Forecasts predict a glorious week ahead, and not just because of the weather.
Tuesday, May 10
At 6 p.m., Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Debby Applegate comes to the Institute Library to discuss her latest book, Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age. Adler was indeed a madam, who, as Daily Nutmeg put it late last year, “worked her way up from an ordinary clientele to the biggest names of the day, including gangsters, jazz musicians and entertainers.”
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Thursday, May 12
At Elm City Social, the rooftop is open “for a night of great dinner, drinks, and stand-up comedy.” A $35 ticket gets you “a signature entree” at 6:30 p.m. and “comedy from nationally touring acts” at 7:30.
As part of a weeks-long ramp-up by the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, Best Video and Spring Glen Church team up to host a pairing of festival events. Today at Best Video, a 5 p.m. concert pays tribute to the avant-garde jazz musician Sun Ra and his Arkestra musical collective, while tomorrow, in Spring Glen Church, a screening of the 1974 Afrofuturist sci fi musical Space Is the Place also pays tribute to Ra and his Arkestra, who happen to be the stars of the film.
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Friday, May 13
Common Ground’s annual Seedling Sale lasts from 12:30 to 5:30 today and 9:30 to 4:30 tomorrow. “Grow your own food!” organizers say, offering an expedited means of cultivating greens, peas, herbs, tomatoes, cucurbits, eggplants, peppers, flowers and more at home. Tomorrow’s sale also includes special family-friendly activities and, at 2, a vegetable garden-planning workshop.
Centered at Orange and Crown Streets, the popular New Haven Night Market, an outdoor “evening bazaar” featuring 37 retail vendors, eight food/drink sellers and eight educational/experiential tents—plus specials from neighborhood brick-and-mortars, live and DJed music and an invitation to contribute to a live-painted mural—runs from 5 to 10.
Scripted entertainment is the offer elsewhere. At 7:30 and 10, Yale Cabaret presents more more more, an original play about a birthday celebrated among strangers in a cabin in the woods. And at 8, the New Haven Theater Company, now back from a pandemic hiatus, presents Annapurna, about the reunion of a pair of former lovers—“two bright and passionate hearts scarred by suffering,” who may or may not “forgive each other for what lies in their past.”
Saturday, May 14
The 10th Annual New Haven Family Stroll & Festival begins at 10 a.m. with a 1.5-mile family river walk finishing at Quinnipiac River Park. Then things shift into festival mode with “drums, parachute play, face painting, food vendors, bubbles, arts and crafts, and a whole lot of door prizes” as well as “valuable information on community resources and services in the area: from health clinics and healthy food to literacy to safety.” And for those who want to keep the party going, there’s an Arts & Ideas-sponsored Fair Haven Neighborhood Festival starting right when the Family Stroll & Festival ends, at 2 p.m.
From 11 to 3, a Spring Outdoor Art Sale connected to The Shops at Yale’s Window Art Stroll & Contest offers art for sale and live music for free. Something else that’s free: a “quilted tote” for each of “the first 50 people to visit The Shops at Yale tent.”
The open-air Westville Music Bowl’s second year of existence kicks off at 6:30 with Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, a Grateful Dead cover band who, according to a highlighted critic, “play tight and vicious versions of some of the most complex songs in the Grateful Dead’s repertoire.”
Sunday, May 15
At 1 p.m., local experts corralled by the New Haven Bioregional Group lead a walking tour through “The Enchanted Forest,” as neighbors call it—“a little-known area” along New Haven-East Haven border, whose “unique characteristics” span “a diverse collection of wildlife habitat and parkland environments, including a long, wooded traprock ridge with sweeping views of Long Island Sound and a lush valley with historic stone walls, towering bottomland trees, and extensive wetlands.”
Written by Dan Mims. Image 1, photographed by Dan Mims, features Quinnipiac River Park. Image 2 features Sun Ra in Space Is the Place. Readers are encouraged to verify times, locations, prices and other details before attending events.
