25 Can’t-Miss Events to Check Out in 2025

Birdman Live

Jan. 19 When Birdman  premiered a decade ago on its way to winning the 2015 best picture Oscar, The New York Times  hailed it as “funny, frenetic, buoyant and rambunctiously showboating entertainment.” Artfully stitched together as if shot in a single take, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s heart-pounding, stream-of-consciousness masterpiece tracks an aging action star portrayed by Michael Keaton as he attempts to stage a vaingloriously “serious” Broadway production—to an increasingly furious inner drumbeat. Much of that energy derives from the music: a thundering, continuous drum solo by Mexican composer and jazz percussionist Antonio Sánchez. For Birdman’s 10th anniversary, the five-time Grammy winner will be appearing at the Crest Theatre, performing his dynamic score live while the film plays on the downtown landmark’s 42-foot screen. crestsacramento.com

Through Their Eyes

Jan. 26–June 22 How better to celebrate and investigate the impact of feminist art than through the eyes of one of the world’s fiercest female art patrons? Through Their Eyes—which draws from the holdings of Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, dubbed “Italy’s Peggy Guggenheim” by style bible W  magazine—presents 60 contemporary pieces by 30 renowned women artists, from self-portraits by Cindy Sherman (aka the original selfie queen) to Zoe Leonard’s photographs Chastity Belt  and Gynecological Instruments  that evoke the medicalization of feminine desire. Other highlights include works by Paulina Olowska, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Danielle McKinney and Barbara Kruger, whose 1997 photographic silkscreen Untitled (Not ugly enough)  is shown above. This Manetti Shrem exhibit, the first show at the Davis museum to focus solely on female artists, marks the U.S. debut of Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s extensive collection. manettishremmuseum.ucdavis.edu

Sebastian Maniscalco

Jan. 31 Martin Scorsese has a knack for slipping comedians into dramatic roles in a way that totally energizes a scene—think Albert Brooks in Taxi Driver  and Jerry Lewis in The King of Comedy. But when the maestro cast Sebastian Maniscalco as real-life mobster “Crazy” Joe Gallo in The Irishman, he caught a tiger by the tail. Going toe-to-toe with Robert De Niro, the Italian American funnyman perfectly captured the gangster’s unhinged, menacing vibe. De Niro was so impressed that he teamed up with Maniscalco again, playing his dad in the comedian’s 2023 autobiographical film, About My Father. Maniscalco has always worn his Sicilian roots on his tuxedo sleeve, whether that’s in a half-dozen comedy specials, his HBO Max sitcom Bookie  (season two premiered in December) or five sold-out gigs at Madison Square Garden this past fall—smashing the arena’s record for comedy shows. On stage, Maniscalco’s outsized style of physical comedy echoes Buster Keaton, with a hint of Andrew Dice Clay swagger thrown in for good measure. Skip his “It Ain’t Right” tour at Thunder Valley? Fuhgeddaboudit. thundervalleyresort.com

Our War Too

Feb. 4–May 4 When Minnie Spotted-Wolf joined the U.S. Marine Corp Reserves, the bronc-busting member of the Blackfoot tribe won the respect of her male peers as a heavy equipment operator. Airwoman Jacqueline Cochran led a team of over 1,000 female pilots who flew 60 million miles for the U.S. military during World War II. Yet the stories of the 350,000 WACs, WAVES, WASPs and SPARs who served honorably in the Great War are all too seldom told (for all you aspiring WWII buffs, those acronyms are short for the “Women’s Army Corps,” the Navy’s “Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service,” the “Women Airforce Service Pilots,” and the Coast Guard’s “Semper Paratus—Always Ready” female recruits, respectively). Now the California Museum’s latest display—a traveling exhibit from The National WWII Museum called Our War Too: Women in Service—honors that too-often overlooked history with more than 200 artifacts, from uniforms to letters to scrapbooks. But the showstopper is an AI-assisted interactive experience where you can “interview” real veterans and ask them questions. All proof that the Good Fight was indeed women’s work as well. californiamuseum.org

