What To Do This Weekend

Celebrate St. Patrick's Day by getting out and being social. Many bars and restaurants have drink and food specials and themed activities, and downtown Jeffersonville, Indiana, is hosting a festive pub crawl. You can even participate in a virtual running race. This weekend also marks the beginning of the Kentucky Derby Festival activities, with Festival Unveiled tonight at Mellwood Arts Center.

See below for picks for weekend entertainment and activities, from plays to music to macarons!

• The Kentucky Derby Festival's kick-off event of the season, Festival Unveiled, gives attendees their first look at the 2018 festival, from meeting this year's poster artists to purchasing 2018 merchandise to the Annual Four Roses Rose Julep Recipe Contest, and more. (Event is sold out.)

• Watch Kentucky and Southern Indiana’s top spellers in a suspenseful competition at the Kentucky Derby Festival Spelling Bee. The overall champion gets to ride on the Winner’s Float in the Republic Bank Pegasus Parade.

• Experience a swirling, fast-paced, surreal adventure in sleeplessness at Looking for Lilith Theatre Company's production of Diana Grisanti's The Patron Saint of Losing Sleep at the MeX Theater at the Kentucky Center.

• Star Wars Day at the New Albany Floyd County Public Library will feature a viewing of "Journey To Tataouine," a documentary by David West Reynolds (who will hold a brief Q&A session afterward), which explores the lost Star Wars desert filming locations in Tataouine, Tunisia. Featuring rare video footage, the documentary shows the original Star Wars filming locations, as well as set décor and props that had been lying out in the sun, abandoned for two decades. There will also be crafts, games, and activities, and an opportunity to meet Stormtroopers, bounty hunters, clone commanders, and more. Feel free to dress up in Star Wars attire. Reynolds' Star Wars exhibit will be on display at the library all month.

• Taste delectable French macarons from various bakeries while also supporting local charities in celebration of Macaron Day Louisville. Just mention Macaron Day and you'll receive a complimentary macaron at participating locations, while supplies last. This year participating bakeries will be donating a portion of proceeds from the day to Dare to Care Food Bank.

• See the famous and familiar characters of Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf come to life at the Brown Theatre, with a cast of puppets created by and manipulated by the Louisville-based Squallis Puppeteers, in collaboration with the Louisville Orchestra.

• As part of the PNC Broadway in Louisville series at the Kentucky Center and based on the hit film, the musical School of Rock follows Dewey Finn, a wannabe rock star posing as a substitute teacher who turns a class of straight-A students into a guitar-shredding, bass-slapping, mind-blowing rock band.

• Celebrate St. Patrick's Day at several locations: Downtown Jeffersonville, Indiana, will host the St. Patrick's Day pub crawl with drink and food specials and live entertainment at several of the locations, as well as street performers if weather allows. There will also be a St. Patrick's Day Tent Party at The Irish Rover; Molly Malone's Highlands will offer St. Paddy's Day specials, featuring live music by The Derby Boys; you can get SHAMROCKED! at the bar crawl at 4th Street Live!, featuring live music all day by The Juice Box Heroes and DJ Travisty; burn some energy with the virtual Blarney Stone 5k/8k/10k/Half Marathon; and much more.

• Meet real neuroscientists and neurosurgeons, and visit more than 20 interactive stations that explore the wonders of the nervous system at Brain Days at the Kentucky Science Center.