A new play by Philadelphia-based playwright DJ Hills about Horsegirl, a young trans woman trying to understand freedom, intimacy, family, and what it means to become yourself. Her relationship with her boyfriend Cowdaddy unfolds alongside memories of her mother, creating a story where different generations imagine freedom in very different ways.
Directed by Adil Mansoor, the production moves between intimate, almost domestic scenes and a much stranger theatrical world of transformation, fantasy, and performance. It is tender, visually bold, occasionally disorienting, and deeply interested in the question of how we construct an identity.

Our review is here.

Place: Wilma Theater
he Wilma Theater

Price: from $32

A Tony Award-winning musical built around the songs of Bob Dylan — but not a traditional jukebox musical or a biography of Dylan himself.
Written by Irish playwright Conor McPherson, the story takes place in a rundown boarding house in Duluth, Minnesota, during the Great Depression, where the lives of its residents and visitors collide.
Dylan’s songs are radically rearranged and woven into the story as emotional material rather than conventional musical-theater numbers, including music from across his career.
The Arden production is a new Philadelphia staging directed by Terrence J. Nolen, opening the company’s 2026/27 season.


Venue: Arden Theatre Company
Address: 40 N 2nd St

A one-man play by Scottish writer Gary McNair about a boy, his grandfather, and a seemingly impossible bet. After winning money by betting on England to win the 1966 World Cup, the grandfather becomes convinced he understands chance — and years later makes one final wager connected to his own life.
What begins as a funny family story gradually becomes a meditation on mortality, storytelling, luck, and the myths families create about themselves. The production relies heavily on the performer and the act of telling a story directly to an audience rather than elaborate theatrical spectacle.

Venue: Inis Nua Theatre Company
Address: The Drake, 302 S Hicks St

From $30

A contemporary reimagining of the 17th-century play The Witch of Edmonton. A devil arrives in a small town offering people their deepest desires in exchange for their souls — only to discover that some residents are surprisingly willing to negotiate.
Playwright Jen Silverman turns the old story into a dark, funny examination of ambition, loneliness, power, gender, and what people believe happiness should look like. It uses the structure of an old Jacobean tragicomedy but speaks very much in a contemporary theatrical language.

Venue: Quintessence Theatre
Address: Sedgwick Theater, 7137 Germantown Ave

From $17

Ben Franklin, Ben Affleck, Benedict Arnold, Bad Bunny and other figures from completely different corners of American history and celebrity culture collide in an absurd theatrical universe. Created by Philadelphia immersive theater company Applied Mechanics, RUN BEN RUN looks at American ideas of progress, fame, success and failure by deliberately scrambling history and mythology together.
This is immersive theater rather than a conventional sit-down play. The audience shares the space with the performers as scenes, choreography, drag and historical pastiche unfold around them inside Christ Church Neighborhood House — only steps away from the actual church Benjamin Franklin attended.

Venue: Applied Mechanics
ADDRESS: Christ Church Neighborhood House, 20 N American St

Price from $36

UnRavelled connects the lives of two people who never met: French composer Maurice Ravel and Canadian scientist-turned-painter Anne Adams. Both developed neurological conditions that profoundly affected their relationship to language, music and visual art.
Created by soprano and neuroscientist Renée Fleming with collaborators, the performance brings together theater, live music, visual art and neuroscience. Rather than presenting a conventional narrative, it explores what happens inside the creative brain — and how changes in the brain can transform artistic expression.

PLACE: Penn Live Arts/Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
ADDRESS: 3680 Walnut St

Price from $42 regular seating found

n the 1970s, a group of women gather in an Ohio recreation center to talk about their lives, relationships, bodies, work and the possibilities opened by the women's liberation movement. Decades later, the daughter of one of those women tries to reconstruct what happened in that room and understand what became of their ambitions.
Written by Bess Wohl, Liberation moves between generations and asks what social progress actually looks like when viewed across a lifetime. It is both a historical portrait of second-wave feminism and a contemporary examination of which freedoms were achieved, which compromises followed, and which questions remain unresolved.


PLACE: Philadelphia Theatre Companys
ADDRESS: Suzanne Roberts Theatre, 480 S Broad St

Created and performed by Priyanka Shetty, #CHARLOTTESVILLE examines the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the violence surrounding it. Shetty developed the solo work using more than 100 interviews alongside court transcripts, news reports and other documentary material.
The result sits somewhere between documentary theater, journalism and solo performance. Instead of fictionalizing the event, the piece reconstructs different voices and perspectives surrounding what happened and examines how racism, public memory, media and political language shape the way such events are understood.

PLACE: Azuka + Simpatico
ADDRESS: The Drake, 302 S Hicks St

price from $18

Israel Zangwill's The Melting Pot, first performed in 1908, follows a Jewish immigrant who escapes a pogrom in Russia and comes to the United States believing that America can become a place where old ethnic and religious divisions disappear.
More than a century later, the play's idealistic vision of America sounds very different. This Philadelphia production revisits the text in a contemporary context, making its ideas about immigration, assimilation, Jewish identity and the promise of the American “melting pot” particularly interesting to reconsider today.

