Bestselling, award-winning author Kate DiCamillo drew a big crowd of readers, young and old, to AADL on Sunday, July 10, 2016. (Photo by Jenn McKee)

Bestselling, award-winning children’s author Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie, Flora & Ulysses, The Tale of Despereaux) drew a few hundred excited fans – clutching books as if they were treasures – to the Ann Arbor District Library’s Downtown Library on Sunday afternoon; and she not only read from her new novel Raymie Nightingale, but self-deprecatingly shared the reason for her “late start” as a writer.

“When I was in college, I had a professor who said to me, in my senior year, … ‘You have a certain facility with words. You should consider graduate school,’” said DiCamillo, dressed in sneakers, black jeans, and a black V-neck T-shirt, with a pink long sleeved shirt wrapped around her waist. “That’s exactly what he said, but I was 20 years old, and so, I heard something entirely different. I thought he was speaking to me in code, and that he was saying, ‘Wow. You are super-talented. I think that you’re probably the next Flannery O’Connor.’ So I thought, ‘Why should I bother with graduate school if I’m really talented? I’m just going to go be a writer.’ So what I did was, I used my mother’s JC Penney credit card and I got a black turtleneck, and then I was set to go. I just sat around, wearing the black turtleneck, looking bored and disdainful and having people go, ‘Oh, that’s Kate. She writes.’ I did that for 10 years. … You can dream all you want and have great story ideas in your head, but eventually, you’re going to have to sit down and figure out a way to do the work. And I didn’t figure that out until I was 30.”

DiCamillo’s now established her regimen, obviously, having published about 20 books over the course of 20 years. The author spoke about how a novel now generally takes a year and a half – working through 7-8 complete drafts – for her to write, and she advised aspiring writers to read as much as they can. But the suggestions didn’t end there. READ THE REST HERE

The Decemberists, presented by The Ark, play at the Michigan Theater on Tuesday, July 12.

The Decemberists at the Michigan Theater. Veteran Portland (OR) indie folk-rock quintet whose densely textured, rhythmically supple music draws freely on a wide range of idioms, from klezmer and Celtic music to prog rock and ’80s pop. Presented by The Ark. Tuesday at 8 p.m. at the Michigan Theater, 603 E. Liberty St. in Ann Arbor. Tickets cost $35-$55, available in advance at mutotix.com, theark.org, and 734-763-TKTS.

The Suffers at Sonic Lunch. Houston-based 10-piece R&B, soul, and rock ‘n’ soul band, featured on “The Late Show with David Letterman.” Thursday at noon-1:30 p.m. (except as noted) at Liberty Plaza, E. Liberty at S. Division in Ann Arbor. Free.

Spinning Dot Theatre’s “A Mouth with Flame” at Carriage House Theatre. July 14-17. Korean artist Tae Hoon Yoo, aka Big Fire, presents his one-man multimedia that includes puppetry, music, and digital media. It weaves together dragon folklore, cultural and historical events, and personal stories. Geared toward families with kids ages 7-12. Thursday at 6 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 10 a.m. and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m., at Carriage House Theater, 541 Third St. in Ann Arbor. $10 (kids, $5) suggested donation. Continue reading →

While watching Shakespeare in the Arb’s Saturday evening production of Love’s Labour’s Lost, which wrapped up its run this past weekend, I realized that it’s kind of the Elizabethan drama ancestor of a famous Seinfeld episode called, “The Contest.”

Why? Because in both stories, four characters make a pledge to each other to suppress sexual desires (and its expression), and in both stories, they fail miserably – and pretty immediately.

Love’s Labour’s Lost, one of Shakespeare’s earliest comedies, begins when Ferdinand, King of Navarre (Will Arnuk), decrees that he and three companions – Lords Berowne (Michael Shapiro), Dumaine (Nicholas Menagan), and Longaville (Jackson Tucker-Meyer) – will dedicate themselves to scholarly study for three years, sleeping little, fasting often, and abstaining from any contact with women, so as to not be distracted.

