Events going on in and around Providence this weekend.
Family Fun
Great Pumpkin Hunt – Friday, October 21st, 2016
Blithewold Mansions, Gardens & Arboretum, 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Participate in the search for hidden pumpkins on the estate. Each person can take one home to carve. After the hunt, join us for music, food (food trucks will be on site), some hot cider, and a discussion about constellations in the night sky during a special star program around the bonfire.
Registration required.
Boo at the Zoo Family Overnights – Saturday, October 22nd, 2016 & Saturday, October 29th, 2016
Roger Williams Park Zoo, 6:30 PM to 10:00 AM
Spend the night at the zoo! Begin with a pizza and ice cream dinner before enduring an owl pellet dissection, program animal encounters, and VIP access to the Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular! Wind down the night with a movie and popcorn, all snug in your sleeping bags before awaking bright and early to greet the animals of the zoo during a morning tour. It’s the family sleepover of the season!
Price: Members: $120 per parent/child pair; $60 per additional participant. Non-members: $130 per parent/child pair; $65 per additional participant.
Museums
SALON: Collecting for Life – Friday, October 21st, 2016
The Providence Athenaeum, 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
SALON: Jan Howard discusses the artists and works in the collection of Dr. Joseph A. Chazan.
In partnership with the RISD Museum. For almost ten years, Chazan has produced “Networks,” a series of videos featuring RI artists discussing their working process and artworks. For decades, Dr. Chazan has devoted himself to collecting the work of these RI artists, and has shared this artwork with patients at his clinics, as well as with the public through his donations to the RISD Museum – the museum’s catalogue of works donated by Chazan will be published in September 2016. Join us as Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs Jan Howard moderates a panel of RI artists who have been featured in “Networks” and whose work he has collected over the years.
Theatre
La Esquinita – Friday, October 21st, 2016
ECAS Theater, 8:00 PM to 9:30 PM
What happens to a town when promises from Big Business are broken? Find out with La Esquinita, USA – a story of love, forgiveness and ultimate redemption. La Esquinita, USA is a solo piece by critically acclaimed writer/performer Rubén C. González, one of the principal members of California’s award-winning Teatro Campesino.
In La Esquinita, USA, at a bus stop on the 40A Red Line, multiple characters tell us their touching and irreverent stories on a passage through a once-booming town now forgotten. The main source of employment, Thompson Tire Factory, has gone overseas leaving the town’s infrastructure in disarray. False idols of hope are the only source of relief and the citizens of this dilapidated town are left scavenging for what little remains.
“Gonzalez, a mercurial silver haired writer/actor slid effortlessly between portrayals of multiple denizens of a fictitious American city… [his] performance was first-rank in a poetical two act play…” – Steven Leigh Morris • American Theatre Magazine.
This performance is co-sponsored by The Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, The Brown Arts Initiative, and ECAS Theater.
Our Town – Friday, October 21st, 2016 to Sunday, October 23th, 2016
Smith Center for the Arts: Angell Blackfriars Theatre, 8:00 PM
The Department of Theatre, Dance and Film celebrates the Providence College centennial year with Thornton Wilder’s classic play about everyday life in a small New England community. A minimalist theatrical style distinguished this 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning play which has become a staple of the American theatrical repertoire. The setting, Grover’s Corners, NH, is intended to represent all communities in which the inhabitants strive to future human relationships, respond to life’s unexpected challenges and seek meaning in their world.
Friday and Saturday shows start at 8:00PM and the Sunday shows start at 2PM.
Miscellaneous
Flowers vs The Frost– Saturday, October 22nd, 2016
Aurora Providence, 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Flowers vs the Frost is a celebration to embrace the end of the growing season. Bringing all the flowers that are left together for one last joyful arrangement, instead of just letting the frost take them away. A collaborative installation, using the petals to create images like the Day of the Dead altars of Mexico. Join us! Materials will be provided, but if flowers are still winning bring those left in your garden to add into the mix.
H.P. Lovecraft Walking Tour & Film Screening – Saturday, October 22nd, 2016 & Sunday, October 23rd, 2015
John Brown House Museum, 12:00 PM
H. P. Lovecraft” Walking Tour & Film Screening.
The life and work of Providence’s best-known fantasy and horror author, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, provide the backdrop for this walking tour. Acknowledged genius of occult and horror fiction, Lovecraft’s “Providence stories” (written between 1924 and 1935) provide the basis for this walk. Lovecraft wrote eloquently, and in great detail, about such landmarks as Prospect Terrace, the First Baptist Church, and Benefit Street houses. See the site of his former home, as well as the sights mentioned in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Haunter of the Dark, The Shunned House, and The Call of Cthulhu. Lovecraft’s own words offer a most amazing literary, historical, and architectural walking tour.
The tour lasts 90 minutes. Tickets are $19.
Halloween Iron Pour – Saturday, October 22nd, 2016
The Steel Yard, 5:00 PM
This theatric display of the industrial arts attracts over 1,000 people including artists, fabricators, families, and friends to 27 Sims Avenue in Providence, RI every year. People come back not only for the sparky performance and the numerous steel and iron props that we build in house, but also for the phenomenal local music and food. For this event, artists harness the power of the Steel Yard’s custom built, iron pouring tilt furnace to pour over 2,500 pounds of molten iron. In the past the Steel Yard has used liquid iron and the heat of flame to create ferociously erupting volcanoes, Viking funerals, and bubbling and brewing scientist labs before the eyes of the crowd.