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Renaissance Festival

Soc. For the Performing Arts - Dave Sedaris. 8pm. Time magazine's 2001 "Humorist of the Year" returns to Houston to dish out his trademark satire in hilarious doses. Sedaris slices through cultural euphemisms and political correctness with social critiques that have made him one of America's preeminent humor writers. Location: Jones Hall, 615 Louisiana. Call 713-227-4SPA for more info.

Avenue Q: The Broadway Musical. Houston events at the Hobby Center. Call 713-629-3700 for more info. Event ID:11/4

Houston Grand Opera - A Masked Ball. A love triangle, a forbidden passion, and a fortune-teller's horrifying prediction are woven into a tangled web of jealousy, vengeance and murder at a lavish masked ball. In Italian with English subtitles. Houston events at Wortham Center, 501 Texas. Call 713-228-OPERA for more info. Event ID:11/2

Stages Theatre - Black Pearl Sings. Houston events at Stages Theatre, 3201 Allen Parkway. Depression-set play depicts an encounter between Susannah, a "song collector" for the Library of Congress, and Pearl, a prisoner descended from slaves whom Susannah discovers to be a living library of folk song. The play will have a staged reading this summer at Virginia's Barter Theatre, but Stages' mounting will be its official world premiere. Call 713-527-0123 for more info. Event ID:11/11.

Dreamgirls - Theatre Under the Stars. Call 713-558-TUTS for details. Event ID:10/21

Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring. Houston events at the Alley Theatre. Call 713-220-5700 for more info. Event ID:11/4

Pompeo Batoni: Prince of Painters in Eighteenth Century Rome Exhibition. Houston events at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

Sesame Street Presents: The Body. Get to know what’s under your skin at Sesame Street Presents: The Body, an amazing new educational exhibition featuring Elmo, Oscar, Grover and the rest of your Sesame Street friends! Run, jump and play your way through a new interactive exhibition all about the human body. This exhibit will cover everything from fingers and toes to your ishy-squishy insides. Houston events at Health Museum, 1515 Hermann Drive. Call 713-521-1515 for more info.

Treasures from Shanghai: 5,000 Years of Chinese Art and Culture. Featuring 77 sets of objects from the Neolithic period (circa 3,000 B.C.) to the Qing dynasty (1644-1911 A.D.), this incredible collection includes rare examples of oracle bones that represent the first form of Chinese writing, bronze vessels, polychrome potteries, sculptures, porcelains, paintings, jade/bamboo carvings and lacquer works. Location: Museum of Natural Science, 1 Hermann Circle Drive. Event ID:1/6/2008.

Lucy's Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia. Discover five million years of Ethipia's diverse history and culture. The exhibition will include the original fossilized remains of the 3.2 million-year-old hominid known as Lucy. With 40 percent of her skeleton intact, Lucy remains the oldest and most complete adult human ancestor fully retrieved from African soil. Location: Museum of Natural Science, 1 Hermann Circle Drive. Event ID:4/20/08.

RED HOT - Asian Art Today from the Chaney Family Collection. Drawn from the extraordinary holdings of Houston collectors Robert, Jereann, and Holland Chaney, the exhibition focuses on artists who emerged after the political and economic upheavals of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Call 713-639-7300 for more info. Showing at Museum of Fine Arts, 1001 Bissonnet. Event ID:10/21

The David Whiney Bequest. This exhibition celebrates the extraordinary bequest of works of art from the collection of David Whitney (1939–2005) to The Menil Collection. A curator, writer, art collector, and former trustee of The Menil Collection and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Whitney was a pioneer in modern and contemporary art scholarship. Houston Fine Arts events at Menil Collection, 1515 Sul Ross. Call 713-525-9400 for more info. Event ID:10/28