Five Artful Things to Do This Weekend

Artful?

Yes: Full of art.

Which is precisely what your brief respite from the work-week grind can be, citizen – especially if you harken unto our suggestions listed below:

Just one piece from the show of that Doyle's UNREAL ESTATE 5 at Parts & Labour

1) TWENTYEIGHT How much do #BLACKLIVESMATTER when those lives are spent building a spacecraft to escape this damn planet? Gale Theatre Company and the Vortex answer that question with Tyler English-Beckwith’s new play, an “Afro-futuristic look at police brutality and racial violence in the United States,” set to the hymns of Kanye West.

2) TIM DOYLE’S "UNREAL ESTATE 5" When he’s not too busy with things like running the VIP poster series for Metallica’s current city-crushing tour, Nakatomi’s own honch heado Doyle renders the locations in your favorite TV shows and movies into stunning illustrations and then screenprints those images in a limited-edition series – the latest of which series, having galvanized New York’s Spoke Art Gallery, makes its Austin debut at Parts & Labour this Friday night.

3) ARMADILLOCON It’s the 39th year for this annual gathering of writers, editors, publishers, agents, and fans of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and similar sorts of fantastic literature. Author Nisi Shawl is the main guest of honor at the convention’s Omni Hotel Southpark venue this weekend, but we doubt even she will have more of a gregarious and geektastic good time there than you will.

4) THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS Even though it’s often funny – intentionally or by pure chance – the Hideout Theatre’s improvised take on the Southern milieu created by Tennessee Williams isn’t exactly what they call “improv comedy.” What it is, as our arts editor Robert Faires reports, is fiercely evocative stagework. Might wanna bring you some smelling salts, hon, in case the intensity whips up a faintin’ spell.

5) JIM TEWS Okay, yeah, we were sold by the whole “web series about a sociophobic Weezer cover band” thing … but we reckon there’s a NYC-based stand-up beast gonna be taking the mic at the Velveeta Room tonight. Quick – to Dirty Sixth, before all those *fnord* students come back!