Lite + Brite: 50 Gently Used Austin Events 11/14

Hello, what’s up, and welcome to the Lite + Brite newsletter.

These are the final days of 2025’s Austin Studio Tour, so if you didn’t make it out last weekend, now is your chance! Honestly, even if you did make it out last weekend, you can’t have seen more than a fraction of the 700+ showcasing artists, so you can have a completely different experience this time out. If you’re not sure where to start, check out our guide to Austin Studio Tour here. Some of our personal targets for this weekend include Object Solutions at dadaLab; all the festivities at Almost Real Things, Springdale General, and Bolm Studios; the panel discussions and official Govalle Cultural District proclamation ceremony at the Museum of Human Achievement; the French flea market and brunch at Justine’s; and whatever else y’all recommend. Reply to this email or pop your favorites in the Lite + Brite Discord. 

If we weren’t so fully booked with Austin Studio Tour, we would be attending Manual Cinema’s performance. This Chicago-based troupe does extraordinary art with shadow puppets, and we make a point of seeing them every time they come to Austin. The Texas Tribune Festival is this weekend, including a free day on Saturday, if you want to see political figures like Beto O’Rourke, Alexander Vindman, and—most crucially to my own life—the editorial director of the NYTimes Games section. Home Slice has a contest for H.O.E.S (Hands On an Eggplant Sub). Also goth drag vampires, Games Y’all’s big annual arcade Round-Up, italo dance parties, BYO synth soundbaths, + a festival centered around a pile of laundry. We wish we had time to do it all!

If you’re not already a subscriber to this newsletter and you want to be, click here. We do one newsletter a week, usually on Fridays, plus a bonus edition around the start of each month. If you enjoy this newsletter, please support us by contributing to our Patreon and by forwarding this email to your friends who enjoy things like listening to music and leaving the house sometimes.

Let’s do fun stuff!

—Leila + Brian
liteandbriteatx.com

WHAT WE’VE BEEN UP TO

Predictably, Leila spent most of last weekend at the Texas Book Festival, soaking in wisdom from so many bestselling, award-winning, and generally brilliant authors. In between book fest sessions, we made it to a handful of Austin Studio Tour stops including the always wonderful Grackle House which had live jazz, screenprinting, and two artist installations including a makeshift jungle in the shower of the house. This weekend we’re going HARD on the studio tour—hopefully we’ll see you at some of the stops in our guide.

This week’s episode of Brian’s radio show No Humans Allowed was all about dogs—the digital kind, obviously, so as to not provoke his allergies. Give it a listen for an hour’s worth of pup-forward tracks.

EVENTS WE’RE EYEING

Friday 11/14

Saturday 11/15

  • Passport to the World Festival at Austin Central Library
    Learn about our sister cities w/global food, dance, + fashion
  • Carnival O’ Pizza at Home Slice SoCo
    Pizza-themed carnival w/eating + sub hardbody contests
  • Hynafol Spectator Day at Sherwood Forest
    “Immersive medieval fantasy experience” w/large-scale LARPing
  • The 4th Witch at McCullough Theater
    Macbeth retelling w/shadow puppets + live action silhouettes
  • The Games Y’all Roundup at Kick Butt Coffee
    Play new indie games, hear game-themed live music + DJ
  • Failfest at Failspace
    “Fail forward” w/puppets, DJ, live music, blanket fort, “pile of laundry”
  • Electrowhip at Elysium
    DJs spinning electro + dark genres w/vendors + photo booth
  • Cycles of Resilience at Eastside Pedal Pushers
    Watch clips from forthcoming ATX Black history film w/Q+A
  • Austin Opera Festival at KMFA Studios
    Live performances of new operas written in central TX
  • WordplayFest at Coldtowne
    Live hip hop, puns, storytelling, + improv workshops
  • Larry McMurtry’s Cowboy Cavalcade at Fallout
    “Touching and at times comedic tribute to the American west”
  • In Transit Film Festival at Austin Beerworks Sprinkle Valley
    Watch films about “movement, migration, change + transformation”
  • Organizing Fair at Double Trouble
    Unions + co-ops organize to raise awareness + community
  • Texas Roller Derby Hosts San Diego at the Buda Thunderdome
    Two roller derby teams play 3 matches mashing up rules
  • Austin Pickle Festival at St Elmo Brewing Co.
    Pickle-themed vendors + “pickle-flavored everything”
  • Pirate Night at Tiny Minotaur
    “No blaggards or bilge-rats allowed” at this pirate costume party
  • Austin Studio Tour at venues throughout Austin
    Artists across Austin open up their studios + hold wacky activities
  • Art Bus Tour at the Carver Museum
    Ride in a bus w/beverages + art fans to see art across town
  • Mosaic Fest at the Mosaic Workshop
    “World-renowned mosaic artists,” workshops, vendors, art talks
  • Surreal Luck at Luck Ranch
    “Dimension-bending neon art experience” w/art installs + live music
  • Texas Tribune Festival on Congress Ave.
    Big names in national + state politics descend upon Austin for talks
  • 44th Madrigal Dinner at the Texas Union
    “Renaissance-style comedy play” w/orchestra, + dinner served
  • Barrio Daze at 3202 Bruce Drive
    Latino comedian sends up current climate w/multiple characters
  • Love You, Moon at 3615 Oak Springs Drive
    Site-specific modern dance performance inspired by the moon
  • Las Frutos de la Muerte at Crashbox
    Play that entails puppetry, movement, + Guatemalan storytelling
  • Caesar & Antony & Cleopatra at dadaLab
    This is basically Kill Bill 1+2 but for historical Shakespeare
  • Ethereal Horror Fest at AFS
    Film fest w/horror screenings + industry panels
  • Dora’s Gently Used Dreams Store at the Vortex
    “Immersive, one-woman performance” about dreams + resilience
  • (weekly thru 11/29) Goat Yoga at Jester King
    “We call out to the beasts of the land to come forth and JOIN US!”

