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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Monday

André Aciman reads from 6 to 7 p.m. at The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Harvard Square. General admission is $6 (with fees, $7.29), or $27.75 (with fees, $30.13) with a copy of the book Catch up with Oliver, Elio and Elio’s dad, Samuel, of “Call Me by Your Name,” in the sequel, “Find Me: A Novel,” and be warned that Acimen says the book was “inspired by every single Jane Austen novel that I’ve ever read.” Information is here.

Cambridge Comedy Underground Television Showcase from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Cambridge Community Television, 438 Massachusetts Ave., Central Square. Free, but with limited seating. The channel’s television comedy showcase includes sets from Zenobia Del Mar (pictured), Todd Clay, Stephanie Elliot, Kevin M. Quigley, Josh Goldstein, Shelley Gruenberg, Tyler Morrow and guests Matt Shore and Ben Loftus, with hosts Demetrius “Big D” Hullum and Casey McNeal. Information is here.


Tuesday

“Mass Ave, Cambridge: Photos by Karl Baden” debuts from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Gallery 344, on the second floor of the City Hall Annex, 344 Broadway, Mid-Cambridge. Free. Baden, an associate professor at Boston College, has spent two years photographing the four miles of Massachusetts Avenue running through Cambridge. (He also took part in the Vacant Storefront Creative Design Contest, and got some attention in 2017 with the news he’d been taking self-portraits of himself every day for three decades, becoming known to some as the accidental “father of the selfie.”) Information is here.

“Above the Free Walls” test screening and discussion from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Cambridge Main Library, 449 Broadway, Mid-Cambridge. Free. Information is here. After focusing on Harvard Square’s Grolier Poetry Book Shop in “The Last Sacred Place of Poetry,” filmmaker Weiying Olivia Huang turned her lens to making a feature-length documentary on the art in Modica Way, Central Square’s “Graffiti Alley.” The filmmaker will be on hand to hear feedback and discuss the making of the film and the legal graffiti movement, and state Sen. Patricia Jehlen will provide opening remarks and join the discussion. Information is here.


Wednesday

All-you-can-eat ice cream sundaes with extended topping bar from 6 to 8 p.m. at Gracie’s, 22 Union Square, Somerville. All-you-can-eat sundaes are $10; it’s an additional $7 for a trip through the toppings bar. It’s the ice cream shop’s five-year anniversary, and it’s been soliciting advice on how to load up on over-the-top toppings. Last year there were 25 toppings available. Information is here. 

“West Side Story” from 7:30 to 10 p.m. (and repeating Thursday, Saturday and Sunday) at Harvard University’s Farkas Hall Studio, 10-12 Holyoke St., Harvard Square. General admission is $15. Romeo and Juliet on the gang-ruled streets of 1950s New York, rethought by Latinx groups for 2019: “Our ‘West Side Story’  takes this classic story of forbidden love and futile violence and looks at it with new eyes. We are proud to put Puerto Rican and Latinx voices, thinkers and artists in conversation with an esteemed but imperfect monolith of the Broadway canon.” Information is here.


Thursday

“The One You Feed” dance from 8 to 10 p.m. (and repeating Friday, Saturday and next week) at MIT Theater Arts, 345 Vassar St., in the MIT/Area II neighborhood. General admission is $5. An immersive dance theater piece set in a deconstructed suburban house, with extreme dancing, dramatic scenes and a “murder tent” inspired by sources ranging from Gertrude Stein and “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” to Michael Pollan and Jean-Paul Sartre. Director/choreographer Dan Safer leads the creative team. Information is here.

“Red Noses” from 8 to 11 p.m. (and repeating Friday and Saturday) in the Balch Arena Theatre at the Aidekman Arts Center at Tufts University, 40 Talbot Ave., Somerville. Free, but register here. Peter Barnes’ dark comedy follows a troupe of fools who entertain the dying during the Black Death year of 1348. It won Barnes an Olivier Award for best play in 1994, at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Information is here.

“West Side Story” from 7:30 to 10 p.m. (and repeating Thursday, Saturday and Sunday) at Harvard University’s Farkas Hall Studio, 10-12 Holyoke St., Harvard Square. General admission is $15. Information is here.