Sasha Velour

Feb. 7 “An advocate and artistic trailblazer today, she has mastered the art of the drag reveal by recognizing the power of naked truth,” declared the Los Angeles Times  about Sasha Velour. Since winning season nine of RuPaul’s Drag Race  in 2017, her truth-telling star power has only grown—the Vassar grad and Fulbright Scholar has gone on to co-host the Emmy-winning HBO reality series We’re Here, stage a theatrical play about her life, and release a vibrant and scholarly coffee table book, The Big Reveal: An Illustrated Manifesto of Drag. This powerhouse of gender-and-genre-bending energy will hold court at the Mondavi Center in a lecture devoted to the history and significance of drag, followed by an audience Q&A. mondaviarts.org

Romeo & Juliet

Feb 14–16 What happens when you put two star-crossed lovers on stage under the graceful guidance of one star choreographer? Balletic magic, we anticipate when the curtain rises on this Sacramento Ballet production of Romeo & Juliet, which will feature the world premiere of Young Soon Hue’s adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy. (The Korean choreographer’s credits include serving as artistic director of the Seoul Ballet Festival and earning Best Choreography of the Year honors in 2013 by the Ballet Association of Korea for her work The Moment.) The bitter rivalry between the Montagues and Capulets in fair Verona will play out at downtown’s SAFE Credit Union Performing Arts Center via a cavalcade of over four dozen dancers accompanied live by the Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera. sacballet.org

Fences

Feb. 14–March 2 “Some people build fences to keep people out and other people build fences to keep people in,” wrote August Wilson in his Tony- and Pulitzer-winning Fences, which examines themes like race and generational trauma. Set in 1950s Pittsburgh, the drama centers on 53-year-old Black father Troy Maxson, who had to set aside his baseball dreams—MLB’s color barrier had not yet been broken when he was a player—and became a malcontented garbage collector. As The New Yorker  noted in its review of the original Broadway run that saw James Earl Jones in the patriarchal role (which Denzel Washington inhabited in the 2010 revival and 2016 film adaptation), “There is no aspect of his life in which he does not feel constricted.” This intimate production in Celebration Arts’ jewel-box main theater will kick off the local Black troupe’s new “Family Affair” season, with Sacramento director Anthony D’Juan bringing the universal humanity in this story to the surface for a contemporary audience. celebrationarts.net

Deftones

March 1 A few years ago, vintage footage of Deftones performing their then-new songs “My Own Summer (Shove It)” and “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)” at The Press Club in 1997 started making the rounds on the internet, and our hard-rock hearts went soft. But make no mistake: This OG hometown alt-metal band is anything but a nostalgia act. Originally formed in 1988 by McClatchy High grads Chino Moreno, Abe Cunningham and Stephen Carpenter, Deftones haven’t let up in recent years, earning two Grammy nominations in 2022, and breaking back into the Billboard  charts this past fall with the re-release of their 2005 compilation album B-Sides and Rarities. You can party like it’s 1997 when the group rocks the Golden 1 Center in March during the first California stop of its 2025 North American tour. golden1center.com

California Capital International Documentary Film Festival

March 7–9 Los Angeles isn’t the only city in California where stars are born. Sacramento State professor Kathy Kasic’s masterful Antarctic documentary, The Lake at the Bottom of the World, took home the “Best of the Festival” prize at this Rancho Cordova film fête two years ago. After a hiatus last year, the nascent cinefest, which launched in 2022, returns this March with a three-day lineup of docs from around the world. Over 40 shorts and features will screen at various venues, like Piblokto , which chronicles life in the isolated Siberian region of Chukotka and has been winning “best” awards at festivals from Canada to Serbia. And Kasic will be back, with her new documentary The Memory of Darkness, Light, and Ice, a poetic mystery about the rediscovery of a sediment core in a Cold War-era military base in Greenland that may hold the key to climate change—a science thriller that proves Sacramento’s answer to Werner Herzog has done it again. calcapdocfest.org

Cavalleria Rusticana

March 15 Did you ever return home from military service to find your former fiancée married to someone else, so you pursue a rebound relationship, but then your ex gets jealous and starts an affair with you? No? The characters in Cavalleria Rusticana, Pietro Mascagni’s juicy potboiler of an opera, do just that. Beloved since its 19th-century debut, the one-act triumph has been a short, sweet hit, gracing stages worldwide—including nearly 700 performances at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. At only 70 minutes, the story of a young Sicilian soldier coping with heartbreak comes to life under the baton of Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera principal conductor Ari Pelto, in his first opera with the company. Look for more than 100 singers and musicians to take the stage, including renowned Sicilian tenor Roberto de Biasio in the lead role, as they deliver one high note after another at the SAFE Credit Union Performing Arts Center. sacphilopera.org

