Events & Activities

Hosted by the Midtown Association and managed by Unseen Heroes, this free, family-friendly market takes place year-round, every Saturday, on 20th street between J and L streets.

The Midtown Farmers Market showcases local agriculture, prepared foods, artisans and crafters, while providing an opportunity for Midtown residents and business owners to discover regionally grown foods. Anchored in the heart of Midtown, the market serves as a lively and fun gathering place where Sacramentans can come together to shop and enjoy the community with neighbors and visitors alike.

California State Parks, Sutter’s Fort State Historic Park (SHP) and Friends of Sutter’s Fort are proud to present an interactive and fun Hands on History: Catch Gold Fever – The Year of 1849.

Fort visitors will have the unique opportunity to step back in time to explore an era that changed California forever. The gold discovery at Coloma echoed around the world and triggered the largest migration in United States history. Thousands of immigrants gambled and came to early California to try to strike it rich. They left family behind, spent life savings, and borrowed money all in the pursuit of gold. Many miners bought one-way passage on ships bound for California, and abandoned ships clogged the port in San Francisco as miners and sailors took off for the hills. Miners stopped at Sutter’s Fort before they headed for the hills in their quest for gold, and the Fort was often the first place to which they returned for supplies and entertainment. Sadly, the dream of riches was not often the reality and many left the hills with only disappointment in their pockets.

As an event highlight, Fort visitors are invited to spend the day enjoying hands-on activities such as gold panning, miners’ camp, games of chance, and money and trade activities where guests learn what it meant to “mine the miners.” In addition, there will be a display of guns and weapons from the Gold Rush era and demonstrations of black powder weaponry in action including the crowd-favorite firing of the Fort’s cannon. Friends of Sutter's Fort will also be sampling out popular gold rush nugget chocolates and featuring gold rush-related items for sale in the on-site Trade Store so visitors can bring a bit of gold rush history home with them.

Larger-than-life concepts and everyday intimacy come together in a rare exhibit of two Kennedy Gallery artists. The metal work of Sally Shapiro and the watercolor/acrylics of Gabriel Garbow will add warmth to the chilled Sacramento nights this January. Creatures great and small are exhibited in oil, acrylic, ceramics, and mixed media by award winning artists from the Sacramento region. Second Saturday with extended hours and full service no-host bar. Over 20 resident artists and three air-conditioned floors of open studios in the heart of Midtown.

Come feel the spirit and the power of civil rights heroes from all over the world. Their stories and words will be brought to life in what will be an unforgettable theatrical experience.

The classic 1959 horror film starring Vincent Price is given a hilarious adaptation that’s totally outrageous, totally terrifying and totally B Street.

Eccentric millionaire Frederick Loren and his wife Annabelle have invited five strangers to a “haunted house” party. Whoever can last the night will receive $10,000, but there’s a catch: The house is full of ghosts, spirits and other terrors! In the style of 39 Steps and Around The World In 80 Days, House On Haunted Hill promises to be an instant classic B Street comedy featuring all your favorite company members.

Note: House on Haunted Hill – The Comedy contains coarse language and strong sexual material and may be offensive to some viewers. Strongly suggested for Age 18 and older.

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers are internationally recognized as one of the top bands in the world performing classic American jazz, swing, blues, and R&B music from the mid-twentieth century. Whether singing her own compositions or drawing on a large repertoire of classics, Lavay and her all-star seven-piece band bake up an instant recipe for dancing and good times.

Lady Business, Sacramento’s longest-running all-female improv troupe, uses true stories from the cast to create a long-form improv show with smart humor, unexpected characters, and guaranteed laughs. After the ladies tell true stories on a monthly theme, the cast does a series of improvised scenes inspired by the stories. None of these stories are shared with each other prior to the show.

Ask any member of the Band ZuhG this question, you will get a different response every time. Musically ZuhG resists being easily defined: Mixing funk, reggae, jazz, jam, and rock n' roll together to create its own expressive genre of music. ZuhG's sound will push your perceptions of music to new heights. They bring this sound to living color with their album releases: To Be Unlike Others (2007), Life (2009), Fish Tank (2010), and Free Love (2011).

