The Bread & Puppet Theater will perform Thursday at 6 p.m. in the Park Hill Orchard, 82 Park Hill Road, Easthampton. Parking starts at 4:30 p.m.
The full troupe, including its band, will present “Whatforward Circus and the Onward Pageant,” in which a group of stone-age technology puppeteers, brass players and percussionists check out the prominent forward-moving passions and politics of the capitalist culture, and make real and unreal against-the-grain proposals to identify and fight the anonymous monster: the big, fat Wrong.
After the show, company members will serve free sourdough rye bread with aioli (it’s a tradition).
The show is appropriate for all ages. Bring a blanket; the performance is outside. Snacks and beverages will be available for purchase.
A $20 donation is requested for adults; $10 for students; free for small children. There’s a sliding-fee scale. No one turned away for lack of funds.
For information, call the orchard at 527-6186.
The Fawns will perform Friday at 7 p.m. on the Courthouse lawn in Northampton.
The rock-pop band, which is celebrating the release of its latest album, “Goodnight, Spacegirl,” on Rub Wrongways Records, is led by Lisa Bezo and includes Henning Ohlenbusch, Brian Marchese, Max Germer and Ken Maiuri.
Free. For information, visit www.thefawns.com.
“Dog Days,” a group show that features work by gallery members and invited guests, is on view through Aug. 28 at the Oxbow Gallery, 273 Pleasant St., Northampton. At least 5 percent of sales proceeds will be donated to the Dakin Humane Society.
There will be an artists’ reception Friday from 5 to 8 p.m.
The work in the exhibit explores the concept of “dog days,” the hottest days of summer.
Inspired by intense heat radiating off a beach landscape, for example, Joanne Holtje describes the colors of her abstract painting “Beach Day” as “vibrating like the light at the shore on a hot summer’s day.”
Another gallery artist, Linda Batchelor, created a monotype to honor her family’s dachshund, who was her mother’s companion in her last illness and her father’s steady decline.
For more information, visit www.oxbowgallery.org or call 586-6300.
Outside the box
Poets Chris Gonzalez, Barry Maupin and Ashley Amon will read from their work Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. outside the new space begin developed by the Northampton Community Arts Trust at 33 Hawley St. in Northampton. The program was rescheduled, due to bad weather.
The reading will precede a showing at 8 p.m. of the film “Soul Power,” also outside on Hawley Street.
The movie is a documentary, directed by Jeff Levy-Hinte, about the Zaire ’74 music festival in Kinshasa that accompanied the “Rumble in the Jungle” heavyweight boxing championship match between Monammad Ali and George Foreman in October 1974.
Performers in the film include James Brown, The Spinners, Bill Withers, Miriam Makeba, B.B. King, and others, including Ali himself.
Bring a lawn chair or blankets. For information, visit www.northamptonartstrust.org.
At Historic Northampton
“The Norwood Engineering Building: A Florence Landmark,” photographs by Paul Griffin and Peter Norman, will open with a reception Friday from 5 to 8 p.m. and will remain on view through Sept. 4 at Historic Northampton, 46 Bridge St.
Like many of the large 19th-century brick factory buildings in Florence, the Norwood Engineering building on North Maple Street has long played a role in the economic and cultural evolution of the community.
Griffin and Norman have documented the current community of artists, artisans, teachers, craftspeople, and skilled trades and business people whose studios and businesses now inhabit the building.
For information, visit historicnorthampton.org.
“Migration Stories and Other Curious Lore,” a solo exhibit by Lynn Sisler, will open with a reception Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m., and will remain on view through Aug. 26, at the ECA+ Gallery in the Old Town Hall, 43 Main St. in Easthampton.
The exhibit, which features mixed media, Raku-fired ceramics and acrylic works, is a visceral and tactile exploration of the relationship between humans and their kinship to nature. The artist fires specimen birds with Raku and other glazing techniques to give them organic yet vibrant tones, and to highlight the importance of wildlife conservation efforts. In her paintings, Sisler uses a wide color palette and layering method which blurs the space between reality and fantasy.
For information, visit EasthamptonCityArts.com or www.lynnsisler.com.
Jerry Noble and Friends will perform Sunday at 4 p.m. in the last Sevenars concert of the season. The show is at the Sevenars Academy, 15 Ireland St. in South Worthington.
Noble, a staff accompanist at Smith College in Northampton, is a busy composer, working to meet an unbroken stream of commissions. He has produced original works and arrangements for a wide range of vocal and instrumental ensembles and soloists, and his music has been performed by acclaimed artists throughout the United States and internationally.
Opening the concert will be Sevenars cellist Christopher James in collaboration with Noble at the piano for the Nocturn and Scherzo of Debussy.
Also on the program: Noble’s “Fiddle in the City” for violin and piano, with Smith College professor and violinist Joel Pitchon, and Noble’s 1984 Piano Trio, with Noble, Pitchon and cellist Volcy Pelletier. That will be followed, after intermission, by jazz improvisations with clarinetist Bob Sparkman, and “Sweet Suite,” a compilation of “Sweet Georgia Brown,” “Sweet Sue,” Sweet Lorraine” and more, with a quartet of Noble, Sparkman, Pitchon and Pelletier.
Refreshments are free and the hall is air-conditioned. Suggested donation: $20. For information, call 238-5854 or visit www.sevenars.org.