Everything Beautiful Happens at Night

March 19–April 20 If you’re a member of the cult that adores 2023’s sleeper hit rom-com Red, White & Royal Blue, then you’ll want to eat this delightful stage confection up with a spoon. Ted Malawer, co-writer of RW&RB, was a children’s book editor and author before turning to screenwriting and playwriting, and he taps that world for Everything Beautiful Happens at Night, which is receiving its world premiere as part of Capital Stage’s 20th season. Set in 1980s Manhattan, the story follows a closeted children’s author, Ezra, who butts heads with his also-closeted editor, Nancy, over whether or not the characters of Chipmunk and Squirrel (different species, same gender) should be allowed to hold hands. Malawer took his inspiration from fellow LGBTQ children’s authors Arnold Lobel (Frog and Toad) and Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are) for this warm, witty treatise on longing and acceptance. capstage.org

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READ MORE: A Mainstage Milestone – Capital Stage celebrates its 20th anniversary season

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The Athletics’ Sacramento Opener

March 31 Break out the peanuts and Cracker Jack, because the boys of summer will be playing big league ball here for the next three years, as the (formerly) Oakland Athletics take up residence at West Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park—which they’ll share with our Triple-A team, the Sacramento River Cats—while they await the completion of their new Vegas digs. The A’s will host the Chicago Cubs on March 31 for our region’s first official MLB game. Sacramento baseball fans can look forward to over 80 major league home games this year, including a Mother’s Day weekend series against the New York Yankees that is set to bring Sacramento-born outfielder Aaron Judge and Elk Grove-raised first baseman J.D. Davis to town. Then there’s a Memorial Day weekend series against the reigning NL East champs, the Philadelphia Phillies, and a Fourth of July weekend that pits the A’s against their NorCal rivals, the San Francisco Giants, whose pitcher Logan Webb hails from Rocklin. mlb.com/athletics

Preservation Hall Jazz Band

April 9 “Loud, funky and brash, it’s enough to blow the roof off the old place. There’s no denying that it reflects the purposefully dynamic spirit of post-Katrina New Orleans. The insistent grooves and catchy riffs will get any party going,” The Guardian  wrote of Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s last studio album, 2017’s So It Is. This Big Easy institution—which received a Presidential Medal of Honor in 2006 and has collaborated with everyone from the Foo Fighters to Tom Waits—has been keeping the slinky, slithery, Southern drawling beat of NOLO-style Dixieland jazz alive around the world since 1961, with an everchanging lineup of touring members. After a knockout performance at the Harris Center last year, the group returns to Folsom in April with just as much swing in their step on original songs like “Keep Your Head Up” and classics like “When the Saints Go Marching In” and “St. Louis Blues.” harriscenter.net

Jack Gallagher

April 5 “Every comedian wants to be a rock star, and every rock star wants to be a comedian,” Jack Gallagher explains. The 71-year-old singing funnyman and longtime Sacramentan (who relocated to his native Massachusetts last summer to be closer to family) takes the stage at The Sofia in midtown this spring for his only capital city appearance in 2025. A popular local tradition since 2010, Gallagher’s musical comedy show—which will once again see him fronting the Dick Bright Band and doing stand-up—is just the latest career evolution for the comedian, who first broke out on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show  in 1985 and went on to star in his own ABC sitcom, Bringing Up Jack, land a recurring role on Curb Your Enthusiasm  and create a series of signature one-man shows for the B Street Theatre. During the concert half of the new performance, expect versions of favorites like “Groovin’ ” and “It’s a Beautiful Morning” by the ’60s band The Rascals, along with a half dozen new cover songs selected for the night. bstreettheatre.org

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READ MORE: Funny Business – Our 2019 profile of River City funnyman Jack Gallagher