ZuhG stripped itself down in early 2013 with the release of an acoustic album, Calm and Clear, giving us a glimpse into the bands uniquely expressive character. Based out of Sacramento California since 2007, ZuhG has been busy carving out its own unique territory up and down the west coast and on the road touring nationally. Even finding a second home in the California music festival scene.

Supporting bands:
-Mookatite
-Wild Montane

This January, Michael Nesmith will return to the concert stage to perform his classic 1972 album, And The Hits Just Keep On Comin’. This series of shows will feature just Nez and his trusty pedal steel guitarist, Pete Finney. These performances will mark the first time Nez has toured as a duo since 1975 (when he worked with the legendary Red Rhodes).

BAS is an American rapper from Queens, New York.

Supporting acts:
-Rexx Life Raj
-K Roosevelt
-Innanet James
-Correy C

Kat has released four groundbreaking albums to date. Her newest album, Old Fashioned Gal, is out now on Spinnerette Records.Her tour supporting the full-length album continues with major tour stops throughout the U.S.

Of writing Old Fashioned Gal, Edmonson says, “I wrote these songs while holed up in my Brooklyn apartment during the winter of 2016. I had a terrible, reoccurring cold that winter and was often laid up in bed. I’d go back and forth from watching 1930s movies on Turner Classic Movies to working on a song. While writing this album, I realized that I was seeing what looked like scenes from a film in my head—a film not yet made. I ultimately sat down and wrote an entire outline for a screenplay—a musical, of course—with this music, the score. I processed a great deal of self-doubt in order to write this hopeful record. Old Fashioned Gal is about believing in yourself even when it seems no one else will.”

Having now lived longer than his father, esteemed Life Magazine columnist and editor Loudon Wainwright Jr., Loudon examines life, family, and mortality with candor and humor on fifteen new original songs.

Loudon Wainwright III was born in Chapel Hill, NC in 1946. His father was Loudon Wainwright Jr., a columnist and senior editor for LIFE Magazine and his mother was a housewife/yoga teacher, Martha Taylor. He studied acting at Carnegie-Mellon University but dropped out to partake in the Summer of Love in San Francisco.

His recording career spans a total of 23 albums, including 2009's Grammy-winning High Wide and Handsome, a musical tribute to Charlie Poole (1893-1931), the legendary, yet obscure NC singer and banjo player. Wainwright has collaborated with songwriter /producer Joe Henry on the music for Judd Apatow's hit movie, Knocked Up, and also written music for the British theatrical adaptation of the Carl Hiaasen novel, Lucky You.

Slowgirl is the story of a teenager who flees the United States to her reclusive uncle’s retreat in the Costa Rican jungle to escape the aftermath of a horrific accident. The week they spend together forces them both to confront who they are as well as what it is they are running from.

Slowgirl is the story of a teenager who flees the United States to her reclusive uncle’s retreat in the Costa Rican jungle to escape the aftermath of a horrific accident. The week they spend together forces them both to confront who they are as well as what it is they are running from.

Join Capital Stage artists during post-show discussions! CapChats expand on your theatre-going experience with stimulating conversations with Capital Stage staff and the production’s artists.

Soft Machine is a legend and an institution of British music, a band who included Robert Wyatt, Daevid Allen, Mike Ratledge, Kevin Ayers, Andy Summers (later of The Police), Hugh Hopper, Elton Dean, Roy Babbington, John Marshall, Karl Jenkins, Allan Holdsworth, John Etheridge, Percy Jones, Rick Sanders, Dave McRae and Jack Bruce among others (Jimi Hendrix briefly jammed with the band in 1968!).

