Four men sit around a table. Three of them look at an open newspaper as the table is filled with breakfast foods and coffee.
SNAP recipients can access discounted tickets to Apple Hunters! this month. The play follows four men on a journey seeking out a rare fruit.

Don’t let April showers keep you indoors for too long. There’s a bumper crop of plays, concerts, dance productions and movies to gobble up in the Portland area. If you have an Oregon Trail card, then you already know that many of the metro region’s leading artistic and cultural institutions offer discounted tickets through the Regional Arts and Culture Council’s Arts for All program. We’re here to make them easier to find — and enjoy!

You’ll find the specific requirements to attend each event alongside the descriptions of our recommendations for this month. But the idea is, you and at least one guest can catch a top-tier event for $5 (which means you can help Timothée Chalamet see ballet, if he happens to be in town). If there are no instructions listed, that means you should be able to purchase a ticket ahead of time and be prepared to simply show your Oregon Trail card if asked.

Calendar

DANCE

  • Oregon Ballet Theatre’s take on the classic fairytale Princess and the Pea goes just as hard on costuming as it does on ballet precision. It’s hard to recall a recent reference where peas have looked so glamorous, but OBT’s wardrobe team made it all pod-ssible. Newmark Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, portland5.com/venues/newmark-theatre, call 503-222-5538 or arrive up to two hours before the show to purchase at box office. 2 p.m. April 4, 5, and 11, 7:30 p.m. April 3, 4, 9, and 11.
  • WindSync, a winds quintet, will score Chamber Music Northwest’s latest collaboration with BodyVox, Drawing on the Walls. This contemporary dance production will be a night about the human soul and how they express themselves through both mediums. Portland Community College Performing Arts Center, Sylvania, 12000 SW 49th Ave., bodyvox.org 4 p.m. Sunday, April 26.
  • White Bird’s co-production brings the Dance Theatre of Harlem back to Portland to showcase more than an hour of classic and contemporary ballet. Since Arts for All tickets will only be available at the Schnitz’s box office two hours before the show, it’s best to show up early if you want to see one of the local dance company’s most popular annual productions.
    Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 503-248-4335, portland5.com/venues/arlene-schnitzer-concert-hall, limited Arts for All available in-person only two hours ahead of showtime, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 29.

CIRCUS

  • Echo Theater wrote a circus play about its mascots, the ButtEyes, for its youth company, The TikToks. Eyes Across the Universe will use aerial dance, acrobatics and other forms of physical theater and comedy to expand the ButtEyes’ worldbuilding efforts. 1515 SE 37th Ave., echotheaterpdx.org. 7 p.m. Saturday, April 18, 2 and 5:30 p.m. Sunday, April 19.

