MUSIC

The National:

THEATRE-pop duo Josephine Sillars + The Manic Pixie Dreams embark on their first UK tour this month following a busy summer schedule that saw Sillars and her band play 10 festivals. Supported by Edinburgh-based feminist perfume company REEK, the tour, which begins just as new single Down is released, begins at Perth’s Green Door (Oct 27) before continuing in November with dates at Elgin’s Drouthy Cobbler (Nov 4), Edinburgh’s Sneaky Pete’s (Nov 5), Glasgow’s Hug and Pint (Nov 7) and Aberdeen’s Drummond’s (Nov 11).

A HUGE hit at Summerhall during the Fringe, Club La La’s mass-karaoke extravaganza Massaoke, above, returns to the venue for a Halloween Party (Oct 27) before their Battle Royal in November (24) and Christmas Party (Dec 22). Expect giant balloons, glitter and a live band playing anthems from the 1980s onwards.

The Dissection Room, Summerhall, Edinburgh, 9pm to 1am, £8, £6 students. www.summerhall.co.uk www.massaoke.com

SCOTLAND’S longest-running indie music website Jockrock.org celebrates 20 years with a live spectacular at Glasgow’s Stereo (Oct 20) from favourites Ballboy, Mitchell Museum, David MacGregor from Kid Canaveral and Stoor – “the best band you’ve never heard”.

Oct 20, Stereo, Glasgow, 7pm, £10 + booking fee. Tickets: stereocafebar.com www.jockrock.org

THEATRE

The National:

AUGMENTED reality theatre show Dragons of Drummohr, above, runs from Oct 11 to Oct 29 in Drummohr House and Grounds.

Among the goblin hideouts, fairy settlements, light installations and sculptures, audiences will help the Dragon Protection League track down the beasts using the Dragon Matrix augmented reality app.

Presented by Vision Mechanics, a company with a history of creating large-scale, immersive works, Dragons of Drummohr is an adventure spectacle that combines storytelling and gaming. The Dragon Bus takes audiences from the Prestongrange Museum Visitors Centre to the site.

Oct 11 to 29 (not Mondays), Drummohr House and Grounds, near Musselburgh, 6pm, 6.30pm, 7pm, 7.30pm, 8pm, 8.30pm, £8 to £14, family prices and concessions available. Tickets: bit.ly/DragonsDrummohrr www.dragonmatrix.org.uk

A PLAYFUL show without words, At A Stretch is Melanie Jordan and Caitlin Skinner’s innovative LGBT love story for audiences ages six and up. With choreography from Lucy Wild (responsible for much of the dynamism of Adura Onashile’s Expensive Sh*t) and a thrilling soundtrack from Susan Bear (co-composer for Julia Taudevin’s Blow Off), At A Stretch heads to Inverness following success at the Fringe.

Oct 28, Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, 7pm, £11, £7 family, £6.50 student/under 26. www.eden-court.co.uk

ART AND DESIGN

The National:

CAPTURED State brings together six artists from the Republic of Macedonia to exhibit in Scotland for the first time.

Asking some of the key questions concerning artists and wider communities across present-day Europe, the group includes Igor Toshevski, an artist whose work addresses freedom of expression, the ownership of public space, and ideas of the public commons.

As well as Obsessive Possessive Aggression – the name of a long-running artistic collaboration between Denis Saraginovski and Slobodanka Stevceska – there’s work by photographer and installation artist Verica Kovacevska that explores ideas of home and the role of temporary housing after the 1963 Skopje earthquake, and Ephemerki, above right, a performance art duo who open the exhibition with a live work on Oct 6 at 6.30pm.

Oct 7 to Nov 30, Sciennes Gallery, Summerhall, Edinburgh, free. www.summerhall.co.uk

HANDMADE Edinburgh is returning to the Royal Mile at the end of the month for their second three-day craft and design event.

The event offers a nice opportunity to scout for a couple of special festive gifts while enjoying the range of ceramics (such as Juliet Macleod’s sea-influenced pottery, above), sumptuous textiles, metalwork, jewellery and work from glass-makers such as Carrie Paxton.

Oct 27 to Oct 29, The Hub, Royal Mile, Edinburgh, 10am to 6pm, £5, £4 concs per day or £12, £10 concs for three days.Tickets: bit.ly/HandmadeEdinburgh www.handmadeinbritain.co.uk

COMEDY

The National:

THE fastest-selling performer at this year’s International Glasgow Comedy Festival, Susie McCabe, above, is not long into her first full-length Scottish tour with Let’s Get Physical, a show about giving up the fags and sausage rolls in pursuit of shifting pounds, getting less grumpy and finding zen in the supermarket.

