THE ESSENTIAL A&E PICKS FOR APR 4 - 10 

• Mike Rosenthal

Chelsea Handler
Chelsea Handler's a renaissance woman. A comedian, author and astute observer, she's made an indelible impression on today's cultural environs. After making her bow on the reality series Girls Behaving Badly, she was cast in several network shows before landing a seven-year stint hosting E's late night talk show Chelsea Lately and its subsequent spin-off After Lately. The documentary series Chelsea Does found her fixated on marriage, drugs, racism and Silicon Valley. And in 2016, she landed her own Netflix series, Chelsea.

She's also starred in several critically-acclaimed cable comedy specials—Uganda Be Kidding Me: Live for Netflix, Evolution for HBO, and Revolution, which brought her back to Netflix. Her extensive stand-up tour, dubbed the "Vaccinated and Horny Tour," took her to 90-plus cities throughout North America, and brought her ultimate honors when, during the People's Choice Awards, she was lauded as "The Comedy Act of 2021."

Likewise, she was included in Forbes Top 100 Celebrity list and, equally impressively, named one of Time magazine's "100 most influential people in the world." She's also written six books, five of which reached #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list, while the recording of her Evolution special reaped a Grammy nomination for "Best Comedy Album." Whew! Given that her iHeart Radio podcast, Dear Chelsea, offers advice, we'd probably best be advised to tune in.

Chelsea Handler's "Little Big Bitch" tour comes to Abravanel Hall (123 W. South Temple) Thursday, April 4 at 7 p.m., for mature audiences only. Tickets cost $75 - $250; Visit arttix.org for tickets and additional event information. (Lee Zimmerman)

• Winston Inoway

Salt Lake City Performance Art Festival
Really, what is performance art? It's a worthwhile question for those who haven't experienced much of it—which is why celebrated Boston-based performance artist Marilyn Arsem (pictured) made "Really, What Is Performance Art?" the title of a lecture she presented at the Salt Lake City Main Library on April 2. It provided a lead-in to the 2024 Salt Lake City Performance Art Festival, a world-class event that showcases local, national and international creators of their own unique stories and performance concepts, presented in intimate spaces.

Arsem will also be one of the performers, with a uniquely individual concept called Teach Me!, in which a single audience member has the opportunity to convey to Arsem their own areas of expertise. Other scheduled performers include Salt Lake City-based Sam Forlenza with Chance Poetry, a spontaneously-created experience based on compiling words and phrased from his previously-created work into brand-new poetry; Dawn Oughton's You Talk Funny, exploring how we learn to speak; Preach R Sun's WOKE, described as "a pop-up course collaging Amerikkka's history of fracture; and Eugene Tachinni's Concentric, in which earth materials are used to create concentric circles.

The 2024 Salt Lake City Performance Art Festival comes to a new venue, City Academy (555 E. 200 South), on Saturday, April 6 from 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. All performances are free, and curator Kristina Lenzi describes the content as appropriate for all ages. The event will also include an action in memory of Utah performance painter Paul Reynolds, who passed away in 2020. For full schedule of performances, visit saltlakecityperformanceartfestival.wordpress.com. (Scott Renshaw)

• Courtesy Photo

Lauren Graham: Have I Told You This Already?
It's one thing for a public figure to consider their life interesting enough to warrant a memoir; it's another to think that it be interesting enough to warrant more than one. Actor Lauren Graham shared funny, fascinating stories from her life and professional career in her 2016 book Talking As Fast As I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls and Everything in Between—but apparently, there was still more to share. And thus came Have I Told You This Already?: Stories I Don't Want to Forget to Remember.

Graham emphasizes here that the work of becoming a recognizable face in the world of entertainment is, in fact, work. As she said in an interview on Today in November 2023 about launching her career in New York, "I had so many jobs at the same time—and that's just what I expected. I didn't expect it to be easy; I didn't expect it to be as hard as it was at times. But, you have to earn New York's respect. ... It's a career that can get to a point where it's not giving you what you want. It shouldn't be like a bad boyfriend who doesn't call you; it should be reciprocal to some degree, and I'm lucky it was."

Touring for the paperback release of Have I Told You This Already?, Lauren Graham visits the Union Event Center (235 N. 500 West) on Wednesday, April 10 at 7:30 p.m. General admission tickets are $45; visit ticketmaster.com to purchase tickets, and visit kingsenglish.com for additional event details. (SR)