Planning to be downtown getting a jump start on holiday shopping this Thanksgiving Weekend? On Saturday, November 28th we invite you to take a break mid-marathon and join us for a relaxing Holiday Oasis at the Armory- you can pick up A Christmas Carol tickets at half price* when you show a Pearl District shopping receipt, cross some theater (and cupcake!) lovers off of your shopping list, and spend some precious moments rejuvenating with a FREE chair massage, a cocktail and the soothing sounds of our Holiday Jazz Trio.

Bring the kids and they can get their photo taken by our production photographer Owen Carey in our Victorian Family Photo Booth and then enjoy some free hot chocolate and some holiday cartoons on our big screen while you check out the offerings at the cafe.

{photo: The Cratchit Family Photo Outtake. photo by Owen Carey.}

Here’s some of what we’ve got planned:

FREE Victorian Family Photo Booth. 11 am to 3 pm.
Dress the family up in their finest and get your holiday photo taken in front of our Victorian backdrop by professional photographer Owen Carey. We’ll email you the picture- feel free to use it in your holiday e-cards!

FREE Live Holiday Jazz. 1 pm to 4 pm and 5 pm to 7 pm.
Chill out to the jazzier holiday classics from the Dan Gaynor Trio from 1 pm to 4 pm and the soulful stylings of Ali Ippolito from 5 pm to 7 pm.

FREE 15 minute Chair Massages. Prep for the next leg of your shopping marathon with a quick chair massage from professional massage therapist <XX>.

FREE Package Check. 11 am to 7 pm. Don’t want to make the trip back to the car? Check your holiday packages at the Armory Coat Check. We’ll keep an eye on them till you get the car pulled around.

Kids Colouring Lounge. 11 am to 7 pm.We’ll have A Christmas Carol themed Colouring Activities and Holiday Movies on the big screen TV for the kids to chill out with. They can redeem their completed coloring activity for a complimentary cup of hot cocoa from the Armory Cafe.

Holiday Themed Treats at the Armory Cafe. All day long we’ll be serving post-Thanksgiving holiday treats, including Turkey/cream cheese/cranberry sandwiches, harvest salads, mulled cider, and a whole bevvy of holiday cocktails at the upstairs bar.

Hot Deals on A Christmas Carol. Show your Pearl District shopping receipt at the box office and get 2 for 1 adult tickets to A Christmas Carol. Choose a performance before December 7th and tickets are $15 for kids and $30 for adults- a family of four could see the show for just $60 TOTAL if they show a Pearl District shopping receipt on Saturday!

Great Green Gifts for Everyone on Your List. Give the gift of experience this holiday season for a LEED Platinum certified holiday experience. Give PCS Gift Certificates and you can double the value of your certificate purchase when you mention the PDX Green Gift Guide.

Instant Gratification Giving: Our Sweetness and Spotlight gift package includes a pair of tickets to any PCS performance plus a dozen cupcakes from Cupcake Jones for just $75. Buy yours on Saturday and walk away with a complimentary cupcake for yourself (while supplies last).

What are you waiting for? Marshall the troupes and make a day of it! We look forward to helping make your downtown holiday shopping a bit more enjoyable this Thanksgiving weekend.

Ali Ippolito is back this week, TODAY (Saturday, Nov. 14) at 5 pm with Sweet Williams Ghost, the kind of luxurious music that lives in the dreamy recesses beneath the floorboards of roots-rich Americana. It features Ali with Dean Gorman (guitar, vocals) and Ben Cartwright (dobro, lap steel, guitar). And it’s damn fine. You’ll rarely have a chance to hear this kind of thing, this up-close and FOR FREE.  Pull up a chair, get an Armory cocktail and simmer in the sounds. 

LIVE MUSIC EVERY SATURDAY!

PCS & Music Millennium, the place where people and music still matter, invite you to  SOUNDS. LIKE. PORTLAND—our new early evening showcase of the best in local music, every Saturday from 5-7 pm.

November’s artist-in-residence is vibrantly talented Ali Ippolito.

Ali Ippolito (of Heroes and Villians, Nick Jaina fame) writes music with a haunting poetry and quiet authority that simultaneously tugs, pulls, coaxes, vexes, and inspires.

A mezmerizing singer, Ippolito accompanies herself on piano, accordion, and the curious banjolele, giving us fading, sepia-tinged sonic postcards of love and loss. This is music that, to paraphrase the poet Mina Loy, “infects us with unendurable ease/touching nerve-terminals.” And that’s a good thing, folks

Join us THIS Sunday, following the 2 p.m. matinee of Josh Kornbluth’s Ben Franklin Unplugged for Formative Stages: Theater and the Life of the Mind, copresented with The Oregon Psychoanalytic Center.

For this installment, Dr. Nancy Winters will delve into issues of independence, family and parental disappointment, and self-reliance in Kornbluth’s play. Winters quipped that Kornbluth’s play is “a great example of psychotherapy in action,”  encouraging, as it does, Josh’s journey to find his own inner Ben Franklin.

One-part cocktail conversation/one-part talk-back session, the lively series, now in its third year, puts theater on the couch and the audience in the conversational driver’s seat for post-show discussions that reveal that the world on the stage is truly a glorious microcosm of life. Join us for this field trip into the nooks and crannies that theater inhabits—from humor and mannered whimsy to the insatiable lust for life to the menage-a-trois between power, justice and truth, to idiosyncratic family dynamics and taboo.

Formative Stages: Theater and the Life of the Mind
Nancy Winters, MD on Josh Kornbluth’s Ben Franklin Unplugged
When: November 8, 2009 (following the 2 pm matinee)
Where: Ellyn Bye Studio , Gerding Theater at the Armory

Discussions take place in the theater directly following the 2 pm matinees. Free with theater admission

Another exciting  IDEAS IN PLAY program
IDEAS in PLAY are free public programs offered by Portland Center Stage that bridge conversations around theater and the arts, sustainability, history, and community. How can we use the lens of the theater to talk about who we are, what we believe and how we connect to one another? IDEAS in PLAY inspires stories to come to life in unexpected ways through conversation-based programs that ask: what’s the big idea here?

more posts about Ben Franklin: Unplugged || Get the Details on the Show || Buy Tickets

The town was aflutter this weekend as book nerds and fashionistas battled it out for the coolest parties during Wordstock and Portland Fashion Week.

We’re particularly delighted to be hosting the last of the Fashion-oriented events tonight at the Armory- an independent show by three local designers including our own Fuschia Lin, the “First Hand” in our costume department and an intensely talented designer in her own right.

The red carpet and runway are already set up in the lobby and have me already salivating for a new frock from Emily Ryan designs…maybe with some artfully exotic cuffs or a cape from Fuschia’s collection:

You can join in the glamour and excitement tonight for $10 at the door. Here’s all the details:

Fashion Collective Show
When: Monday, Oct. 12
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Where: Gerding Theater at the Armory, Portland Center Stage, 128 N.W. 11th Ave.; 503-445-3700.
Tickets: $8 in advance at Idom; $10 at the door

On Saturday, October 24th at 2pm and 7pm, at the World Trade Center Theatre, Third Rail be showing high-definition live-captured presentations of William Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, directed by Marianne Elliot.

Tickets for these screenings are $20. Don’t miss out on this rare chance to be part of a truly global theatrical experience. For reservations go right here or call 503-235-1101.