PLACE: Theatre Ariel + Philadelphia Artists’ Collective
ADDRESS: Arch Street Meeting House, 320 Arch St

price from $49

A psychology professor begins searching for a former student who has suddenly disappeared, setting off a story that moves through different people, places and moments in time. The play draws on questions from psychology and cognitive science to examine how people form beliefs and how certain they can ever be about what they think they know.
Written by Jonathan Spector, This Much I Know plays with memory, perception and confirmation bias while gradually connecting seemingly unrelated stories. It is structured partly like an intellectual puzzle, but underneath that structure is a more personal question: what happens when the explanations we build for ourselves stop working?

PLACE: InterAct Theatre Company at The Proscenium Theatre
ADDRESS: The Drake, 302 S Hicks St

price $200 / 2 seats

This may be the smallest-scale immersive production in Philadelphia this month: Spiritual Experience is performed for an audience of only one or two people at a time.
Created by The Private Theater, the 75-minute experience removes the usual separation between performer and spectator. Rather than watching a story from a seat in a crowd, the audience enters an intimate theatrical encounter designed specifically around their presence. With only two spectators allowed per performance, it sits somewhere between theater, ritual, installation and private performance art.

PLACE: The Private Theater
ADDRESS: 3408 Brandywine St

A group exhibition exploring folklore, superstition, dreams, monsters, and the strange space between reality and imagination. Featuring Philadelphia artists including Caitlin McCormack, Alex Eckman-Lawn, Jeremy Hush, Darla Jackson, and others.


Venue: Paradigm Gallery + Studio
Address: 12 N 3rd St

A group exhibition celebrating Philadelphia’s artist-run culture and the communities built outside traditional art institutions. Part of the Collective Futures Festival, it brings together artists connected to independent galleries, collectives, and DIY spaces.


Venue: Muse Gallery

Thirty-three artists explore the idea of resistance through sculpture, installation, and two-dimensional work. The exhibition looks at political resistance alongside more personal ways of challenging social structures and inherited systems.


Venue: Philadelphia Sculptors
Address: Art on the Ave

A two-person exhibition exploring memory and the ways our perception of the past changes over time. Abeloff and Hersh consider how familiar experiences can become altered, fragmented, or newly understood when viewed from a distance.


Venue: Elisa Abeloff + Nanci Hersh
Address: 121 N 2nd St

A group exhibition exploring the contemporary meaning of the “bohemian” spirit — artistic freedom, experimentation, unconventional lifestyles, and creative communities. The show brings together artists whose work reflects individuality and alternative ways of living and making art.

Venue: The Arts League
Address: 4226 Spruce St

A collaborative exhibition exploring the small social rituals and everyday decisions that shape our lives — from how we dress to whom we share a meal with. Its title, Tutto Passa, translates roughly as “everything passes.”

Venue: Keith Warren Greiman + Jarmel Reitz

Four artists — Amze Emmons, Rami George, Alicia Link, and Qiaira Riley — imagine possible futures for Philadelphia. Their newly commissioned works explore community, collective action, and what might need to change for alternative versions of the city to become possible.

Venue: Amze Emmons, Rami George, Alicia Link, Qiaira Riley
Address: AUTOMAT, 1400 N American St

A group exhibition featuring artists from CFEVA’s Visual Artist Fellowship program. The show brings together a range of contemporary practices and offers a snapshot of work being developed by emerging and established artists within Philadelphia’s creative community.


Venue: CFEVA fellows
Address: 3600 Market St

museum admission

The first major U.S. retrospective of Marcel Duchamp in more than 50 years brings together over 300 works, from paintings and photographs to readymades and experimental film. The exhibition traces how Duchamp radically challenged the definition of art and helped shape contemporary artistic practice.


Venue: Philadelphia Museum of Art
Address: 2600 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy

An exhibition examining video games as an artistic medium rather than simply entertainment. It explores visual storytelling, interactive worlds, player agency, and the unusual relationship between freedom and control created by games.


Venue: Pearlstein Gallery
Address: 3401 Filbert St

A solo exhibition by artist Pragya Gupta. Chrysalis centers on ideas of transformation and transition, presenting Gupta’s work within the Annenberg Center’s visual arts program.

Venue: Pragya Gupta
Address: Annenberg Center, 3680 Walnut St

Philadelphia’s monthly art night: galleries open new exhibitions, showrooms stay open late, and the neighborhood turns into a casual gallery crawl. Great for discovering local artists and moving between openings throughout the evening.


Venue: Barnes Foundation
Address: 2025 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy., Philadelphia, PA 19130

A Philadelphia-focused fashion show presented as part of DesignPhiladelphia, bringing together local fashion, design and creative communities. It takes place alongside the festival’s Evolution of Revolution graffiti exhibition at Suburban Station.

Venue: Suburban Station
Address: 16th St & JFK Blvd area

A free social night for Philadelphia’s next generation of designers and creatives, organized by the JADE Fellows. Expect a live DJ, food, mocktails and a crowd of design students and young creatives; registration required.

