Performing Arts❯Variety

Overview Portland Art Museum invites the community to join a Free First Thursday event, offering free admission to the museum for all, plus a Live Wire event as part of the Literary Arts Portland Book Festival. Visitors can take in the afternoon gallery pop-ups, the evening show, or both! Free First Thursday + Museum pop-ups 4:30 – 6 p.m. — 4:30-6:00pm — Free, pre-show, pop-up performances will take place throughout the Museum’s galleries. Performers are poet and rapper Dessa, bestselling...

Live Wire joins forces with the Portland Art Museum for an afternoon of roving performances ahead of an evening recording of the program. The event coincides with PAM’s monthly Free First Thursday and the Portland Book Festival’s expanded...

We provide the mic, you bring the talent. Calling all poets, writers, actors, musicians and artists alike -- of all ages! Come share your talent(s)with a live audience. Are you a student in need of a live audience to rehearse your monologue or solo piece for an upcoming college audition or show? Are you a poet or writer in need of some feedback for that upcoming novel? Are you a musician wanting t

The Cover to Cover programis an eclectic mix of fun events organized by community partners across the metro area that expands Portland Book Festival. This additional programming is aimed at going beyond the scope of a traditional reading or...

Chatter PDX is a performing arts series in Portland inspired by the success of the innovative Chatter series in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which has captivated audiences for over 15 years. Chatter PDX brings a unique blend of music, spoken word...

Join us for a welcoming night of creativity and connection at this free, all-ages open mic. Bring your music, your poetry, your comedy, your rough drafts, and your masterpieces to the Main Stage in the Alberta Abbey theatre. Sign-ups and Happy...

Each month, embark on a journey where you showcase your talents. Whether you are a singer/songwriter, a poet, or a solo instrumentalist, here's your opportunity to shine on the stage. Feel free to start a jam as well. The stage is yours. Get...

Cozy up for a night of poetry as acclaimed writers Ellen Waterston and Jeff Fearnside share their latest collections. Completed while travelling the state during her first year as Oregon’s Poet Laureate, the poems in Waterston’s As Far as I Can Anthem enlist the people and places across Oregon to inform, challenge and inspire readers in vital and unexpected ways. Fearnside’s most recent book, Lake: Love Poems , is focused on the concept of place, specifically Central Asia, where he lived for four years, and Oregon, his home for the past 13 years. The poems are connected by the thread of his courtship with and marriage to the woman who has experienced these places with him, his life partner Valentina.​ Ellen Waterston is an award-winning author and columnist who has dedicated herself to writing and advocating for the literary arts in the high desert region of Oregon, all the while continuing to write poetry and nonfiction works that have evolved into essential reading about Oregon and the West. She has published five poetry and four literary nonfiction titles, including We Could Die Doing This and Walking the High Desert . In 2024, Waterston was named to a two-year term as the 11th Poet Laureate of Oregon and received both the Soapstone Bread and Roses Award and the Stewart H. Holbrook Award. Waterston is the founder of the Writing Ranch and the annual Waterston Desert Writing Prize.​ Jeff Fearnside is the author of three full-length books and two chapbooks of poetry and prose, including the essay collection Ships in the Desert , which won a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award and the Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Book Award in Prose from the Arkansas Writers MFA Workshop. His story collection A Husband and Wife Are One Satan won the Orison Chapbook Prize. Free tickets are available here .