FASHION | The Clothing Show
If it would ever stop raining in this town, May would be the perfect time to bust out some fresh spring fashions. The Clothing Show is an annual must for those looking for original pieces from local designers and hard-to-find vintage fashions. In addition to its 300-strong vendors including Toronto faves like 69 Vintage, Culturshoc and Dirty Little Secret, this year the show has added Menswear and Eco sections. The Clothing Show is a great place to shop, check out runway shows, and find bargain prices on clothes, jewelry, and accessories for the coming season. Assuming the season ever arrives, that is. Runs til Sunday.
Better Living Centre, Exhibition Place, $ 8 advance, $10 at the door, Friday 3 pm - 9 pm, Saturday 11 am - 8 pm, Sunday 11 am - 6 pm

THEATRE | La Sangouine
A classic piece of Canadian theatre, la Sangouine has been an audience favourite since it debuted on the French-language station Radio Canada in 1971. The one-woman show was written by Antonine Maillet, who based the title character on an old washer-woman she knew from her hometown in rural Acadia. The loud-mouthed, quick-witted Sangouine immediately endeared herself with audiences for her acid-tongued observations about her wealthy employers and the raucous sense of humour with which she delivered the play's 16 monologues. Viola Léger has starred as the washerwoman since the play's beginning, which means that she's scrubbed the stage floor over 2000 times at theatres all over the world. English-speaking audiences were denied the pleasure of the play until its first translation in 1984, but Léger still hasn't gotten around to performing all the monologues in English and the new production by CanStage will see Léger's first-ever English performance of the monologue "The War." Runs til June 5.
Pleiades Theatre at the Berkeley Street Theatre, 26 Berkeley Street, Previews today and Saturday $16, Regular performances $37, Monday to Sunday 8 pm

PARTY | Heavy Pettying
Local filmmaker extraordinaire Scott Cudmore already has one weekly party over at Sweaty Betty's, but while Bring It On Home is a low-key Tuesday night jam, his new night at the Atlantic promises to be a bit a lot more rowdy. The Dundas West restaurant has already been scouted out by some of the city's savvy yet frugal gourmets, offering as it does menu items like pickled quail and "three feared things on a stick: crickets, frog legs, and jellyfish" at more than reasonable prices. Heavy Pettying threatens to completely spoil any high-class atmosphere the place may have, and Cudmore promises that people will be standing on chairs for drunken sing-a-longs to classic Michael Jackson ballads by the end of the night. Does jellyfish look any different that it did on the plate once you've vomited it up on Brock Street at 2 am?
The Atlantic, 1597 Dundas Street West, No Cover, 10 pm

PHOTOGRAPHY | CONTACT Photography Festival
Two weeks in, most of the gallery openings for the CONTACT Photography Festival have already popped their corks, but there are still a few shows worth checking out. It is the biggest photography festival in the world after all. The OCAD Photo Thesis Show at Yorkville's prestigious Drabinksy Gallery unveils the work of graduating students from the college's photography program, capping off another successful year of turning talented students into talented professional artists. Over at the Junction's Rebas Café and Gallery an exhibition called Two Artists' Truth examines the ease with which images can be altered in the digital age through the work of Toronto photographers Terri Dixon and Gail Pahwa.
OCAD Photo Thesis Show: Drabinsky Gallery, 114 Yorkville Avenue, 7 pm
Two Artists' Truth: Rebas Café and Gallery, 3289 Dundas Street West, 5 pm

BOOKS AND LIT | Hot Mess Magazine Launch Party
The creative kids at OCAD always have some kind of project on the go. Now that the school year's over, they're not content with crashing on their parents' couch for the next three weeks watching Labyrinth over and over with a bag of Cheetos, and instead are launching a new student-run magazine tonight. Hot Mess will feature the work of OCAD students from all years and disciplines and be distributed for free across campus and the surrounding area, adding yet another free arts publication to the Toronto media landscape, which can't be a bad thing. Tonight's launch will be a typical art student party, which means super cheap drinks, visual art on the walls, and some indie bands that are too obscure to even be listed on the event's flyer.
White House, 277.5 Augusta Ave., No Cover, 9 pm

FILM | Ryerson University Film Festival
Ryerson University is slowly taking over the downtown core, gobbling up real estate around Yonge and Dundas at a rate that would make a heartless condo developer proud. Its ever-expanding campus has coincided with its growing reputation as the country's premiere technical arts school, the centrepiece of which is its Image Arts Film Production Program. Each year the Ryerson Film Festival showcases the work of final-year students in the Film Production program, selling out screenings to audiences hungry for the next big Canadian talent. Twenty-four short films will be shown at the festival over the next three days, including Banana Girls, in which a team of jumpsuit-clad women battle the evil Terry Testosterone in a misogynist dystopian future. Nanoscience is a 15-minute mini-documentary that explores the applications of tiny technology, while Last Stop transforms a late-night Toronto subway platform into a Dante-esque portal to hell (which when you think about it isn't that much of a stretch). This year Ryerson has partnered with Ouat Media to choose two films for public distribution, meaning there's much more than a passing grade on the line for these budding filmmakers. Runs til Sunday.
Royal Cinema, 608 College Street, $10 per screening, $25 festival pass, Friday to Sunday 7 pm

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Photo: "Oscilloscope" by ronnie.yip, member of the blogTO Flickr Pool.