Venue: Frankie’s Summer Social Club
Address: 355 S 15th St

The official opening party for the 35th Philadelphia Film Festival, featuring DJ Dommis, festival guests and activations from Letterboxd, Dad’s Hat and others. A major social kickoff for Philly’s film community.

Venue: F1 Arcade
Address: 1330 Chestnut St

DesignPhiladelphia and AIA Philadelphia revive the Beaux Arts Ball with an immersive black-tie night of large-scale installations, live performances and elaborate costumes. The 2026 theme, Be Revolutionary: America Turns 250, connects design and Philadelphia history with the city’s contemporary creative community.


Venue: Girard College
Address: 2101 S College Ave

The closing celebration of PFF35, bringing filmmakers, festival guests and Philadelphia cinephiles together after 11 days of screenings, premieres and events.

Venue: Stratus Lounge
Address: 433 Chestnut St

FringeArts’ major annual benefit combines Philadelphia’s art and food scenes in one large creative party. Expect performances, installations and food and drinks from dozens of local restaurants and bars; $200 GA / $350 VIP, Creative Cocktail dress.

Venue: FringeArts + Fringe Bar
ADDRESS: 140 N Columbus Blvd

$14

Charlie Kaufman’s surreal directorial debut follows a theater director attempting to recreate his entire life inside an ever-expanding stage production. A rare chance to see this strange, ambitious cult film projected on 35mm.

Venue: Film Society Center
Address: 1412 Chestnut St

$12

Ruth Leitman’s 1994 documentary captures the boardwalk culture, workers and young women spending their summers in Wildwood, New Jersey. Director Ruth Leitman joins the screening for a post-film Q&A.

Venue: PhilaMOCA
Address: 531 N 12th St

$14

Chris Marker’s landmark essay film moves between Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland and other places while reflecting on memory, images, travel and the way we experience time. Presented on 35mm.

Venue: Film Society Center
Address: 1412 Chestnut St

free

Philadelphia Film Festival programmers preview the newly announced PFF35 lineup and share their recommendations, followed by a free screening of Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos in a new 4K restoration.

Venue: Film Society Center
ADDRESS: 1412 Chestnut St

$14

A monumental 4.5-hour, six-part essay film examining history, memory and the meaning of monuments. Presented by Lightbox Film Center — one of the more experimental cinema experiences on October’s calendar.


Venue: Bok Auditorium
Address: 3800 Mifflin St

Eleven days of 100+ films, including international premieres, independent cinema, documentaries, local filmmaking and major new releases, alongside filmmaker Q&As and special guests. Instead of choosing one screening, check the full schedule and build your own festival lineup.

Venue: Mandell Theater, Drexel University
ADDRESS: 3220 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19104

$20

A screening of David Lynch’s early short films The Alphabet and The Grandmother, followed by a conversation with Peggy Reavey, who collaborated with Lynch during this formative period of his career.


Venue: PhilaMOCA
Address: 531 N 12th St

Philadelphia’s underground film community gets its own awards night. Organized by the Philadelphia Psychotronic Film Society, it celebrates the strange, cult, independent and overlooked corners of local cinema culture.

PLACE: PhilaMOCA
Venue: 531 N 12th St

A cult screening of the famously bizarre Troll 2 with actor George Hardy appearing in person. The night includes a screening, Q&A, photos and autographs — much more cult-film gathering than conventional movie night.

Venue: PhilaMOCA
Address: 531 N 12th St

Experimental improvisation by multi-reedists David Leon and Yuma Uesaka, moving between free jazz, microtonality, noise and extended saxophone techniques. Aaron Pond opens with an even stranger combination of horn, voice, daxophone, duck calls and electronics.

Venue: The Rotunda
Address: 4014 Walnut St

Seven nights devoted largely to the Philadelphia music scene, moving between indie, jazz, experimental music, hip-hop and heavier sounds. This year's lineup includes Gregory Alan Isakov, RJD2, Sweet Pill, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Madi Diaz and Philly-raised jazz saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins.

Venue: Solar Myth
Address: 1131 S. Broad St., Philadelphia, PA 19147

$15–25

Pianist Heather O'Donnell performs Frederic Rzewski's monumental hour-long work: 36 variations built around the Chilean protest song ¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!. Experimental classical music with a fascinating political and musical history.

Venue: Trinity at 22nd · 2212 Spruce St

$30–35

Cosmic experimental music somewhere between jazz fusion, ambient, electronics and prog. Mercereau — a collaborator on André 3000's New Blue Sun — performs with percussionist Carlos Niño and drummer Austin Williamson at one of Philly's best rooms for adventurous music.

Venue: Solar Myth ·
ADDRESS: 1131 S Broad St

$30–35

South African saxophonist Linda Sikhakhane brings contemporary jazz shaped by improvisation, spirituality and South African musical traditions to Solar Myth. Ars Nova Workshop presents the show.

Venue: Solar Myth
Address: · 1131 S Broad St