On a recent Tuesday night, 16 women gathered backstage and changed into costumes to play their roles in a production of Shakespeare’s “Othello.”

The space hummed with the giddy electricity of actors preparing to perform in front of an audience. The actress playing Iago, wearing brown slacks, a white shirt and a dark-red sash (which also holstered a foam sword), huddled up with Othello to do some last-minute line cramming.

Brabantio tucked her long, dark-blond hair up inside a hat. Cassio smirked and held up a spare handkerchief, jokingly noting that this all-important prop went missing onstage during the previous week’s performance. And Desdemona pinched the sides of her white, long-sleeved, knee-length dress and girlishly skipped across the stage.

Even before they began speaking the Bard’s lines, Shakespeare had temporarily liberated these women from their circumstances by giving them a temporary excuse to wear clothes not stamped with the letters MDOC — for Michigan Department of Corrections. READ THE REST HERE

Michael Franti and Spearhead play an Ann Arbor Summer Festival main stage show this week.

Ann Arbor Summer Festival/Top of the Park is in full swing, with free outdoor concerts, retreats and more happening at Ingalls Mall every night but Monday, starting at 5 (and on Sundays, and Tuesdays-Thursdays, movies under the stars at dusk).

Plus, lots of theater productions continue their runs this week: “Morning’s at Seven” at Chelsea’s Purple Rose Theatre; “Spin” at Ann Arbor’s Theatre Nova; “Assassins” at the Dexter’s Encore Theatre; Penny Seats Theatre Company’s “Canterbury Tales” at West Park; and Shakespeare in the Arb finishes its run of “Love’s Labour’s Lost” this weekend. But if you’re STILL looking for more great options, check out what else is happening.

UMS Choral Union’s 23rd Annual Summer Sings. All singers welcome to join this venerable local chorus for read-throughs of favorite choral works. Participants practice the more difficult parts of each night’s piece and, after a break, sing it in its entirety, with regional professionals singing the solos. No auditions required; music provided (or bring your own, if you have it). Refreshments. This time, University of Georgia choral activities director Daniel Bara conducts Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass. Monday 7-9:30 p.m. at U-M Walgreen Drama Center’s Stamps Auditorium, 1226 Murfin in Ann Arbor. $5 at the door only. Registration begins at 6:30 p.m.

72nd Annual Manchester Community Fair. June 21-25. Midway rides, carnival games, concessions, tractor pulls, a rodeo (June 23 and 24 at 7:30 p.m.), an opening parade (June 21, 6:30 p.m.), livestock shows, live music by Dexter country-rock singer-songwriter KayLyn Pace (June 21, 7:30 p.m.), and more. For complete schedule, see manchesterfair.org. Tuesday from 9 a.m.-10 p.m. (June 21; rides open at 5 p.m.), Wednesday from 8:30 a.m.-10 p.m. (June 22; rides open at 3 p.m.), Thursday from 1:30-10 p.m. (June 23; rides open at 3 p.m.), Friday, 10 a.m.-10:30 p.m. (June 24; rides open at 1 p.m.), and Saturday, 10 a.m.-10:30 p.m. At Alumni Memorial Field, at Vernon and Wolverine in Manchester. $18 ride wristbands available. Continue reading →

Zingerman’s Mail Order director Brad Hedeman has had a front row seat for Ann Arbor’s evolving food culture since 1994. (Photo by Doug Coombe)

Brad Hedeman, director of marketing and product selection for Zingerman’s Mail Order, arrived in Ann Arbor as a U-M freshman in 1994; and though he began his career that year with a job at Zingerman’s Deli, he also, a few years later, waited tables at West End Grill.

“At the time, there just weren’t a lot of restaurant options downtown,” says Hedeman. “If you couldn’t get in at West End, you probably went to the Chop House.”

There were other choices, of course: Real Seafood Company had been a Main St. mainstay since 1975; and Gratzi, Palio, and the Prickly Pear had all opened their doors by the early ’90s. But these eateries were once part of a relatively small grouping that has, in the last decade or so, exploded into a full-blown restaurant buffet in Ann Arbor, thus making the town a go-to destination for serious foodies.

There are many possible reasons for this evolution: the ethnic and cultural diversity of a college town; Ann Arbor’s “hippie” sensibilities, which translated – in gastronomic terms – into a relatively early embrace of vegetarian/vegan and farm-to-table cuisine; a longstanding, community-wide preference for local businesses and food suppliers; a population that regularly gets a sizable injection of new, creative young people every year; and a growing frenzy around the creation and consumption of food that’s swept not just Treetown, but the entire country – a la The Food Network and other media.