Friday

“How to Let Things Fall Apart” concert from noon to 2 p.m. at the Granoff Music Center at Tufts University, 20 Talbot Ave., Somerville. Free. This entry in the New At Noon series features music by Tufts composers that highlights unexpected approaches to structure, with new compositions by Dan Berkowitz, Jeannette Chechile, Andrew Daetz, Tucker Donelan, Wen Gao, Yasaman Ghodsi, Niki Glensiter, Seungyoon Kim, Kyra Link, Lucas Loaiza, Charlotte Nanteza, Stephanie Rifkin and Joseph Rondeau. Information is here. 

Community block party celebrating “nonprofit row” from 4 to 7 p.m. across from 99 Bishop Allen Drive, The Port, near Central Square. Free. Food, music and entertainment at an outdoor party – dress warm – to celebrate the work of the rescue of the “nonprofit row” building from development that could have forced out organizations serving the community. Information is here.

“Hamlet” from 8 to 10 p.m. (and repeating Saturday, Sunday and next week) at Unity Somerville, 6 William St., just off College Avenue near Davis Square, Somerville. General admission is $20 (with fees, $16.74). A “fast-paced, emotional journey through the Bard’s finest work” is promised as Theatre@First’s capper to a season of Shakespeare-adjacent work such as “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare [Abridged],” “The Revenger’s Tragedy” and a staged reading of Paul Rudnick’s “I Hate Hamlet.” “We’ve been talking about Hamlet all year,” says Elizabeth Hunter, who will be directing a strong cast of local favorites. “Now we close the circle by bringing our audiences back to the original.” Information is here.

Beethoven’s 250th Birthday from 8 to 10 p.m. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Kresge Auditorium, 48 Massachusetts Ave. General admission is $5. Conductor William Cutter leads the MIT Concert Choir with pianists Yukiko Oba and MIT professor David Devau to acknowledge Ludwig turning 250 years young with his “Choral Fantasy, Op. 80,” Mass in C major, Op. 86, and “Elegischer Gesang, Op. 118.” Information is here. 

Gessner-Schocken Concert Series: “Homecoming” from 8 to 10 p.m. at the Longy School of Music, 27 Garden St., Harvard Square. Free, with requested donations of $10 or $20. The Ames-Totenberg Stradivarius disappeared for 35 years, taken by a thief from the office of virtuoso violinist Roman Totenberg, and by the time it was recovered by the FBI in 2015, the owner had been dead three years. Now the violin, made in 1734 by Antonio Stradivari, comes out of the case for a performance in the round  by rising young violinist Nathan Meltzer and pianist Jessica Xylina Osborne of pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Bartók, Franck, Szymanowski (a composer championed by Totenberg) and Wieniawski. Information is here.

“The Magnificent Seven” comedy from 8:30 to 10 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square. Tickets are $25. The entire ongoing Boston Comedy Festival – now in its 20th year – looks killer, but these are the killers who kill the killers. Bethany Van Delft hosts Joey Carroll, Corey  Rodrigues, Jim McCue, Emo Philips, Dana Gould and Kenny Rogerson. Information is here.

“The One You Feed” dance from 8 to 10 p.m. (and repeating Saturday and next week) at MIT Theater Arts, 345 Vassar St., in the MIT/Area II neighborhood. General admission is $5. Information is here.

“Red Noses” from 8 to 11 p.m. (and repeating Saturday) in the Balch Arena Theatre at the Aidekman Arts Center at Tufts University, 40 Talbot Ave., Somerville. Free, but register here. Information is here.


Saturday

The Art Outlet: Affordable Art for Everyone from noon to 4 p.m. (and repeating next week) at Washington Street Art, 321 Washington St., Somerville. Free to enter. A salon-style group exhibition showcasing handmade objects and art pieces by local painters, photographers and sculptors selling at affordable prices – for holiday gifts, to begin an art collection or for a peek into an artist’s earlier or more experimental work. Information is here.

Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” from 2 to 4 p.m. (and repeating next week) at the Cambridge Main Library, 449 Broadway, Mid-Cambridge. Free. Perhaps Shakespeare’s best comedy – the one with twins separated in a shipwreck – is back again, performed by the Frances Addelson Shakespeare Players. Information is here.