Shortly after signing the pact, though, Ferdinand’s reminded that the Princess of France (Clare Brennan) is on her way to Navarre, accompanied by three ladies-in-waiting: Rosaline (Amy Robbins), Maria (Rebecca Godwin), and Katherine (Maia Gersten). When the King greets the royal party to explain why they must make camp outside his court, he falls in love with the princess, of course, and his friends become smitten with her companions, leaving the men scrambling to convey their affections to the women while also hiding it from their compatriots.

Shakespeare in the Arb shows are always “traveling” productions, so instead of watching a series of set changes, the audience gets up and moves to a new part of Nichols Arboretum. This is a double-edged sword, of course, because while it gives the players a great variety of natural backdrops within which to play, the logistics of getting a couple hundred audience members from one area of the park to another – separating the ground-sitters up front from the chair-sitters behind – more than a half dozen times can bloat the show’s running time, compromise momentum, and grow unwieldy (audience members at Saturday’s performance seemed to get a smidge grumpier/more impatient with each transplant). READ THE REST HERE

Slipstream Theatre Initiative’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

At a Slipstream Theatre Company rehearsal for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” earlier last week – following emotional conversations about Sunday morning’s massacre inside an Orlando gay nightclub – a cast member pointed out that seeing actors lying on the floor with their eyes closed might be too resonant and disturbing.

Why? Because the Ferndale-based Slipstream, about a year ago, had planned to set their all-male production of Shakespeare’s comedy in a gay nightclub.

“There’s this moment when all the lovers are sleeping on the ground,” said Slipstream artistic director/actor Bailey Boudreau. ” … And it was pointed out to us by this kid in the cast – he’d pulled someone aside and said, ‘It kind of looks like they’re dead when they’re on the ground.’ It was the scariest thing.”

That moment ended up being one of a handful of staging choices that needed to be carefully re-evaluated, discussed and tweaked by Boudreau, director Luna Alexander and the cast in the week leading up to “Midsummer”‘s opening.

“In the play, of course, our characters are fortunate enough to get up, with a fairy’s blessing,” said Alexander. “Remembering what’s happened, we hope that maybe we can help with the healing.” READ THE REST HERE

The cast of the Purple Rose Theatre production of “Morning’s at Seven.” (Photo by Sean Carter Photography)

As an exquisitely elegant prologue for the Purple Rose Theatre’s production of Paul Osborn’s Morning’s at Seven, actor Richard McWilliams strolls onto the stage and sits on one of the set’s porches to polish a pair of shoes, followed by fellow cast member Laural Merlington, who seats herself in a nearby chair to knit. The two exchange warm smiles, but they don’t say a word. Sharing a few moments of quiet together is enough.

Soon, the two actors stand and walk into the house, and then a Purple Rose apprentice appears in another part of the theater and asks us all to turn off our cell phones.

The irony isn’t lost on me, and I suspect that director Michelle Mountain pointedly intends for us to note that while we’re all now constantly overwhelmed by texts and alerts and messages – not to mention our own compulsive social media habits – the world of Morning moves at a slower pace. The play’s prologue helps transition us, in a sense, from hyperventilating to deep, full breaths. It tells us, “Like those two actors, we’re all just going to be here together for a while.”

Osborn’s family drama, set in a small Midwestern town in 1938 (the play premiered on Broadway in 1939), focuses on four sisters entering their twilight years: Esther (Susan Craves), who’s married to rigid intellectual David (Tom Whalen); Cora (Ruth Crawford), who’s married to Thor (McWilliams), and who’s housed the youngest, never-married sister, Arry (Merlington), in her home for decades; and Ida (Franette Liebow), who’s married to Carl (Hugh Maguire), and who has a 40 year old son, Homer (Rusty Mewha), still living at home.

The appropriately-named Homer is, in fact, what sets Morning’s plot in motion. When he finally brings his long-time fiancee Myrtle (Rhiannon Ragland) home to meet the family, Carl has one of his “spells” – a kind of existential un-spooling, wherein he walls himself off and questions the path he chose for his life; meanwhile, the nearby house that Carl built for Homer and Myrtle, which has been ready and empty for five years and counting, becomes the site of Cora’s hopes for living her last years with only her husband. READ THE REST HERE

The cast of Penny Seats Theatre’s “The Canterbury Tales,” being staged at the West Park band shell.

