Wednesday, April 29
Kathleen Hanna
As Riot Grrrl, the feminist punk movement of the ’90s, has been rehistoricized and come back into style in recent years, Kathleen Hanna has undeniably become the face of that revolution. This is something both she and critics have a problem with. Though she didn’t ask for it, she has taken on the responsibility with grace. Riot Grrrl has been accused of lacking diversity, for not including women of color. Two decades later, married (to the Beastie Boys’ Adam Horovitz), resurgent in her musical career (with The Julie Ruin), and recovered from Lyme disease, Hanna is now seeking a dialogue with her feminist heirs. “We put ourselves out to be criticized,” she says, “and I hope that people criticized things that I said, because it’s all about the exchange.” Riot Grrrl was monumental in creating spaces both safe and separate from men in punk (hence the famous “Girls to the front” commandment), and a supportive community for women to navigate within it. In this non-musical appearance, Hanna will speak about the movement and her career in a lecture called “Riot Grrrl Then and Now.” The Neptune, 1303 N.E. 45th St., 877-784-4849, stgpresents.org. $24 (sold out). 8 p.m.
DIANA M. LE
Thursday, April 30
In Country
The premise sounds like Christopher Guest: Portland filmmakers Meghan O’Hara and Mike Attie follow a “platoon” of Vietnam War re-enactors into the woods. Your first thought, as mine was, is likely to be “Jesus Christ, you fucking losers, get a life and stop pretending you’re at war. American troops are still dying abroad. This is in really bad taste!” O’Hara and Attie confess to just the same qualms, but their sympathetic doc is anything but a simple takedown. To begin with, several re-enactors are actual veterans of recent wars. Their mentor is a Vietnam War vet. And one of them, a teen, is set to enlist in the Marines. So your snickers end quite soon. Then the directors interlace scenes of this Oregon “war” with actual Vietnam War footage to show what these guys are after. The old newsreels and stills have an enduring power to startle, in large part because Vietnam was the last time photojournalists were allowed such intimate access; all wars since have been strictly stage-managed by the Pentagon. An amusing footnote: For the sake of veracity in this amateur-theatrical-in-the-woods, O’Hara and Attie agreed to “play” reporters following the platoon with their camera. And the two directors will attend tonight’s screening. (Through Sun.) SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff.net. $7–$12. 7 p.m.
BRIAN MILLER
Friday, May 1
STIFF
The acronym for the newly renamed and broadened Seattle Transmedia and Independent Film Festival was always a cheeky bit of misdirection, since SIFF proper begins on May 14. The motley, spunky STIFF programs differently—like Slamdance punching upward at Sundance. This year’s lineup has a typically impudent feel, with highlights including Jen Marlowe’s Arab Spring doc Witness Bahrain; an interactive web game called Pirate Fishing (intended to raise awareness about overfishing off West Africa); the Chilean Assent (about the ’70s military coup, designed for Oculus Rift); Coney Island: Dreams for Sale (about gentrification in New York); and Lost Conquest (about a Minnesotan’s quest for his supposed Viking heritage). Tonight’s screening of the romantic thriller Bristel Goodman (6 p.m., Grand Illusion) is followed by a gallery event and opening-gala afterparty. Grand Illusion, Lucid Lounge, Wing-It Productions, and other venues. Tickets (mostly $12) and schedule:
trueindependent.org. Runs through May 9.
BRIAN MILLER
Saturday, May 2
Ariadne auf Naxos
For all its frivolity and ebullience—the aspects of Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos
that Seattle Opera
is selling the hardest for its upcoming production—it cost its composer, and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, years of grueling and contentious labor. The latter’s original comic concept, the onstage clash of a tragic Greek-myth opera performance and a commedia dell’arte troupe—so avant, so meta—was itself stuffed, like some giant theatrical turducken, into his adaptation of Moliere’s play Le bourgeois gentilhomme. (One of Moliere’s characters presents the two-operas-in-one as an entertainment in his home, or so goes the contrived premise.) Strauss wrote a great deal of music for this hybrid: incidental music for the reworked Moliere plus the complete 90-minute double opera. When this proved less than a hit, mainly because it made for an evening of Wagnerian length, Strauss and Hofmannsthal had to detach what they had so painstakingly spliced together, adding a new prologue to the opera (depicting the manic backstage preparations) so it could stand on its own. Happily for Strauss, though, this overelaborate concept called for two very different styles of music, both of which he excelled at: elegant, sparkling 18th-century pastiche to evoke the commedia players; and soaring, opulent music for his tragic heroine Ariadne. Seattle Opera revives its 2004 production—including, memorably, onstage fireworks at the climax. (Through May 16.) McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer St. (Seattle Center), 389-7676, seattleopera.org. $25 and up. 7:30 p.m.
GAVIN BORCHERT
Chiho Aoshima
This is SAAM’s second exhibit by a contemporary young Japanese artist associated with Takashi Murakami. (The artist known as Mr. was the guy who recently filled a gallery with tsunami detritus.) Aoshima is a woman, however, who ought to provide a different perspective on the oppressive sexism of most anime. In addition to 30-plus drawings and two large “dreamscapes,” her show Rebirth of the World will include new animated work, Takaamanohara (or The Plain of High Heaven), dealing with Shinto deities. In her typically colorful paintings, ethereal kawaii sprites roam in enchanted glades where the colors are anything but natural. Long, undulating hair mixes into the undergrowth and vines, suggesting deeper connections to the planet. There are cityscapes, too, as in her 2005 animation City Glow, where the towers rise like wormy, human-faced figures. Corporeal, architectural, and natural realms blur together in her work. Aoshima is a syncretist whose diverse subjects grow from the same spiritual undercurrent. (Through Oct. 4.) Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect St. (Volunteer Park), 654-3100, seattleartmuseum.org. $5–$9. 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
BRIAN MILLER