Weekend matinee: “Boy and the World” from 3 to 4:30 p.m. at the Harvard Film Archive at The Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St., Harvard Square. Tickets are $5 cash, or free with a current Cambridge Public Library card, and available starting at 2:15 p.m. outside the screening room. An animated feature film from Brazil (where it’s “O Menino e o Mundo”) by Alê Abreu about Cuca, a boy whose life exploring the countryside is disrupted when his father has to leave for the city to find work. Audiences of all ages will experience different levels of the same narrative; recommended ages are 8 and up. Information is here.

Poets Joan Kane, Jake Skeets and Santee Frazier read from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop on 6 Plympton St., Harvard Square. General admission is $10. Kane is an Inupiaq American poet who lives in Anchorage, Alaska; Skeets is Diné from Vanderwagen, New Mexico, and won last year’s Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Contest; Frazier is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Information is here.

“West Side Story” from 2 to 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 to 10 p.m. (and repeating Thursday, Saturday and Sunday) at Harvard University’s Farkas Hall Studio, 10-12 Holyoke St., Harvard Square. General admission is $15. Information is here.

“Red Noses” from 7 to 10 p.m. (and repeating Saturday) in the Balch Arena Theatre at the Aidekman Arts Center at Tufts University, 40 Talbot Ave., Somerville. Free, but register here. Information is here.

“The One You Feed” dance from 8 to 10 p.m. (and repeating Friday, Saturday and next week) at MIT Theater Arts, 345 Vassar St., in the MIT/Area II neighborhood. General admission is $5. Information is here.

“Hamlet” from 8 to 10 p.m. (and repeating Sunday and next week) at Unity Somerville, 6 William St., just off College Avenue near Davis Square, Somerville. General admission is $20 (with fees, $16.74). Information is here.


Sunday

Storytime with Drag Kings, Queens and Friends from 3 to 4:30 p.m. at Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Porter Square. Free. This pop-up reading goes beyond the typical, usually featuring circus stars and dancers as well as folks reading from their favorite children’s books (many with a focusing on family diversity and LGBTQIA+ Jewish themes). Information is here.

Heart & Music: Stolen Rhythms from 3 to 5 p.m. at Killian Hall in the Hayden Library Building at 160 Memorial Drive at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Free, but register here. The kind of event you won’t find many places on the planet, in which you get to explore the connections between music and heart rhythms. Pier Lambiase, professor of cardiology at University College London, gives a short introduction to arrhythmia; then Elaine Chew of MIT and a European Research Council project in Paris follows with a concert of piano music created from “stolen” rhythms, including from arrhythmic hearts. Information is here.

Marti Epstein@60 Mini-Festival at 3 and 7:30 p.m. at the Longy School of Music, 27 Garden St., Harvard Square. Free, with requested donations of $10 or $20. The Ludovico Ensemble presents a career-spanning mini-festival of the music of Marti Epstein to celebrate her singular compositional voice and impact on musical life in Greater Boston.The early show is “The Eternity of Time”; later comes “Caused to Tremble.”

Boston Arm Wrestling Dames Fight Night from 7 to 10 p.m. at Oberon, 2 Arrow St., Harvard Square. Tickets are $15 to $20. A surreal take on the sport with the feel of pro wrestling (TinkerHell is defending her title; Punky Brewzer is a competitor; Ruthless Badhair Sinsburg is a referee) with DJ’d breaks by WhySham, Nüqueer Power and Rowan Deepe and a T. Rex, mime and Roman god competing to sell raffle tickets. It all benefits the Boston Alliance for LGBTQ+ Youth. Information is here.

“Hamlet” from 3 to 5 p.m. (and repeating Sunday and next week) at Unity Somerville, 6 William St., just off College Avenue near Davis Square, Somerville. General admission is $20 (with fees, $16.74). Information is here.

“West Side Story” from 7:30 to 10 p.m. (and repeating Thursday, Saturday and Sunday) at Harvard University’s Farkas Hall Studio, 10-12 Holyoke St., Harvard Square. General admission is $15. Information is here.