at Temple University, scholarly presentations with performers like Leah Stein (pictured), Susan Hefner, Bhob Rainey, Michael Evans, Travis Woodson, Susan Alcorn and many more, Mascher Space Cooperative, 155 Cecil B. Moore Avenue, Philadelphia. Photo by Lois Greenfield.

Back to the Future Day at Bryn Mawr Film Institute

Celebrate Back to the Future Day, Wednesday, October 21, 6pm, at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute, celebrating the precise day that Marty McFly was transported into the future to thwart his kids from disaster in the second film from the Back to the Future series. Take a photo with a visiting DeLorean “time machine,” win prizes for knowledge of Back to the Future trivia, dress in costume and receive a free small popcorn, and watch Back to the Future II on BMFI’s big screen at 7pm, 824 W. Lancaster Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA.

Onstage

“Disgraced” at Philadelphia Theatre Company

Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Disgraced opens Philadelphia Theatre Company’s new season. The provocative and dramatic show tackles themes of Islamophobia and Muslim self-identity as the conversation gets heated at a dinner party between a successful Pakistani-American lawyer and his wife and a couple at their home. The Philadelphia premiere is directed by Mary B. Robinson with an ensemble cast including Anthony Mustafa Adair, Ben Graney, Aimé Donna Kelly, Monette Magrath and Pej Vahdat, through November 8. Related programs and events include Meet-the-Artist Talk Backs, Wine Tasting, Backstage Tours, LGBT night and more, at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, Broad & Lombard Streets, Philadelphia. Presented with Intercultural Journeys. Photo by Mark Garvin.

Theatre Exile’s “Rizzo”

The larger than life Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo is the subject of a world premiere production by Theatre Exile opening October 15 through November 8. Rizzo is the theater’s first commissioned work, by award-winning playwright and South Philadelphia resident Bruce Graham and based on Frank Rizzo: The Last Big Man in Big City America by ESPN’s Sal Paolantonio. Rizzo, who rose from beat cop to Police Commissioner to mayor (from 1972-1980), is portrayed by Barrymore Award-winning actor Scott Greer. Cast also includes Damon Bonetti as the political beat reporter, Paul L. Nolan as Rizzo advisor and confidant Marty Weinberg, Amanda Schoonover, Akeem Davis, Robert DaPonte, and William Rahill. Set in a South Philadelphia row home and directed by Founding Artistic Director Joe Canuso, Christ Church Neighborhood House, 20 N. American Street, Philadelphia. Photo by Robert Hakalski.

Passage Theatre Company’s “Song for the Disappeared”

Tanya Saracho’s Song for the Disappeared takes to the stage at Passage Theatre Company. The riveting new comic thriller focuses on a family that, while reuniting to save a son from the narcos on the Mexican border, need to be saved from each other. The Mexican-born playwright’s World premiere opens the Trenton-based theater company’s 30th anniversary season, is directed by Alex Correia, and stars Vivia Font, Christina Nieves, Annie Dow, Felipe Gorostiza and Thomas Christopher Nieto, through October 25, Mill Hill Playhouse, 205 E. Front Street, at the corner of Montgomery Street in Trenton, NJ. Free guarded on-street parking. Photo by Michael Goldstein.

Music

Kinky Friedman

Singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, and politician Kinky Friedman comes to the Philadelphia region for several performances promoting his new album The Loneliest Man I Ever Met: Sellersville Theater in Sellersville, PA on Thursday, October 15 and at The Record Collector in Bordentown NJ on Sunday, October 25 (doors open at 7:30pm with show at 8pm). Kinky’s producer Brian Molnar opens both shows. Photo by Brian Kanof.  Listen to Kinky Friedman’s interview on NewsWorks Tonight.

 

Philadelphia Chamber Music Society Concerts

The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society opens its new season with the Pavel Haas Quartet, Friday, October 16, 8pm, Kimmel Center; guitarist Jason Vieaux (pictured), Sunday, October 18, 3pm, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Jeffrey Khaner, flute and Charles Abramovic, piano, Monday, October 19, 8pm, Settlement Music School; Jeremy Denk, piano, Friday, October 23, 8pm, Kimmel Center; Montrose Trio, Kazuhide Isomura, viola, Tuesday, October 27, 8pm, Kimmel Center.

Mendelssohn Club’s “Beginnings”

Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia welcomes new Artistic Director Paul Rardin (pictured) with Beginnings, Sunday, October 18, 4pm. Program includes Mendelssohn’s Psalm 98, Psalm 100, and Psalm 43, Kile Smith’s world premiere of Agnus Dei, and Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor with soloists Ah Young Hong, soprano and Barbara Berry, soprano, Church of the Holy Trinity, 1904 Walnut Street, Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia. An hour before the performance, catch MendelSounds, a 20 minute pre-concert talk and demonstration with Rardin. One of this country’s oldest choruses, Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia advances the development of choral music as an art form.

 

 

Each week, the Entertainment Guide spotlights interesting local arts offerings happening now, including music, dance, theater, museums, special exhibitions and other arts events from across the region.

To submit an event to be considered, email Robin Bloom at artscalendar@whyy.org.