THEATER

  • Hand 2 Mouth’s New 2 You Festival brought 20 artists together to create new works in just 24 hours. Its closing week offers a chance to see what you missed in March. Wednesday’s show is a double feature: Pepper Pepper’s A Cyborg Sissy and Nathalie Owen FitzSimons’ The Surgery. Thursday is Nurys Herrera’s System Check and Trick Pony’s Soft Machine. Friday is a solo performance: Youth Divising Residency Ensemble’s Enter Your Prompt Here, which includes a Saturday afternoon matinee performance. Saturday evening’s closing program features Daye Thomas and Dylan Hankins’ The Parallax View with Olga Kravtsova and Piper Francis’ Keepers. Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, 15 NE Hancock St., hand2mouththeatre.org/new2you-2026, 7:30 p.m. April 1–4, 2:30 p.m. Saturday, April 4.
  • Four men — two brothers and their childhood friends — reunite to seek out a rare fruit as golden and delicious as their boyhoods in Apple Hunters!, which not only shows as part of the Fertile Ground Festival but also caps playwright E.M. Lewis’ six-year residency with Artists Repertory Theatre. 1515 SW Morrison St., artistsrep.org/performance/apple-hunters, use code Arts4All at checkout. 7:30 p.m. April 1–3 (previews), 8–11, 15–18, and 22–25, 2 p.m. April 5, 12, 19, and 26. 
  • It’s hard to believe that Dear Evan Hansen—the musical about a socially anxious teen who embellishes his importance in the life of a recently deceased classmate—is turning 10 years old. Broadway Rose Theatre Company brings the full spectrum of this emotionally challenging neo-classic to Tigard. 12850 SW Grant Ave., Tigard, broadwayrose.org, Arts for All available at 503-620-5262 or in-person starting 90 minutes before a performance’s start. Arts for All not offered for matinees or the production’s final week. 7:30 p.m. April 1–4 and 8–11.
  • Lakewood Theatre Company closes out its months long run of The Glass Menagerie — the first of Tennessee Williams’ plays to bring him fame. The classic, semi-autobiographical “memory play” looks back at people as emotionally fragile as the namesake menagerie of glass animals. The cast gives theater goers a great reason to sparkle in Lake Oswego. Lakewood Center for the Arts, 368 S State St., Lake Oswego, lakewood-center.org, call 503-635-3901 to verify Arts for All showtime availability. 7:30 p.m. April 2–4, 2 p.m. Sunday, April 5.
  • Outside Mullingar is an Irish comedy from John Patrick Shanley (Doubt) from Corrib Theatre that follows two rural, middle-aged people whose families are locked in a decades-long land dispute. They carry on maintaining their farms, but the heart wants what it wants (think Romeo and Juliet if the protagonists had fully-formed brains). Historic Alberta House, corribtheatre.org, call 503-389-0579 to purchase Arts for All tickets. 7:30 p.m. April 2–5, 9–11, and 16–18, 2 p.m. April 5, 12, and 19.
  • Four middle-aged Southern women seek to rekindle a spark of passion in their lives over six months of happy hours in Savannah Sipping Society. Cast members include AM Northwest host Helen Raptis. Triangle Productions, 1785 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-239-5919, trianglepro.org, Arts for All tickets sold in-person 15 minutes before shows start. 7:30 p.m. April 2–4, 9–11, and 16–18, 2 p.m. Sunday, April 12.
  • If you need more Tennessee Williams in your life after Lakewood Theatre Company’s take on The Glass Menagerie (or Shaking the Tree Theatre’s upcoming production with a $12 discounted ticket tier), the Reser’s got what you need. Alan Cumming first directed Jacob Storms’ biographic play Tennessee Rising: The Dawn of Tennessee Williams. Patricia Reser Center for the Arts, thereser.org, call 971-501-7722 to inquire about Arts for All availability. 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 8. 

MUSIC

  • Oregon Symphony will play a trio of compositions, including Camille Saint-Saëns’ Herculean symphonic poem Le rouet d’Omphale (The Spinning Wheel of Omphale) about how the demigod was punished for his killing spree by being forced to cross-dress while enslaved to the threadmaker Omphale. Maurice Ravel’s jazz-influenced Piano Concerto in G Major will have its moment, as well as his classic symphonic poem Daphnis et Chloé, a pre-WWI adaptation of a second-century novel about two kids with pretty problems as their young love is tested by how people around them react to their hotness. It was first performed with a massive orchestra of more than 100 members. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, Arts for All tickets available after applying at orsymphony.org/bridge-arts-for-all, please allow 3–5 days ahead of time for approval. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 11, 2:30 p.m. Sunday, April 12.

