Reading

Suzan-Lori Parks

Those who haven’t yet experienced the 365 Days/365 Plays phenomenon playing out across the country are strongly advised to do so before the mastermind behind the largest theater collaboration in history arrives in Seattle and they are left choking on regret. It’s as simple as running down to the Union Street Station (Fifth Avenue South and South Jackson Street) at 6:45 tonight to catch SIS Productions’ five-minute (but nonetheless thought-provoking) performance—easy preparation for the reading by Suzan-Lori Parks sponsored by Seattle Arts & Lectures. Her wrenching play on the humor and pitfalls of cardsharping and street hustling, featuring two conflicted brothers ironically named Lincoln and Booth, made Topdog/Underdog the 2002 Pulitzer Prize winner for drama. Theater might be Parks’ staple, but she certainly doesn’t allow it to define her. She’s left practically no literary niche untried: Parks penned a barefaced portrayal of a struggling actress–turned–phone sex operator in the screenplay for Girl 6 for revolutionary director Spike Lee, churned out one novel to date (Getting Mother’s Body), and recently participated, with over a hundred other artists, in the collaborative stage work The War Anthology. It’ll be a treat to see what she pulls out of her hat tonight. Benaroya Hall, Third Avenue and Union Street, 621-2230, www.lectures.org. $10–$25. 7:30 p.m. JENNA NAND

Film

Half-Cocked

Unlike unearthing a time capsule, whose artifacts provide a snapshot of what life was like in a certain time and place, watching an entire film that captures an era catapults you into it with reckless abandon. Should you be hankerin’ for full immersion into grungy, apathetic, not-as-slick-as-Singles-style 1994, don’t miss this one-night-only screening of Suki Hawley and Michael Galinsky’s first full-length feature. In it, a group of bored, angst-sprinkled kids living in a dilapidated party house in Louisville, Ky., steal a van and the instruments within from local band the Guilloteens, fronted by the self-absorbed brother of the story’s heroine (played by a perpetually glazed Tara Jane O’Neil), and just drive, man. Escaping their numbing, purposeless existence—O’Neil waxes stonily poetic about feeling like a caged gerbil selling matinee tickets at the local theater—is exhilarating at first, until hunger sets in. They form a fake band to scrape together some cash, and what follows is a comedy of errors on the interstate, set to a soundtrack that includes Smog, Ruby Falls, and an appearance by the Grifters (as themselves). Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave, 329-2629, www.nwfilmforum.org. $5–$8.50. 7 and 9 p.m. AJA PECKNOLD