Disbanded in 1978, recreated in few occasions in 1981 and 1984, the band resurfaces in 1999 under the name of Soft Ware. Much was said about this band with a very complex intriguing history of constant personal changes during the 1966-1978 period. The band resurrected in 1999 under the name of Soft Ware, then as Soft Works 2002-2004 and Soft Machine Legacy 2004-2015. In December 2015, it was confirmed that the band had dropped the "Legacy" tag from their name, as the band featured three of the group's 1970s era members -- guitarist John Etheridge, drummer John Marshall and bassist Roy Babbington (from the seminal 1976's album Softs), in addition to flute and sax player Theo Travis -- returning to the original name from 2015, and performing numerous concerts all around Europe, South America and Japan. Soft Machine made their first North American tour since 1975 (Holdsworth era) in October 2018, to be followed by the second North-American leg of the tour in January/February 2019.

The band's brand new studio album Hidden Details was released worldwide in September 2018.

Moses was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. She later moved to Los Angeles, California with her mother and three siblings after her parents separated. Her childhood has been a direct influence on her musical style, her mother was a gospel singer and she was raised on gospel, jazz, zydeco and blues.

Moses recalls wanting to listen to the music that was then being played on the radio, but her mother made her listen to gospel. The final song on her debut album, "I Think of You (Shirley's Song)", is dedicated to her late mother.

Singer-songwriter and music producer William Fitzsimmons’ latest record, Mission Bell is a chronicling of the tumultuous last year of his life, particularly of the separation from his second wife. An initial version of the album was originally recorded in Fitzsimmons’ home studio in the summer of 2017 but was subsequently abandoned during the course of, and as a result of, the separation. In 2018 William traveled to Nashville to start recording the album over from square one.

Working with producer Adam Landry (Deer Tick, Los Lobos, k.d. Lang, Vanessa Carlton), Fitzsimmons spent a month’s time rebuilding the lost record, with contributions from friends, including Abby Gundersen and Rosie Thomas. The resulting 11-song album tells the story of a decade-long marriage destroyed and eventually rebuilt from the ground up. The process and the results are both painful and healing, but also respect the complexity of humans, especially at their worst. This is not an exercise in “good-guy, bad-guy” songwriting; rather an attempt to find empathy, even when people are at their most depraved. Mission Bell includes songs about betrayal, but also reconciliation and forgiveness. Choosing to go deeper than mere absolutism and fate, these are stories of people doing their best, but still managing to often destroy each other in the process.

Stories on Stage Sacramento is excited to announce the opening of its 10th season! The group will feature Tom Barbash and a reading from his bestselling new novel The Dakota Winters, a mesmerizing tale of life in the famed Dakota Apartments in New York in the late 1970s. It's not giving anything away to tell you that one of the main characters is John Lennon!

The event will also feature a short story from Sacramento writer Shelley Blanton-Stroud. Readings by local actors Ian Hopps and Jessica Laskey. Tom Barbash will be in attendance and we'll be selling copies of his book which he will be happy to sign for you.

Short Cuts is a fast-paced, game-based improv show similar to Whose Line is it Anyway?. Fun, short-form improv games and a great cast of performers will ensure that this is one show that you won’t want to miss!

YOU! The Musical is a completely improvised musical inspired by your suggestion of a title. Everything in the show is made up on the spot—lyrics, music, dancing…everything. Each 60-minute performance features a full story with heroes and villains, sidekicks and allies.

Ann and Nancy Wilson forever changed the rock n’ roll landscape in 1975 with hard hitting guitars and soaring vocals. That power and passion continues with Heartless, the Premier Tribute to Heart. Heartless takes you back to the first time you heard ”Magic Man” on the radio and you couldn't wait to hear it again! Heartless gives you the thrill of falling in love with the music of Heart all over again. Every Heartless concert is packed with the songs fans love and delivered in an amazingly authentic musical journey from the very beginning of four decades of Heart and beyond!

Heartless weaves the song and story of Heart into each performance, finding fans swaying to “What About Love”, or screaming “Barracuda” while “closing their eyes and being at a Heart concert”! Truly a testament to the six talented and versatile musicians that deliver the sound, spirit, and all live energy of the original band, Heart. New and existing fans are experiencing the power and intensity of Heart songs as never before with Heartless – the Premier Tribute to Heart.

Supporting band:
-Invincible (A Tribute to Pat Benatar)