Your weekend arts forecast: Park rock, tricks and/or treats

The Sarasota County-based Paragon Festivals, deliverers of fine art, seafood and music festivals throughout Florida, will be in charge of Williams Park Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

The event is called Rocktoberfest, and it’s a blend of German food (schweinshaxe, knodel, steckerlfisch et cetera), beers and assorted beverages, a fine and a craft marketplace, and live bands each day on the Williams Park stage:

Friday (gates open at 4 p.m.): Paisley Craze, 4:30-6 p.m.; Abraham/Billings Band, 6:30-8 p.m.; Soul Circus Cowboys, 8:30-10 p.m. Tickets $5.

Saturday (gates open at 11 a.m.): Kara Nalley Band, 12:30-2 p.m.; Memphis Lightning, 2:30-4 p.m.; Igor & the Red Elvises, 4:30-6 p.m.; Black Honkeys, 6:30-8 p.m.; Goodbye June, 8:30-10 p.m. Tickets $7.

Sunday (gates open at 11 a.m.): Randy Stevens & the Grove Makers, 12:30-2 p.m.; Ronnie Dee & the Superstars, 2:30-4 p.m.; 22N, 4:30-6 p.m. Tickets $5.

Abraham/Billings, Black Honkeys and Ronnie Dee & the Superstars are St. Petersburg bands.

Find more information at the Paragon Festivals website.

Boo!

Indeed it’s Halloween weekend, and who says you can’t have a little culture with your costumes and creepiness? Here’s a sackful of winning weekend combos:

“Dirty” John Huls and his merry band of improv comedy cabaret weirdos are back at thestudio@620 Friday and Saturday with an adults-only show called Dragula: The Horror. At press time, the Friday show was close to sold out. Tickets for both nights are here.

The local literary group Wordier Than Thou is back with its signature Halloween event Friday and Saturday. Read No More is walking tour through a vintage St. Petersburg home, called the “Murder House,” with actors performing a “short, scary” play in each room. Find out more, and get tickets, here.

On the Straz Center’s Riverwalk Stage, Opera Tampa has its annual spooktacular production The Witching Hour – with music and moments from both opera and popular music – Friday and Saturday. Tickets.

FreeFall Theatre’s musical director Michael Raabe is the man in charge of FreeFall Sings: I Put a Spell on You, a Halloween-themed cabaret with singers Ann Morrison, Ericka Womack and Sara DelBeato, happening Friday. Raabe gives us all the details in this story from earlier in the week.

La Lucha, St. Pete’s venerable, envelope-pushing jazz trio, is at the Palladium Theater Saturday with the annual La Luchaween show, in which the group plays live music to accompany classic horror flick scenes onscreen. St. Pete actress Eugenie Bondurant, who’s become something of a scream queen with her recent film and TV work, will host … and things move downstairs to the Side Door after the main event, where Boho Sideshow will provide additional tuneage, for dancing (or dramatizing). Halloween dress is encouraged. Tickets.

Sunday afternoon, The Florida Orchestra welcomes all ages for its Haunted Halls Family Concert at the Mahaffey Theater. Costumes are encouraged, and there’ll be an “instrument petting zoo” in the lobby (along with tons o’treats for the little ones) starting at 1 p.m. The concert, which begins at 2, has kid-friendly music like the Superman and Star Wars themes, plus Pirates of the Caribbean, The Nightmare Before Christmas and more. Chelsea Gallo conducts. Tickets are here.

Concerts

Rodgers & Hammerstein, on the other hand, aren’t remotely scary (unless you’re Lerner and Loewe), so Saturday’s Florida Orchestra concerts at the Mahaffey (matinee and evening performance) should be quite the treat for musical theater fans. Along with three guest vocalists and conductor Stuart Malina, TFO will play the hits from Oklahoma! to Carousel to South Pacific. And beyond. Tickets.

At Ruth Eckerd Hall tonight: Country’s Travis Tritt, with Chris Janson. Tickets.

Author, satirist and all-around witty guy David Sedaris returns to the Straz Center (Morsani Hall) tonight. Tickets.

The legendary British metal band Iron Maiden stomps into Amalie Arena tonight. Tickets are here.

Pop star Demi Lovato is at the Seminole Hard Rock Event Center Friday; tickets are here.

Friday at the Capitol Theatre: The ‘90s band The Wallflowers, with Jakob Dylan. Tickets.

Saturday at Ferguson Hall, in the Straz Center, it’s Magnificent 4 – The Indian Idol Tour, featuring the top four singing finalists of TV’s Season 12. Find tickets here.

Theater

Giles Davis and Newt Rametta in “Dracula.” Photo: Ned Averill-Snell.

The current production of Dracula, which you can read about here, recently became the best-selling show in the history of Jobsite Theater. It’s onstage this weekend, in the Straz Center’s Jaeb Theatre.

And Ybor City’s LAB Theatre Project is in the middle of a successful run of Andra Laine Hunter’s The Abbey of the High Lonesome. It’s the world premiere of a spooky drama about the familial machinations of a mountain witch. Details and tickets are here.

Mountains, films and MountainFilm

Speaking of mountains, the Rocky Mountains in Telluride, Colorado form the scenic backdrop for the annual Mountainfilm Festival, a collection of short films spotlighting both breathtaking natural beauty and indomitable human spirit. Mountainfilm On Tour brings a sampling of the ’22 festival’s best movies to the Palladium Sunday. There are two separate screening times; read all about them both here.

Your weekend arts forecast appears every Thursday in the Catalyst. 

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