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The Prom

April 18–May 3 A gay Indiana teen wants to take her girlfriend to prom, but the “Oh, hell no!” PTA cancels the event to prevent that from happening. Plot twist: After watching the community conrrrtroversy unfold on the news, a hilariously self-centered troupe of Broadway stars—smarting from a spectacular flop (who knew that a musical about Eleanor Roosevelt wouldn’t land?)—drunkenly strike out for the Midwest to save the day. “With its kinetic dancing, broad mugging and belty anthems, it makes you believe in musical comedy again,” The New York Times  wrote when The Prom, loosely based on a true story, made its Broadway debut in 2018. With music by Matthew Sklar and lyrics by Chad Beguelin (the duo behind Elf: The Musical), and a book by Bob Martin (a Tony winner for The Drowsy Chaperone), the musical is both a satire of celebrity and a fable about acceptance, tolerance and values. In a twist of verisimilitude, this Woodland Opera House production is helmed by veteran local director Bob Cooner—a former high school teacher. woodlandoperahouse.org

Parade

May 6–11 In its rave review of the 2023 Broadway revival of Parade—which is based on the true story of Leo and Lucille Frank, a newlywed Jewish couple in 1910s Georgia—The New York Times observed that “the enhanced emphasis on a love story tested by tragedy and set to song is a big net gain.” A mordant retelling of Leo’s wrongful imprisonment, trial and execution, Parade  won writer Alfred Uhry (already a Pulitzer Prize winner for his 1988 play, Driving Miss Daisy) and composer Jason Robert Brown Tony Awards for best book and original score, respectively, in 1999. The musical then claimed two more Tonys, for best revival and best direction, when it returned to the Great White Way two years ago. The Broadway Sacramento production of the revival, starring actor Max Chernin (Apple TV+’s Dickinson, and Netflix’s The Week Of ), heads to the SAFE Credit Union Performing Arts Center in May. broadwaysacramento.com

BerryFest

May 10–11 Strawberry jalapeño burgers? Strawberry mango salsa? Strawberry malasada doughnuts? BerryFest is back in full force for the first time since the pandemic, and that’s sweet music to our taste buds. What started as a fruit-forward farmers’ market has over the years burgeoned into a full weekend of pageantry paying homage to everyone’s favorite juicy ruby berry. And after about a decade in Placer County, the Mother’s Day weekend strawberry festival is moving to the Yolo County Fairgrounds in Woodland this year, marking the occasion with a “Coming Back with Country” theme. Six entertainment stages will feature everything from local bands (playing country, of course) to cooking demos hosted by Michael Marks (aka Your Produce Man), as well as booth after booth after booth overflowing with the sweetest strawberries California has to offer. Also look for roaming cowboy entertainers, a kids’ carnival area, a new classic car show and a rodeo in the fairgrounds arena. berryfest.org

Sting

May 28 This spring will see an Englishman in Yuba County. More than 15 years since last taking the stage as part of a trio act, Sting is giving it a new go with his “3.0” tour, which includes a stop at Wheatland’s Hard Rock Live. “I’ve worked with these big seven, eight-piece bands, and it’s a bit like driving a Bentley. It kind of drives itself, and it’s comfortable,” Sting told Billboard. “So I decided I would put myself out of my comfort zone in order to get something on the back end that wasn’t guaranteed—a risk, if you like.” With drummer Chris Maas and longtime guitarist Dominic Miller in tow, the former frontman of The Police will perform stripped-down versions of many of the greatest hits from throughout his nearly five-decade career, like “Every Breath You Take,” “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You,” “Message in a Bottle,” “All This Time” and “Roxanne”—which, fun fact, became The Police’s breakout song, thanks in part to prescient airplay by UC Davis’ radio station KDVS. hardrockhotelsacramento.com

Marysville Peach Festival

July 18–19 The Marysville Peach Festival turns perfectly ripe this summer as it marks its 25th outing. During this two-day milestone celebration, look for juicy traditions like the peachy pancake breakfast, peach pie eating contest and 5K run and walk, as well as rows and rows of themed treats to sink your teeth into (last year’s food winners included peach-pie-filled churros from Churros Daisy, peach cobbler from Jen & G’s and peach parfaits from Sodaro Orchards, whose namesake family started this peachy community party in 1999). But be sure not to sleep on the mounds and mounds of fresh peaches on hand, from firm Summerset to creamy white to the must-get yellow O’Henry. And don’t sleep in—the earlier you arrive the better, as an annual turnout of 25,000 peach-loving pilgrims will once again be competing for the sweetest bites. marysvillepeachfest.com

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