Profound and Accessible

1. The Mike McGinn victory party is tonight in Southeast Seattle. I went to McGinn’s election night party at the War Room, and it was surprisingly fun. My conclusion: Team McGinn knows how to party.

The McGinn campaign would also like you to know that the meeting is easily accessible by light rail (Othello station) and bus (the 106).

7 pm at the New Holly Gathering Hall, 7054 32nd Ave South.

2. Equivocation, performed by the Seattle Rep, is a play about political tensions in Elizabethan England. In it, William Shakespeare, the play’s main character, wrestles inwardly over an order by a royal minister to write a play about assassination attempts on the king.

The play was inspired, says playwright (and Jesuit priest) Bill Cain, by Cain’s first-hand witnessing of the fall of the Twin Towers on September 11.

Re-imagining Shakespeare as a worn-out artist everyone calls “Shag,” the show is ultimately about an artist coming to grips with the nature of a nation functioning under a veil of fear—generated both by circumstance, and by the government itself.

Cain told the Seattle Times in an interview yesterday, “it’s fundamentally about finding one’s soul, a personal soul and the soul of one’s country.”

I’ve heard from a couple of friends that the play is great (one friend described the writing as “profound and accessible”). I’m going to see it this weekend.

Equivocation

Equivocation is running until December 13 at the Bagley Wright Theater, in Seattle Center.

3. MusicNerd recommends epiphanies from voices that will never meet tonight. I respectfully disagree, and I’ve got a bargain show for you instead. I suggest you check out Wolfmother. But maybe skip their $30 show at the Paramount—their nostalgia for sludgy 70s ganja-metal is fun, but not terribly inspiring—and hit up their free, 5:30 pm gig at the Northgate Best Buy instead.

5:30 at the Northgate Best Buy.

(I also received an email earlier today with the subject line “rad shows” and the message “Ensiferum. Sat. Studio Seven.”

I’m not recommending the show, just that you read their Wikipedia page, which describes the band’s style as “heroic folk metal.” And apparently “Ensiferum” is a Latin neuter-adjective meaning “sword bearing.”)

4. There’s a new spot opening in the space that once housed Laced Up, a now-closed hip-hop clothing store on Pike Street, in Capitol Hill. The new place is called pun(c)tuation, and it’s something of an urban boutique/art gallery. I hear that one of the investors is Ishmael, an emcee from Digable Planets.

Kizha Davidson, pun(c)tuation’s spokeswoman, tells me the place is about “sustainable consumption—most of the current interior space was built using salvaged materials—and co-operative living and education. Most of the people working in the store are actually partners in the business.”

Also, starting in January, they’re going to start selling trendy hip-hop clothing. Tonight is pun(c)tuation’s opening show, featuring graffiti-woodcut Samurai art.

Tonight, at 705A Pike Street, 6 pm to 10 pm.

Interesting footnote: Pun(c)tuation’s creative director is local artist Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes, who, after being beaten by a couple of police officers back in 2005, was at the center of a debate over police accountability that evolved a couple of years later (the city later settled in the Alley-Barnes case).

5. New Moon. Not because of this, and certainly not because of this, but only because of this.

Playing everywhere.

Know about any important meetings, rad shows, weirdo lectures, or other noteworthy events? E-mail chris@publicola.net.