Sunday 11/16

Monday 11/17

Tuesday 11/18

Wednesday 11/19

Thursday 11/20

NHA258
Digital Dog Catcher

It’s a doggy dog world out there, so we’re busting out an hour of synthpop, italo, + electro all about pups. Adjust your woofers + tweeters, make a hydrant in MS Paint, + press play.

Stream Digital Dog Catcher

Tracklist
Cat Stevens – Was Dog a Doughnut
Dog+night – Reuben’s New Digs
Catz ’n Dogz – There ft. James Yuill
Berny – Playing with Dogs
Mr. Master – A Dog in the Night
Angelo Badalamenti – The Black Dog Runs at Night
Runaway – Dead Dog Dance (Simoncino Remix)
Rex the Dog – Do You Feel What I Feel ft. Jamie McDermott
Saint Pepsi – Look at That Dog
Eyeliner – Toy Dog
George Clinton – Atomic Dog
Dance Reaction – Honey Puppy Is My Name
Pet Shop Boys – I Want a Dog

No Humans Allowed is Brian Blackout’s award-winning, weekly robots-themed radio show on internet station KPISS.fm. Machine vibes 4 machines. Songs for robots, androids, mandroids, cyborgs, AIs, cylons, skinjobs, roombas, wifi routers, smart devices, anything colored Bondi blue, and virtual assistants. Humans not required. Broadcasts live every Wednesday at 6pm CT on kpiss.fm, with over 200 episodes now streamable in the archives on topics like and Beach Simulations, Roomba dance parties, undersea adventures + Cyber Texas.

PATREON THANKS

A huge thank-you to our Patreon subscribers James Gray, Emily Heddleson, Andrew Creswell, Robert B., Roman Gonzalez, Nick Ivons, Molly Fonseca, Lilly Ettinger, Michael Sales, Zach, Gino Scaramuzza, Erica Speegle, Jarrett Holtz, Thomas Refferson, Bones Malones, Katie Green, Christina Jue, Colleen MB, Alexander Freed, Kristen Backor, and Timon A. We’re deeply grateful for your support, which allows us to do things like “pay our Mailchimp fee” and “spend hours researching Austin events when technically we should be working.”

If you’d like to support us on Patreon and get access to exclusive member-only benefits, you may do so here.

SOCIALS

Recent weeks found us attending a dance party in a storage unit, marching in a Greek mythology-themed Halloween parade thrown by a bat crew and a rat crew, and watching a troupe of gigantic leftist puppets from New England. Follow Lite + Brite on Instagram to keep up with our adventures. We’re now on Bluesky too. Yay federation! And come chat with us and the rest of the L+B community on our Discord server (where we sometimes post stuff early too).

ABOUT US

How do we choose which events to feature?

Honestly, it’s pretty random. We might include anything in Austin that we, personally, would conceivably want to go to, generally excluding normal concerts, comedy shows, and movie showtimes because there are many other good resources for finding those. (We especially recommend Showlist for live music, The Darker Side of Austin for goth and metal stuff, Concept Animals’ ATX Art for You for gallery openings + artist talks, ATX Theatre for plays, and the 60+ Weirdest Things in Austin for exactly what it sounds like). This list is by no means exhaustive; it’s just stuff that caught our eye this week. If you have an event that you want us to consider including, send it over.

Who are we?

We are Leila + Brian. We make this newsletter. We do our own events, most often No Lights No Lycra, + also BYOT, a party where we share very good YouTubes (here’s a playlist from the last one). We go very hard seeing bands at SxSW (here are playlists of our favorites from 2025). We once got called “local Austin couple” by KXAN. We do some other stuff here and there. We love going out to creative events in Austin, and we want you to join us. Visit us at liteandbriteatx.com, and support us on Patreon if you like what we do.

SEE YOU NEXT WEEK, CHAMPIONS

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