Things to do in NYC this week, chosen by Scope. One pick for every night, plus Saturday and Sunday daytime.
October 12–October 18, 2026
This week moves between worlds: a comic becoming an opera, an octopus’s sensory life, and drag sharing a stage with wrestling. Indie pop, experimental improvisation and boleros supply the music; gallery openings and working studios shape the weekend. Saturday brings a reading beside Baba Stiltz; Sunday closes with Robert Glasper’s acoustic trio at the Blue Note.
Minnesota Opera opens the workshop door on a comic-book adaptation in which Death becomes a mortal named Laila Starr. Composer Kamala Sankaram, librettist Minita Gandhi and the creative team discuss the transformation, with cast members performing excerpts. Start the week with an opera taking shape, then continue the conversation at the Guggenheim’s rotunda reception.
7 p.m.; excerpts and creative-team conversation, ahead of the world premiere.
What does the world look like to an octopus? Janna Levin brings Alex Schnell and Caroline Albertin to Pioneer Works to approach that question through behavior and genetics. Come early for a live encounter with dwarf cuttlefish; Tuomas Laitinen’s Siphon installation stays open, extending the conversation into an evening of looking and listening.
Free with RSVP; doors 7 p.m., conversation 8 p.m. Seating is first come.
Madi Diaz and Tasha share Elsewhere’s Zone One for a 7 p.m. show. The Bushwick venue lists general admission at $25 before service fees, a close-room setting for two singer-songwriters.
Elsewhere lists 7 p.m. door time; admission is 16+.
The Theys and the Thems finish their first tour alongside A Matter of Pride’s tenth-anniversary drag wrestling production. The Brooklyn Monarch hosts a collision of indie rock, theatrical combat and queer performance, with fundraising for local mutual aid folded into the night. This is Thursday’s unruly option, built around two celebrations meeting on one stage.
Listed start 6:30 p.m.; 18+. General admission listed at $25.40 including fees.
Hiroko Ohno’s Event Horizon opens its reception on Henry Street with paintings and sculptural elements shaped by astronomy and geological time. Mineral pigments, seashells and mica bring physical histories into images of cosmic space. Take Friday at gallery pace: the large two-panel Galaxy painting gives a small Lower East Side outing a much wider horizon.
Brooklyn Navy Yard opens its working campus for an afternoon inside fashion, design and technology studios. The annual open house, part of Open House New York Weekend, gives access to makers and businesses usually encountered only through what they produce. Enter at Building 77 and let Saturday become a walk through Brooklyn’s industrial present.
Free; noon–5 p.m. Enter at Building 77, 141 Flushing Avenue.
Night Club 101 sets Baba Stiltz’s loose, quietly strange pop beside a reading from writer Natasha Stagg, live music by Barrett Avner and an Ana Roxanne DJ set. The mix moves between literary and dance-floor modes without settling into a standard bill, making this a good Saturday-night snapshot of the Lower East Side’s cross-scene energy.
The Noguchi Museum hosts approximately forty-five floral arrangements for the New York Ikenobo chapter’s fortieth anniversary. Flowers sit alongside Noguchi’s sculpture, making balance, empty space and seasonal change something to look at together. The exhibition lasts only this weekend; Sunday offers its final afternoon, with time to linger rather than race between openings.
Robert Glasper closes his Blue Note run with an acoustic trio, stripping the night back to piano-led interplay after a week of larger collaborations. The club lists 8 and 10:30 p.m. sets, so this is a late-week chance to hear his playing in a close, uncluttered frame.
Doors 6 p.m.; 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. sets. Blue Note lists a $20 minimum per person.