I have been using the Event Calendar 3 plugin successfully on my arts listing service: http://www.artwordlist.net. You can find it at http://wpcal.firetree.net/
Try it.
Check out http://www.urbangiraffe.com. The author, John Godley, has everything you need: instructions about how to modify your templates, how to set up a local server, and most important, an excellent theme that does what you want. He calls it “giraffe2. . . slightly wonky edition”, but he’s being modest. The wonkiness is very minor, if it’s there at all. Here is a direct link to the relevant page: http://urbangiraffe.com/themes/.