FILM

  • Acclaimed video artist Marco Brambilla, whose massive pop culture-influenced work is on view at Portland Art Museum, will attend this screening of his film Demolition Man (1993). Los Angeles police detective John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone) and psycho killer crime lord Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) are sentenced to cryogenic prison, but bust out decades later into a significantly softer society than they remembered. Tomorrow Theater, 3530 SE Division St., 503-221-1156, tomorrowtheater.org, Arts for All available as walk-up only, recommended arrival at least 30 minutes before showtime, 7 p.m. Friday, April 3.
  • Juliette Lewis plays a woman who finally finds personal fulfillment after switching places with a chair in the new surrealist comedy By Design (2025). Tomorrow Theater, 4 p.m. Saturday, April 4.
  • 24 Hour Party People (2002) looks back on news coverage of the mid-1970s Manchester punk scene from both sides of the TV news lens. Tomorrow Theater, 7 p.m. Saturday, April 4.
  • Penelope Spheeris’ music documentary trilogy The Decline of Western Civilization documents L.A.’s late-century music scenes, including punks (1981) and metal bands (Part II, 1988) with a 1990s conclusion (Part III, 1998). Each movie will be shown on the same day, with individual tickets required for each showing. Make a day of it or pick the showings that most interest you. Tomorrow Theater, 2, 5, and 7:30 p.m. Sunday, April 5.
  • Overwhelmed actress Rose (Lucy Fry) flees to a motel to escape her boyfriend’s overbearing mother (Sheryl Lee) in Julie Pacino’s new horror movie I Live Here Now (2026). But instead of the good night’s sleep she sought, Rose suffers sleep paralysis and surreal visions of other hotel dwellers and suppressed memories of her past. Tomorrow Theater, 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 8.
  • Drag queen Violet Hex hosts bingo with the classic dog show mockumentary Best in Show (2000), where surely there will be all sorts of things to talk about, and not talk about, forever. Like soup. Tomorrow Theater, 7 p.m. Friday, April 10.
  • The Republic of Artsakh was a Southern Caucus territory that broke away from Azerbaijan in the early 1990s after attempting to reconnect with modern Armenia (which the latter did not formally recognize). The documentary There Was, There Was Not (2024) follows four women in the aftermath of the war that saw Artsakh disband and return to Azerbaijanian control, resulting in the expulsion of the area’s Armenian population. Tomorrow Theater, 3:30 p.m. Saturday, April 11.
  • Two boys explore Lagos with their estranged father amid the 1993 Nigerian election crisis in My Father’s Shadow (2025), which shows as part of the multi-site Cascade Festival of African Films. Tomorrow Theater, 7 p.m. Saturday, April 11.
  • A collection of short films by the late and great David Lynch will screen along with his feature-length debut, Eraserhead (1977). If you can still see blue velvet through your tears, this one’s for you. Tomorrow Theater, 7 p.m. Sunday, April 12.
  • If you are a fan of the 1990s band Pavement, not only will you want to show up early to secure a spot for PAM CUT’s screening of its eponymous 2025 documentary pondering the band’s legacy amid its sold-out 2022 reunion tour, but also to potentially win swag from Matador Records in a giveaway sponsored by Music Millennium. Tomorrow Theater, 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 15.
  • Portland Pickles’ collegiate wooden bat baseball league mascot Dillon T. Pickle has gathered international attention online from a “nude” scandal to an unscripted “kidnapping.” Now he gets the documentary treatment in Pickles, Pickles, Pickles (2025), named for the team’s gameday bleachers chant. Dillon will be in attendance to meet fans at his big-screen debut. Tomorrow Theater, 7 p.m. Thursday, April 16.
  • Locally based members of the L.A. creative collective Brain Dead will attend PAM CUT’s screening of the sci-fi horror classic Predator (1987), which holds up remarkably well ahead of its 40th anniversary. Tomorrow Theater, 4 p.m. Saturday, April 18.
  • It’s been 20 years since Sofia Coppola snuck those Chucks into Marie Antoinette (2006). The anachronistic fashion classic screens as the yarn shop/dye studio Ritual Dyes hosts a knitting session for crafters of all experience levels. Tomorrow Theater, 4 p.m. Sunday, April 19.
  • Arrive by 6 p.m. to take part in a pre-screening scavenger hunt connected to Jean-Luc Goddard’s heist classic Band of Outsiders (1964) organized by local art critic Ashley Gifford. Tomorrow Theater, 7 p.m. Thursday, April 23.
  • The entire lineup of the Hillsboro Film Festival is available to Arts for All cinephiles for an added 20 cent service charge. Loaded with short films, HFF shows movies featuring everything from dance to immigration to the teenage condition. The Vault Theater, 350 E Main St., Hillsboro, 503-345-9590, bagnbaggage.org April 24 and 25.
  • Coexistence, My Ass! (2026) is a documentary about Israeli comedian and activist Noam Shuster Eliassi’s professional rise over the past five years. Ascending amid social breakdowns from COVID and the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, Shuster Eliassi comes to terms with her identity, having grown up in Israel’s only intentionally integrated village. Tomorrow Theater, 7 p.m. Thursday, April 30.

This article appears in April 1, 2026.