Music and comedy are a couple of artistic offerings for Halloween, reports HELEN MUSA in her latest Arts in the City column.

In an evening of Halloween Classics, a string quartet from Phoenix Collective will serenade visitors by candlelight at the NGA’s James Fairfax Theatre on October 31. The repertoire includes everything from Tubular Bells (the theme from The Exorcist) to the prelude from Psycho and Danse Macabre by Saint-Saëns.

On the same theme, Ali Clinch is directing Trick or Treat, billed as a one-of-a-kind Halloween comedy journey into the unknown, where the Lightbulb Improv troupe performs an unscripted show with the audience’s chosen ending. The Courtyard Studio, October 31-November 2.

I Am a New Woman is a series of screen prints by Parliament House artist-in-residence Alison Alder. The show celebrates 12 women, Catherine Spence, CE Clark, Henrietta Dugdale, Emma Miller, Rose Scott, Louisa Lawson, Vida Goldstein, Laura Harris, Pearl Gibbs, Faith Bandler, and Pat Eatock, who campaigned for a more inclusive democracy. Level 1 of Parliament House, until October 2025. 

Margaret Hadfield’s oil paintings from her travels to the Southern Ocean and Dennis Mortimer’s series, The Ocean and Nothing, will be seen in a collaborative exhibition at Rusten House Art Centre, Queanbeyan, October 26-November 16. 

The Come Alive Festival, hosted by the National Library and the National Portrait Gallery, sees school and college students pick items from our museums and create their own piece of theatre to tell the story of the piece. This year’s festival has 10 schools presenting. Mill Theatre, Fyshwick, October 31-November 5. Inquiries to director Peter Wilkins, 0408 034373.

In Aetherial Realms: Landscapes of Light and Stillness, Kris Ancog presents a solo exhibition rooted in classical technique, where each piece is rendered in rich layers of paint to convey sunsets, mornings and aerial vistas. Aarwun Gallery, Nicholls, until December 3.

Ex-patriate Aussie comedian Monty Franklin, who has just played his newest show, Yeah Nah, to more than a million Americans across 40 states, will play the same show at the Canberra Theatre, November 5. 

Likely to pack out, Scottish master storyteller, historian, writer and broadcaster William Dalrymple’s The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World, will be at The Playhouse, November 4.