A Torah scholar, mother, touring musician, frontwoman for Girls in Trouble, and composer of the performance piece A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff: That's Portland writer Alicia Jo Rabins. Joshua James Amberson writes of her latest, Divinity School, "Rabins clearly lives many different lives. These competing forces result in poems that place the practical and the metaphysical side by side. Think buying toilet paper and boxes of crackers at the grocery store, then reading about the prophetic threat of natural disasters on ancient tablets in a climate-controlled basement. Elsewhere, prophets get oral sex instruction manuals and unicorns-in-training drop acid." Rabins reads Sunday at Powell's on Hawthorne.

At Portland Playhouse, season eight opens with Idris Goodwin's How We Got On, a hip-hop musical that is much larger than its catchy conceit, reports Rebecca Waits: "How We Got On takes us through a pivotal time in the history of music—a new, empowering cultural identity, and the advent of commercially available synths, drum machines, tape recorders, and boomboxes," she writes. "Fighting both personal and societal demons, [the play's teenage heroes] push through high school and after-school jobs to hammer away at an exciting collaboration. What follows is a catchy, fresh, and unique journey through ego, self-doubt, identity, and inspiration—a keyhole view into a place in time that playwright Goodwin didn't want to be lost to history or white-washed in its telling." Bonus: It stars Post5's Ithica Tell in a role it sounds like she was born to play.

Imported from New York by BoomArts, Adrienne Truscott's Asking For It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy & Little Else brings its aim of reclaiming rape jokes to Portland. "The title of the show might suggest a lewd and provocative piece that skewers rape culture," writes reviewer Katie Pelletier. "And it is. But not in the way you'd think. Truscott lands a sophisticated discourse on the subject through an intelligent, vulnerable stand-up set that is very, very funny." Truscott's final performances are slated for this weekend.

Plus! You should read Rookie! Taking Jean-Michel Basquiat's name in vain! Quick hits and drunk jokes at the All Jane Comedy Fest! Even more riot grrrl art at PNCA!