Stranger, smaller-room, and in-the-know Scope NYC picks for Saturday, October 17, 2026.
WordOut Theater’s un/reality program brings three new short plays—Night Market, It Is What It Is and Melt With You—to Caveat. The 1:30 p.m. matinee is an afternoon of new queer writing shaped through the company’s workshop process.
The second séance of The Haunting of Miss Robusta brings camp-horror theater to the Stonewall Inn for a 3 p.m. matinee. Its ghost-story framing makes for an unusually theatrical way into the city’s Halloween season.
Anthology’s 16mm program looks at gay liberation through rarely screened films from its Multimedia Resource Center. Lucy Talbot Allen introduces the 5:45 p.m. selection, giving the archive’s material history a live point of entry.
The Ornate Project brings Sid Vaga, Alex Raouf and AG to a Gowanus address for a six-hour music gathering. Arrive early for complimentary food from 6–8 p.m.; entry requires a ticket even during the free RSVP window before 7.
A Morning with Ernie Bushmiller turns the Nancy cartoonist’s world into a play, with Bushmiller making comic-strip gags amid a parade of unusual visitors. The title is a joke: this Saturday performance begins at 7 p.m.
Spectacle revives Michael Findlay’s 1967 revenge thriller The Touch of Her Flesh, a rough-edged cult title running 78 minutes. Its 7:30 p.m. slot suits the theater’s taste for cinema that lives well outside repertory-house respectability.
Bassist Or Bareket leads a quartet with saxophonist Godwin Louis, pianist Esteban Castro and drummer Savannah Harris at Close Up. The 8 p.m. set puts four agile players into the Lower East Side club’s intimate listening space.
Mr. Choade’s Upstairs Downstairs brings the Slipper Room’s long-running variety revue back for a late-night sequence of burlesque, circus and sideshow acts. Doors are at 8; performances begin at 8:30 and continue in several turns.
Percussionist Pejman Hadadi and setar player Nima Janmohammadi meet for an evening of Persian classical music at Christ & St Stephen’s Church. The 8 p.m. concert pairs tombak and daf rhythms with the setar’s delicate plucked lines.
At the PIT’s 24 Hour Festival, sketch teams learn their groups the week of the show and have one day to rehearse. The 11:30 p.m. installment is a late look at how much chaos a short deadline can produce.