Make some history this weekend! You can also catch live dance, live theater...or watch movies online. See our list of free things to do here, and keep reading for five of the best ticketed events around town this weekend:

Mimesis Documentary Festival
Through Tuesday, August 10
Various Boulder locations and online
Tickets: Packages from $35 to $270
“Documentary is an impulse within the arts, something that exists within all art-making,” says Eric Coombs Esmail, director of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Documentary and Ethnographic Media, which is presenting Mimesis in collaboration with the Dairy Arts Center and the ATLAS Institute B2 Center for Media, Arts and Performance right now. The festival includes more than eighty films shown in various locations around Boulder, ranging from traditional documentaries to ethnographic, docu-fiction and experimental films. Get the complete schedule and find out more here.

The Noteworthy Life of Howard Barnes
Through Saturday, August 21, selected dates and times
Tickets: $20 to $30 at Ovation Tix
People’s Building, 9995 East Colfax Avenue, Aurora
Thanks to Forge Light Theatreworks, musical theater lives on in Aurora, where the company’s production of The Noteworthy Life of Howard Barnes opened August 6 at the People’s Building. It's the story of a man who becomes embedded in a musical and how he strives to get back to life as usual, where no one ever breaks into the old song and dance. Expect lots of laughs — and music, of course. Find a performance schedule and tickets here.

Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, ReFlect-ReClaim
Saturday, August 7, 7:30 p.m.
Arvada Center, 6901 Wadsworth Boulevard, Arvada
Tickets: $28 to $40 online
Live performance is back (for now), and Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, a cultural treasure, is back on the roomy Arvada Center Mainstage Theatre. For this performance, the troupe will mine more than fifty years of dance in Denver, combining classics with new works, every one a gem. Learn more here.

Opera on Tap Tenth Anniversary Bash
Saturday, August 7, 7 to 9 p.m.
Bar Max, 2412 East Colfax Avenue
Tickets: $10 to $250 at Eventbrite
Opera on Tap has been shaking things up with glass-shattering arias at local Colorado bars for ten years, which calls for a bash loaded with operatic drama. OOT’s super-singers will celebrate that longevity with music, food and craft cocktails out on the patio at Bar Max. Seating will be limited; reserve a space and find info here.

Second Annual Trash N’ Fashion Show
Saturday, August 7, 7 to 9 p.m.
Art Cartopia Museum, 2702 Freedom Road, Trinidad
Tickets: $10 ($5 to participate or model costumes)
Trinidad, the art-car capital of Colorado, is definitely a drive from Denver, but it’s also a place where strange and wonderful things happen that you’d never encounter anywhere else. Consider the annual Trash N’ Fashion, a trash-heap of a wearable art show, hosted by the town’s Art Cartopia Museum: It’s not Meow Wolf, but it's cheerfully zany, and “puts the garb in garbage,” organizers promise, with a jaw-dropping display of recycled and repurposed costumery. Find details here.

Do you know of a great event around town? We'll be updating this list through the weekend; send information to [email protected]