A regular compere at The Stand and Jongleurs, McCabe visits Glasgow’s Stand tomorrow, Inverness Mad Hatters (Oct 21), Aberdeen Tunnels (Oct 27), Falkirk Behind The Wall (Oct 28), Dundee Gardyne Theatre (Nov 2), Crieff Meadow Inn (Nov 17), Glasgow Platform (Nov 24) and Edinburgh Stand (Nov 26).

www.facebook.com/susiemccabecomedy

A MAN who likely doesn’t mind feeling the autumn wind birl about him, habitual kilt-wearer Craig Hill tours the UK this month.

And if he seems to some Fringe-goers to have been around forever (albeit sporting a wide range of different kilt designs), he’s getting there: in August he sold out his latest Fringe show, making it the 18th time he’s done so.

Rounding off a year that also saw him making his debut at Glastonbury, Hill takes that hit show, titled Someone’s Gonna Get Kilt, to Castle Douglas Catstrand (Oct 12), Rutherglen Town Hall (Oct 13), Dunfermline Carnegie Hall (Oct 20), Crieff Strathearn Artspace (Oct 21), Cumbernauld Theatre (Nov 17), Falkirk Town Hall (Nov 18), Peebles Eastgate Arts (Nov 24), Langholm Buccleuch Centre (Nov 25), Kirkcaldy Adam Smith Theatre (Jan 26), Aberdeen Lemon Tree (Jan 27), Musselburgh Brunton Theatre (Feb 2), Livingston Howden Park (Feb 9) and Stirling Macrobert Arts Centre (Feb 16).

www.mrcraighill.com

FESTIVALS

The National:

KITE & Trumpet, a festival of Polish art for children, is a series of workshops, talks and performances running from Oct 12 to 22 at Edinburgh’s Summerhall. It includes Tuliluli (Oct 18 and 19), a soft, sensory theatrical installation for the under fours, King Matt The First (above, Oct 15), Figure Theatre’s puppet performance exploration of entering adulthood for ages seven and up, and Billy Fogg (Oct 14), a shadow theatre show “for everyone who is or used to be 10 years old, who maybe lost their cat, hamster or parrot and wanted to outsmart death.”

www.summerhall.co.uk

THE Festival of Politics runs at the Scottish Parliament from Oct 19 to 22 with three days of events on Brexit, the Arab Spring, Black History Month, mental health, drugs, relationships and rebellion, as well as talks by authors including Labour MP Harriet Harman (Oct 20), economist Evan Davis (Oct 21) and George Monbiot (Oct 20), whose new book Out Of The Wreckage offers a vision of how to engage people in an age of system failure and anti-politics.

www.festivalofpolitics.scot

CREATIVE ageing festival Luminate aims to help older people access the benefits to health and wellbeing that engagement with the arts brings. Running throughout the month with events from Shetland to the Borders, its huge programme features events on Muriel Spark and Edwin Morgan, films, workshops, music and performance, including events aimed at people living with dementia.

www.luminatescotland.org

TALKS

The National:

CURRENTLY making her debut solo exhibition in Scotland at the DCA, Canadian artist Kelly Richardson uses CGI, animation and sound to create hyper-real representations of space travel and a possible future planet Earth ravaged by over-exploitation, above. Head of exhibitions Eoin Dara leads a guided tour through the gallery spaces (where Richardson’s work is on show until Nov 26) in pursuit of answers to some of the questions she poses.

Oct 18, Dundee Contemporary Arts, 6pm, free but ticketed. Tel: 01382 909 900. www.dca.org.uk

USING Cinderella’s favourite vegetable as a prop, Woodlands Community Cafe discuss food waste, including what to do with the leftovers from Halloween pumpkin carving.

Oct 29, Woodlands Community Garden, West Princes Street, Glasgow, 2pm, £5. Tickets: bit.ly/WoodlandsPumpkin

OCTOBER 19 will have been marked in the diaries of many Philip Pullman fans for months, as it’s the publication date of La Belle Sauvage, book one of the Book Of Dust, a companion trilogy that runs parallel to His Dark Materials.

Bookshops across Scotland are putting on special events, including a midnight opening of Waterstones in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow.

www.philip-pullman.com www.waterstones.com/events