Sat. Jan. 23

It's Surrealist Night at the Somerville Armory for the Arts. That is, it's a trip back to the heyday of the '20s and '30s with your host Roger Miller (Mission of Burma, Alloy Orchestra, etc.) What you'll do tonight, Sat. Jan. 23: Learn and play riotous mind-bending games that were developed by Andre Breton and his co-conspirators 70, 80 years ago. Miller will explain and lead the games to kick off the event, and he'll also DJ - providing a surrealistic soundtrack to the evening (we're guessing some Stockhausen, Glass, Eno, Cage, Virgil Thomson) - and handpick a variety of beers (surreal beers?) to be made available for gameplaying consumption.
One of these games is Exquisite Corpse, also the name of one of Miller's musical entities. Exquisite Corpse is derived from a word game Benton developed, the basic Exquisite Corpse drawing game (advanced drawing skills are not required), the Dream Game, and other varieties of surrealist word games. The wonder of these games is the unexpected juxtapositions that occur, creating amazingly synchronistic sequences and unexpected meanings and connections. The games require 3-4 people (up to 6 in some cases), so there will be a number of tables with different games going on simultaneously. After explaining the games, Miller will stroll the tables, making sure the simple but sometimes oddly confusing rules are followed.

Says Miller, "I have played [the Dream Game] many times, and it's always fun as all get out! The greatest virtue of these games is that they are not at all competitive. A person who is a brilliant artist may interact with a more naive drawer to produce a brilliant collective work. It's all about the collective work."

Tickets: $8. It's the Armory's Cafe, and the capacity is 52.
Starts at 7:30.

191 Highland Ave., Somerville, 617-718-2191 www.brownpapertickets.com