Looking for something to do on Friday? The Straight’s got you covered. Here are 44 events happening in or around Vancouver on Friday, May 11.

CONCERTS

Canadian roots singer-songwriter-guitarist and member of Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, Colin Linden, plays the ANZA Club.

American rock legends the Eagles play the second of two nights at Rogers Arena, with guests JD & the Straight Shot.

Connecticut indie-rock band MGMT plays the Orpheum Theatre, performing tunes from new album Little Dark Age.

Lazy Syrup Orchestra, I M U R, and Malcolm Jack perform at the Ponderosa 2018 Lineup Launch Party at the Rickshaw Theatre.

Coastal Jazz presents New York jazz pianist Tardo Hammer and his trio in the first of two nights at Frankie's Jazz Club.

Local rock band Muscle and Gall performs at a benefit for Water Shortage South Africa at Railway Stage and Beer Café, with guests Tokyo Bleu, Quantum Council, and the Belief Experiment.

BENEFITS

Hand-sewn blankets from Mi Soo Park will be on sale at Visualspace Gallery, with partial proceeds to support BC Children’s Hospital.

ETCETERA

Opening of the Richmond Night Market, which features dozens of food stalls, a dinosaur park, paddle boats, a baby playground, music, martial arts, and dancing.

SPORTS

The Vancouver Whitecaps take on the Houston Dynamo in Major League Soccer action at BC Place Stadium.

FORUMS

Brigadier-General Nic Stanton, acting commander of the 3rd Canadian Division, addresses the Canadian army's strategic engagement plan and forthcoming deployments at SFU. 

KIDS' STUFF

CircusWest presents its newest theatrical circus creation inspired by the impossible worlds of MC Escher at the PNE Garden Auditorium.

TAKE ACTION

Mobilization Against War and Occupation presents a rally and petition against U.S. military action in Syria in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

COMEDY

Director/actor Kevin Smith and actor/radio host Ralph Garman share the mike at the Commodore for Hollywood Babble-On, which takes a comedic look at showbiz news while biting down on the Hollywood hand that feeds them.

Join comedian Alicia Tobin and guests Randee Neumeyer, Aaron Read, and Charlie Demers for an event at Little Mountain Gallery that is part comedy show, part art class.

American comedian Chad Daniels performs the second of three nights of standup at the Comedy Mix.

Comedy benefit for Little Mountain Gallery renovations features standup by John Cullen, Erica Sigurdson, Chris Griffin, Katie-Ellen Humphries, Ross Dauk, Fatima Dhowre, Ryan Williams, Jane Stanton, and Abdul Aziz.

Canadian comedian Ron Josol performs the second of three nights of standup at Yuk Yuk's Comedy Club.

DANCE

Ballet BC concludes its 32nd season with a program of choreography by Cayetano Soto ("Beginning After") and Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar ("Bill") at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

Flamenco Rosario In-Studio Performance at Centro Flamenco features Nanako Aramaki, one of Flamenco Rosario’s long-time company dancers, and Yurie Kaneko, a recent graduate who has been dancing professionally with Flamenco Rosario since 2013.

LITERARY

Join Sheila Heti and Gabor Maté for a discussion of Heti's new novel Motherhood at the Vancouver Film School Cafe.

MUSIC

United Voices and Chamber Orchestra's Spring concert at Dunbar Ryerson United Church features music from Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem and Morten Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna. 

THEATRE

Alberta Aboriginal Performing Arts and Punctuate! Theatre present a performance at the Cultch of Bears, a comically dark, unapologetically political play about pipelines.

ITSAZOO presents the Western Canadian premiere of David James Brock’s drama WET, set during the height of Canada’s involvement in the Afghanistan War, at the Russian Hall.

Pacific Theatre and Northern Lights Collective present Almost, Maine, a play about the residents of a town who find themselves falling in and out of love in the strangest ways, at Coquitlam's Evergreen Cultural Centre.

Midtwenties Theatre Society presents the world premiere of the original coming-of-age drama Molly Misbegotten at Havana Theatre.

Louise Porter stars in Shirley Valentine, Willy Russell’s one-woman comedy about a bored housewife who is offered a trip to Greece by her best friend, at Deep Cove Shaw Theatre.

The Arts Club Theatre Company presents Mamma Mia!, a feel-good musical featuring the music of ABBA, at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage.

The tale of how Narnia and Middle Earth came to be is chronicled in Tolkien, a new play by artistic director Ron Reed at Pacific Theatre.

GALLERIES

Emily Carr in Dialogue with Mattie Gunterman is a new exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery featuring the paintings of Carr with 48 photographs by U.S.-born photographer Gunterman.

Polygon Gallery's inaugural exhibition, N. Vancouver, explores how a specific locale can be reflected through existing and newly commissioned artworks by artists from Vancouver and beyond.

Living, Building, Thinking: art & expression at the Vancouver Art Gallery uses the German Expressionist collection from the McMaster Museum of Art to explore the development of Expressionism in art from the early 19th century to the present day.

The Blue Hour at the Contemporary Art Gallery features photographs by Joi T. Arcand, Kapwani Kiwanga, Colin Miner, Grace Ndiritu, and Kara Uzelman.

MUSEUMS

In a Different Light: Reflecting on Northwest Coast Art at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC features more than 110 historical indigenous artworks and explores what we can learn from these works and how they relate to indigenous peoples’ relationships to their lands.

Haida Now: A Visual Feast of Innovation and Tradition at the Museum of Vancouver is guest-curated by Kwiaahwah Jones and features more than 450 works by carvers, weavers, photographers and print makers, collected as early as the 1890s.

The Lost Fleet at the Vancouver Maritime Museum investigates the unjust 1941 seizure of 1,200 Japanese-Canadian fishing vessels following the bombing of Pearl Harbour through a collection of historic photographs, models of Japanese-Canadian-built fishing boats, fishermen’s tools, and replica documents.

ATTRACTIONS

At the Bloedel Conservatory you can take in more than 200 free-flying exotic birds and 500 exotic plants and flowers.

Take a ride in an exterior glass elevator and get a 360° view of Metro Vancouver and the North Shore mountains at Vancouver Lookout.

The 22-hectare VanDusen Botanical Garden features over 255,000 plants from around the world, a restaurant, a garden shop, and a horticulture library.

The Vancouver Aquarium features almost 800 animal species in galleries ranging from Canada's Arctic to the Amazon rainforest.

Science World features hundreds of interactive exhibits in five permanent galleries, live science demonstrations and workshops, and giant movies in the Omnimax Theatre.

MOVIES

The DOXA Documentary Film Festival runs until May 13 at various Vancouver venues. Screenings tonight include Nova Ami and Velcrow Ripper's Metamorphosis (above) at Vancity Theatre.

Free screening at Vancouver Public Library's Mount Pleasant Branch of the darkly comic drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Late-night screening at the Rio Theatre of first-time director Coralie Fargeat's acclaimed horror flick Revenge, starring Matilda Lutz.

Free afternoon screening of the animated kids' film Cars 3 at Vancouver Public Library's Renfrew branch.

For all the latest Metro Vancouver event announcements and updates follow @VanHappenings.