Five Reasons to Leave the House This Weekend

Copa Libertadores de America 2011. / Photo via Jimmy Baikovicius on Flickr/Creative Commons

FUTBOL
Copa América Centenario: Quarterfinals

It’s not every day you can catch an globally popular soccer game right here in Massachusetts. Mexico and a team to be decided will face off at none other than Gillette Stadium Saturday evening for the Copa América Centenario quarterfinals. This year is the first time the oldest continental soccer competition—going on year 100 since its founding—has been played outside South America. The teams competing include Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Haiti, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, United States, and Venezuela.

$65+, Saturday, June 18, 7 p.m., Gillette Stadium, One Patriot Place, Foxborough, 508-543-8200, gillettestadium.com.

People playing Quidditch by the Hatch Shell. / Photo by Margaret Burdge

FLYING HIGH
Major League Quidditch Match

Potterheads and muggles alike will get to see the fictional sport of the wizarding world come to life in Brookline this Saturday. An official Major League Quidditch team, the Boston Night Riders make up for their lack of flying broomsticks with strength, speed, and agility. Watch them challenge the Slytherin to their Gryffindor—the New York Titans. The rules of Quidditch have been adapted from J.K. Rowling’s popular series to combine elements of basketball, rugby, and dodgeball, and the sport is full-contact and co-ed. Last summer, the Boston Night Riders defeated the Titans in front of 200 spectators and finished the season crowned Major League Quidditch champs. This year they’re hoping history repeats itself.

Free, Saturday, June 18, 2-5 p.m., Harry Downs Field, Highland Road and Jamaica Road, Brookline, major-league-quidditch.ticketleap.com.

The cast of Matilda. / Photo by Joan Marcus

FAMILY FUN
Matilda the Musical

Penned by children’s book extraordinaire Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, The BFG), Matilda is the story of a likeable, clever little girl who brings justice to a school that’s tyrannized by an evil headmaster. For a Tony Award-winning, yet kid-friendly theater experience, check out the musical rendition of the children’s classic, here for two weeks at the Boston Opera House. A New York Times critic’s pick, their chief theater critic Ben Brantley writes of the show, “But within its traditional form Matilda works with astonishing slyness and grace to inculcate us with its radical point of view. Matilda, you see, is about words and language, books and stories, and their incalculable worth as weapons of defense, attack and survival.”

$40-$200, through June 26, Boston Opera House, 539 Washington St., Boston, 800-982- 2787, ticketmaster.com.

Photo via harvardsquare.com

SIMPLE SONG
Ninth Annual Make Music Harvard Square Celebration

Rejoice the longest day of the year, Summer Solstice, at the Make Music Harvard Square Celebration, an event inspired by the Fête de la Musique that originated in Paris in 1982. The free music festival with a French twist will bring more than 60 artists to its 10 stages, ranging genres such as jazz, classical, hip hop, and blues. The organizers of the event aim to keep it as relaxed and natural as possible, keeping the focus on the performers and giving people freedom to spend the day as they please. “People really come for the love of the music. That’s very simplistic but it’s truthful,” Harvard Square Business Association executive director, Denise Jillson says. “It really is quite lovely how this thing has evolved.”

Free, Saturday, June 18, 2-10:30 p.m., Harvard Square, Massachusetts Ave. and Brattle St., Cambridge, 617-491-3434, harvardsquare.com.

Macklemore rehearsing in Vancouver. / Photo by Zoe Rain Photography

CAN’T HOLD US
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

Their music has matured since their Thrift Shop days—both in sound and tone—so Friday at Agganis Arena, get your fix of introspective lyrics and catchy rhymes courtesy of the Seattle-based hip-hop duo. The 2016 North American tour is following the release of their latest album, The Unruly Mess I’ve Made, known for its hit Downtown and the more serious, nine-minute-long White Privilege II. Music review website Pitchfork writes of the album, “They’ve returned with This Unruly Mess I’ve Made, a blend of juvenile joke raps, inquisitive woke raps, and diaristic contemplations of Macklemore’s life that attempts to prove they belong—that they’re not just white saviors trying to project their face onto the culture.”

$22.50-57, Friday, June 17, 7:30 p.m., Agganis Arena, 925 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, ticketmaster.com.