Night & Day Events

4 Thursday
This year’s Sesame Street Live tour focuses on a message that many children understand quite intuitively: “If you have friends, you can do anything!” Nobody has a better sense of this underlying truth than the kids who have no friends, the ones who lie awake at night certain that other kids with more friends probably manage to evade household chores and get dessert without eating dinner first. Fortunately, Sesame Street Live has another take on the matter. The story of Elmo and Zoe’s friend club — which initially admits only monsters with orange or red fur but eventually opens up to welcome grouches, honkers, and the rest — demonstrates how much more fun everyone can have by including instead of excluding. Elmo and Zoe even begin admitting people who speak other languages. Sesame Street Live costs $9 to $15 per ticket and starts at 7 p.m. at Kemper Arena, 1800 Genessee. For more information, call 816-513-4020.

5 Friday
Tonight’s opening at the Joseph Nease Gallery unveils the sculpture work of Shaun Cassidy. Kansas Citians might think that because Cassidy has two sculptures on permanent display in town, they needn’t to rush to see the exhibit. After all, Cassidy’s work is here to be seen anytime, right? It’s actually not that simple. His sculpture on the grounds of the Cedar Creek development in Olathe is located at Hidden Lake Park. But Hidden Lake Park is hidden, and trying to find the snow-covered mulch trail to the sculpture can be a challenge. Anyone with a notion of looking for it can obtain guidance from kind yet discouraging Cedar Creek information-desk attendants, who hand out maps generously while uttering warnings such as “You’ll never find it.” Tonight’s opening affords viewers the opportunity not only to meet Cassidy but also to see a number of his works at a distinct address — 1819 Central — without that lost-in-the-woods feeling. For more information, call 816-421-2166.

6 Saturday
Today is the first day of the rest of your life. And tonight is the first night of The Last Night of Ballyhoo at the Jewish Community Center, 5801 W. 115th Street. A play by the author of Driving Miss Daisy, this story takes place in Atlanta in December 1939. While most of the city is ablaze with the premiere of Gone With the Wind, Atlanta’s Jewish community is busy getting ready for Ballyhoo, a social event where German Jews could meet, often with the hope of finding someone to marry. Asked to write something in honor of the Olympics in Atlanta, playwright Alfred Uhry chose this set-up because the movie premiere was the last time Atlanta had been in the spotlight and, as he told Lifestyles magazine, “Hitler had just marched into Poland, and I thought, ‘What a wonderful setting, Hitler at one end and Scarlett O’Hara at the other.'” The show is at 8 p.m.; ticket prices range from $10 to $14. For more information, call 913-327-8073.

7 Sunday
This morning at 10, Oscar L. Hampton III of the U.S. Department of Labor speaks on the commonly cited offense of Driving While Black, or DWB, at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church, 4501 Walnut. Speaking out on such matters is not new to Hampton; he began his legal career working for the Equal Opportunity Commission in St. Louis in 1986, and as a high school student he participated in desegregating the Center School District in Kansas City, Missouri. Hampton says he has been stopped for DWB in predominantly white neighborhoods. This morning’s lecture should reveal whether the situation is any better in Kansas City. For more information, call 816-523-7666.

8 Monday
The Grand Emporium, 3832 Main, gets down to the nitty gritty on Monday nights, when the Rural Grit Happy Hour brings acoustic country and blues acts to the mic. Before the place fills up, loyal Rural Grit devotees huddle around the bar and start to fill the front rows of seats; at 6 p.m. the terse and bearded Brother Ike provides an entertaining free-for-all of between-song banter (he’s been known to say things like “If that wasn’t a good enough written song for you, you’re an idiot”). It takes a few Mondays to catch up with the inside jokes exchanged between the stage and the seating, but the reward for persistence is some humble, old-school blues on washboards and harmonicas. For more information, call 816-531-1504.

9 Tuesday
Although the name of today’s Martin Luther King Celebration luncheon is Economic Ju$tice, it is only to be expected that a program including the Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr. is unlikely to be free. But lunch is included in the $25 tab. The event, which starts at 11:30 a.m. at the Marriott Downtown, 200 W. 12th Street, welcomes a special guest from the Cesar Chavez Foundation — probably a member of the Chavez family — along with representatives from local organizations such as the Black Chamber, the Hispanic Chamber, the Korean Chamber, and the American Indian Council. For more information, call 816-920-7774.

10 Wednesday
The Swope Murder Trial, which took place in the early 1900s, is Kansas City’s own legendary unsolved mystery. If Thomas Swope really died of a stroke, then a bizarre set of coincidences made his niece and nephew look awfully suspicious. Swope’s assigned executor just happened to die within two days of Swope’s death, and a month later, a typhoid outbreak hit nine family members, killing Swope’s nephew. But Swope’s niece was untouched by the epidemic, as was her husband, who happened to be the doctor of the household. Conclusive evidence of foul play has yet to be discovered. Historian and author Debra Parson discusses the case at Borders, 9108 Metcalf in Overland Park, at 7 p.m. For more information, call 913-642-3642.