8 pm: Comedy

Comedians Paula Poundstone and Caroline Rhea (“Sabrina, the Teenage Witch”) give a joint performance at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, kicking off the Marshalls Women in Comedy Festival. The same night, the Grrl Genius Club takes over the Improv and 10 women are slated at the Laugh Factory, including Kathleen Madigan and Laura Kightlinger. The four-day festival in comedy clubs and other venues around L.A. spotlights female comedians, from Wendy Liebman to Phyllis Diller. Money raised goes to programs to stop domestic violence.

* Paula Poundstone and Caroline Rhea, Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, 8 p.m. $20 to $35. (562) 916-8500. Paula Poundstone with Wendy Liebman and Judy Gold Sunday at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., 7 p.m. (805) 583-8700. For information on all other festival events call (800) 444-0559.

8 pm: Jazz/Theater

Some would argue jazz is theater. See for yourself when Ken Rosser, a guitarist who’s worked with everyone from avant composer John Cage to jazz drummer Tootie Heath, teams with former Mothers Of Invention keyboardist Don Preston and Al Jarviene, percussionist from the California Ear Unit, at this ongoing Thursday-night series at the new Downtown Playhouse. Opening is Robert Mearns’ one-act play “Now Departing.” Future weeks feature Weather Report drummer Peter Erskine’s trio and Zappa vets Don Preston and Bunk Gardner. Dig?

* Bobby Bradford Mot’tet and “Now Departing,” the Downtown Playhouse, 121 Vignes St. (between 1st and 2nd streets), downtown Los Angeles, 8 p.m. $10. (213) 626-6906.

8 pm: Theater

In Tina Landau’s odyssey “Space,” a neuropsychiatrist suddenly finds himself attracting patients claiming to be alien abductees and being drawn into strangely overlapping worlds of extraterrestrials and hard science. The play is produced in association with Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

* “Space,” Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Ends Nov. 14. $29 to $42. (213) 628-2772.

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FREEBIE

UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television and the Film & TV Archive present “An Evening Dedicated to George Burns” at James Bridges Theater, UCLA campus, Westwood. 7:30 p.m. (310) 206-FILM.