We’re all pilgrims, in a sense, finding our way around the hairpin twists and bumps in our life’s path. Maybe this is why Geoffrey Chaucer’s 14th century writings about a group of pilgrims traveling to Sir Thomas Becket’s shrine still endure.

Or it could just be because The Canterbury Tales – adapted for the stage by Lindsay Price, and now being staged (outdoors) by Ann Arbor’s Penny Seats Theatre Company – are often laugh-out-loud funny, and demonstrate that hundreds of years ago, people had many of the same desires and fears that we have have now.

One basic human drive was, and remains, storytelling, which Chaucer’s pilgrims employ as a means of distracting themselves during the journey. For Price’s stage version of  Canterbury, the pilgrims have been distilled down from about thirty, in the original Middle English text, to seven: the Pardoner (Brian Baylor), the Miller (Matt Cameron), the Franklin (Dale Dobson), the Cook (Jenna Hinton), the Prioress (Tina Paraventi), the Wife of Bath (Debbie Secord), and the Reeve (Jeff Stringer) – plus an inn’s hostess (Jennifer Sulkowski), who tags along and suggests that the pilgrims compete in a storytelling contest. READ THE REST HERE

Jose Martinez and Matthew Webb in Emilio Rodriguez’s “Spin,” now having its world premiere at Ann Arbor’s Theatre Nova. 

Mila – a gay, black/hispanic teen in Emilio Rodriguez’s Spin, now having its world premiere at Theatre Nova – greets the enrichment programs at his homeless shelter, as well as the world outside, with measured skepticism.

“They try to get you with the root beer floats. Then you have to learn something,” he says.

Yet his new roommate, a more trusting Latino teen named Angelo (Jose Martinez), feels differently. “Poetry is dope,” he says weakly, like a little brother who’s been caught cuddling a teddy bear.

The young men vacillate between vulnerability and guardedness with each other throughout the show’s 80-minute run time, gingerly navigating a minefield of masculinity. Both spin self-defensive lies as well as rhymes: Angelo with his verses – which he presents to the audience between scenes, thus providing the play’s connective tissue – and Mila with rap.

But Rodriguez’s script also takes pains to remind you how young and naive these two characters are, despite their hard pasts and bluster. Mila explains, for instance, that if he ever has kids, of they were misbehaving, he’d simply tell them to knock it off. “They’ll stop, and they’ll be grateful I stayed,” he says. (This got a pretty big laugh on opening night.) And when Angelo explains that he has an alternate identity he adopts in moments of stress, Mila settles in to watch the transformation, as if expecting an act of magic to occur. In these moments, we know they’re just boys grown tall. READ THE REST HERE

The cast of Slipstream Theatre Initiative’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Literature’s most famous sprite, Puck, wearing nothing but metallic blue hot pants? Demetrius and Helena waking to mutual love via Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away”? Rival beaus engaging in a push-up face-off on the dance floor?

This is (probably?) not your father’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, now playing at Ferndale’s Slipstream Theatre Initiative. Adapted by director Luna Alexander and her cast – I’d wager you’ll never hear “Dost thou even lift, bro?” in any other version of Shakespeare’s comedy – Slipstream’s all-male Midsummer runs a brisk 90 minutes and takes place in Athens, Ohio at a gay nightclub.

If that last detail gives you pause, you’re not alone. Slipstream’s ensemble, in the wake of last weekend’s massacre at an Orlando gay nightclub, struggled to determine how to proceed, if at all, with the production. (Alexander and artistic director Bailey Boudreau had hatched the concept for the show a year ago, aiming to time Midsummer with the celebration of Pride Month.) In the end, though, the company chose to move forward, making small adjustments in hopes of making the show defiantly fun and fierce instead of merely silly. READ THE REST HERE