See Hear Do: September of Your Years

For those unfamiliar with who he is, Harry Fagel is a longtime fixture in the poetry and spoken word community, as well as a former cop. His poetry, no matter the topic, has a noticeable heartbeat to it — he doesn’t punch down, and he’s not snide or acerbic towards his subjects. But he also manages to find a way to overlap his many worlds, in a way that comments on the human condition.

Join Fagel and eight fellow poets to celebrate the release of his newest book, Bellowing at the Volcano, at the Double Down — yes, that Double Down, because that’s how Harry rolls. Live music provided by local Punk band, The Minges. If this doesn’t strike you as your standard poetry event, well, that’s the point.

We hold art on display to high standards — we’ve made the trek to see it, it’s taking up valuable space in a museum or gallery or public space, so it better be good, right? Core Contemporary’s second edition of its OOPS! exhibit explores the imperfect. What if an artist’s work didn’t go as planned?

Emerging artists get to show when and how it went awry, and maybe when their artistic practice became transitional. As co-curator and artist Bailey Anderson puts it, “Without technical failures, conceptual risks, failed relationships, or professional setbacks, there would be no point at all.”

There are many levels of inspiration, appropriation, and satire in Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play, which is fitting for a play with The Simpsons at its center. The post-apocalypse production starts with a campfire discussion about episode two from season five, “Cape Feare.” Eventually, the same group performs the episode live as part of their pop culture-centric theater troupe; decades later, others perform a more severe version of the episode in a Simpsonsesque theater, where we see how the titular miser — and the relevance of electricity — figure into the production (and the production-within-the-production). If this all seems familiar, Troy Heard and Vegas Theatre Company staged the play in 2015. But even if you were there, Mr. Burns is a well-layered work that demands a revisit.

Shows start on September 11; times currently unavailable.

The Life is Beautiful festival is in a rebuilding phase, as Rolling Stone has assumed full ownership of the Downtown festival. Instead of taking the year off entirely — it’s planning to revive the traditional event next year — the media company has decided to draw upon its influence in the music world and put together a smaller and much different festival experience not only to hold us over, but also to expand its event program. This two-evening “block party” is actually taking place at the event center-slash-parking lot adjoining the Plaza hotel-casino and will only have two stages. Headliners Justice, Peggy Gou, and LCD Soundsystem give this new event some indie cred, while also threatening to bring Downtown the biggest dance party of the fall.

Ever go through one of those haunted-house attractions during Halloween and think, “Meh, I could make a scarier one?” The young horror enthusiasts of The House on Watch Hill must have, because they set a goal to build “the greatest neighborhood haunted house” ever. And they do — succeeding maybe too well. Vegas Theatre Company executive artistic director Daz Weller helms the world premiere of the latest Richard Oberacker and Robert Taylor musical, an 1980s-soaked fantasia that oughta get you in the mood for the spooky season.

Shows start on September 27; days/dates vary.