Aussie Rocker Courtney Barnett Plays Carnegie Music Hall; ‘Sleeping Dragon’ Film at City Theatre; (Mon., 1/27/20) 

1) Like Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain before her, Courtney Barnett plays a mean southpaw. Her pairing of deadpan lyrics with a deadpan vocal delivery is one of many things that sets her apart. Don’t expect her to be any less sharp for her sold-out show at the Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland. The concert is part of the Warhol’s Sound Series and will feature Barnett solo, no band.  She rose to international prominence with 2013’s The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas. Her brilliant debut LP, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, followed in 2015. Tell Me How You Really Feel, her sophomore album, followed in 2018. In between LPs, she recorded Lotta Sea Lice with one of rock’s other great contemporaries, Kurt Vile. The pair wrote originals, covered other artists’ songs, and covered each other’s songs. She released MTV Unplugged Live in Melbourne in 2019. Hachiku opens. 8 p.m. 4400 Forbes Ave., Oakland. (CM)

2) Attention, budding movie critics: Here is a chance to attend a free rough-cut screening of a new film and tell the filmmaker what you think of it. When My Sleeping Dragon Woke is a documentary about the making of a stage play. Pittsburgh’s City Theatre will host the screening, because the play in question—titled Feeding the Dragon—premiered there in 2016 before a successful run off-Broadway. Seating is limited, so reserve free tickets online. Theater artist Sharon Washington created and performed Feeding the Dragon as a one-person autobiographical piece. It deals with her unusual youth, when she lived with her family in an apartment inside a major branch library of the New York Public Library system. (Washington’s father was the resident caretaker, and “feeding the dragon” was his cold-weather chore of stoking the massive coal furnace.) The play drew praise for exploring topics from childhood literary fantasies to grown-up racial issues, which then inspired filmmaker Chuck Schultz to begin work on When My Sleeping Dragon Woke. Both Schultz and Washington will be present at the screening. 6:30 p.m. Lester Hamburg Studio, 1300 Bingham St., South Side. (MV)

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