“Eating is no longer just about sustaining ourselves,” says Laura Berarducci, a self-described foodie (“Food rules my life,” she jokes) who’s also the marketing director for the Ann Arbor Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. “It’s become an experience, and Ann Arbor has a long history of having a very rich food culture. … Washtenaw County provides this great balance between rural and urban, which really helps when the farm-to-table craze suddenly becomes a big deal. … Ann Arbor is kind of unique, in that it didn’t have to change who it was to meet the demands of the foodie traveler.” READ THE REST HERE

Matthew Brennan as Lee Harvey Oswald in Encore Theatre’s “Assassins.”

Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins, now being staged at Dexter’s Encore Theatre, explores the more nightmarish aspects of the American Dream: for if we’re told from birth that we can “get ahead”– both professionally and personally  – by working hard, and yet we toil and labor and get nowhere, we’ll inevitably feel cheated, angry, and bitter.

But when a country breaks your heart, at whom do you aim your rage? For the 9 historic characters at the heart of Assassins, the answer is simple: a U.S. President. And while some are successful in their attempt, and others are not, they all transcend their respective eras to gather together in this show as a perverse kind of secret society. Included in the group is its famed forefather, stage actor John Wilkes Booth (David Moan); McKinley assassin Leon Czologsz (Dan Johnson); Garfield assassin Charles Guiteau (Daniel A. Helmer); FDR’s would-be killer Giuseppe Zangara (Ari Axelrod); Lee Harvey Oswald (Matt Brennan); would-be Nixon assassin Samuel Byck (Keith Allan Kalinowski); failed Ford assassins Sara Jane Moore (Sarah Briggs) and Manson protege Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (Carly Snyder); and would-be Reagan assassin John Hinckley (James Fischer).

If this sounds like pretty strange territory for a musical, it is – but in the best way possible. There’s still no other show quite like Assassins, more than 25 years after its Off-Broadway debut; and in addition to Sondheim’s terrific score (and John Weidman’s darkly humorous book), you get fascinating, brief glimpses into our history, and you’re also challenged to relate to people whose actions you’re never asked to excuse. READ THE REST HERE

Fans can see Ann Arbor native Laith Al-Saadi perform at Sonic Lunch this week, fresh off his successful fun on NBC’s “The Voice”!

Cinetopia International Film Festival continues in Ann Arbor, Detroit and Dearborn this week, as do theater production runs at EMU (“The Last Five Years”) and Theatre Nova (“Katherine”). But all kinds of things are kicking off this week, including the Ann Arbor Summer Festival and Shakespeare in the Arb. See all the details below.

Book/author event highlights. New Yorker contributor and arts editor Michael Schulman will discuss his new book, “Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep.” Monday from 7-8:30 p.m. in the Ann Arbor downtown library’s multipurpose room (lower level), at 343 S. Fifth Ave. in Ann Arbor. Free.

New Baltimore, Michigan writer Tom Stanton will discuss his new book, “Terror in the City of Champions: Murder, Baseball and the Secret Society That Shocked Depression-Era Detroit,” about the Black Legion, a secret terrorist organization that flourished in Detroit in the mid-1930s, when the Tigers won a World Series, the Lions won an NFL title, and the Red Wings won a Stanley Cup. Signing. Monday at 7 p.m. at Nicola’s Books, at 2513 Jackson, in the Westgate shopping center in Ann Arbor. Free.

Finally, on Tuesday, Ann Arbor’s Julie Lawson Timmer will read from “Untethered,” her new novel about a college professor and stepmom whose parental rights are challenged when her husband dies in a car accident. Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Literati, 124 E. Washington in Ann Arbor. Free.  Continue reading →

Melissa Beckwith stars in Kim Carney’s “Katherine” at Theatre Nova.

Kim Carney’s new play, Katherine, now having its world premiere at Ann Arbor’s Theatre Nova, has a wholly apt tagline: “Herstory repeats itself.”

The one-woman show highlights five generations of women within one family. Thanks to an established tradition of naming the first-born daughter Katherine, we glimpse the carriers of that name (all played by Melissa Beckwith) over the course of about a century. Beginning with a farmer’s wife who addresses God one night in a barn, the play goes on to feature a single mother of five who’s desperate to find work during the Depression; a snarky, bored, alcoholic housewife who’d prefer a male therapist; an addict-turned-motivational speaker who finds God in a school community’s response to a natural disaster; and a contemporary single businesswoman who stands at a personal and professional crossroads.

The 90 minute play, directed by David Wolber, is structured in five scenes, with minimal props and nifty transitions that show us Beckwith, in silhouette behind a screen, transforming into the next Katherine. READ THE REST HERE