The cast of Tappan Players’ “13: The Musical.” (Photo by Kristina Crow)

Reilly Conlon, director of this year’s Tappan Players musical production (“13”), reportedly told her middle school student cast, “This show is everything you want to say to your parents, wrapped up in a musical.”

Why? Because the show, which premiered on Broadway in 2008 (with a book by Dan Elish and Robert Horn, and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown), tells the story of 12 year old Evan, a New York kid who lands in a small Indiana town when his parents get divorced. While preparing for his bar mitzvah and adjusting to a new town and school, Evan gets caught up in a number of tween dramas. His first friend and neighbor, Patrice, develops a crush on Evan, but at school, she’s a social pariah; and while Evan schemes to get the most popular kid in school to attend his bar mitzvah, Patrice and others get caught in the crossfire.

“The reason we chose ’13’ is because it’s about the kids that are in it,” said Conlon. “We thought it was a great way to tell … stories that are relatable to kids in their age group. And the music is incredibly modern. It’s easy to grab onto, and get into, and be passionate about.”

That’s not to say that the music is technically simple, however. Far from it.

“The music is incredibly difficult,” said Conlon. “Jason Robert Brown is the composer, and he writes some of the most difficult music in the theater world today. To have (the student performers) tackle that is a challenge, but they’ve been very open to it, and very hardworking throughout the process. They’ve really made great strides.” READ THE REST HERE

Taking a beloved hit movie and transforming it into a stage musical is standard practice these days. One look at current Broadway listings — Aladdin, Anastasia, Frozen, the soon-to-open Mean Girls, and Waitress, to name a few — proves how often the stage artists are borrowing from the screen.

But of course, not every translation works.

What made School of Rock — the youth version of which is now being staged at Dexter’s Encore Theatre — a bona fide hit (and a Tony Award nominee) instead of a B-side flop?

“With a character who is essentially just Jack Black teaching kids to defy expectations and rise above the world on a cloud of rock, it’s hard to go wrong,” said David Moan, music director of Encore’s production. READ THE REST HERE

The cast of Open Book Theatre’s production of “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.” (Photo by Jan Cartwright)

Years ago, when my husband and I had just suffered through a stiff, all-too-reverent production of a Chekhov play, he pronounced himself done-ski with the iconic Russian dramatist, arguing that life was simply too short for “Uncle Vanya.”

Which is one reason I think he’d really enjoy Christopher Durang’s witty “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” now being staged at Trenton’s Open Book Theatre.

Not that you have to be well-versed in Chekhov to laugh loudly and often while watching Durang’s play; but if, by chance, you are familiar with the likes of “The Seagull” and “The Cherry Orchard,” the characters on stage, as well as their charged interactions and existential struggles, will feel all the more familiar – albeit with a contemporary twist. Continue reading →

Even though, in this Digital Age, we tend to view things through an expansive global lens – now more than in any previous era – we still, when we want to hear a story, tend to look no further than our own backyard.

Perhaps this tendency is driven by our ever-growing hunger for familiarity and connection. Yet Ann Arbor’s Spinning Dot Theatre – which specializes in global children’s theater, and has both a youth company and an adult repertory company – believes that exploring stories from faraway places not only offers exciting new ways to connect, but also provides ways to reframe the struggles that we may be too close to to see clearly.

SDT’s latest presentation, “The Kids from Amandla Street,” is the company’s first-ever Unity Production – meaning that it features both youth and adult SDT actors, with various levels of experience – and comes from South Africa. (SDT’s age recommendation for “Amandla” is ten or older, since issues related to racism, violence, and immigration are explored.) READ THE REST HERE

When you first hear about the Threads All Arts Festival, happening for just the second time ever this weekend, you might have a vague notion, as I did, of a big event featuring local fiber artists.

Nope.

Patrick was a U-M music school senior when she and a friend (Samuel Schaefer) applied for and received a grant from the school’s EXCEL entrepreneurial program. The inaugural Threads All Arts Festival happened in April 2016 at Ann Arbor’s Yellow Barn.

“It was really an experiment,” said Patrick. “ … Being artists ourselves, it was a melting pot of things we wish would happen for us at a gig. We made all these plans to get people to help the artists carry their gear, help them get it hooked up on stage – at the end of the festival, that’s where we heard the most positive feedback. … One of our philosophies is that, if the artist is happy and appreciative, the audience feels that. … If an artist wants to perform and gives their all, and it matters to them, that reads in the audience.” READ THE REST HERE

Because Ann Arbor has long been the home of North America’s oldest experimental film festival – 2018 will mark the Ann Arbor Film Festival’s 56th year – the town also has also become the home of some pretty big AAFF fans.

Robin Sober and her husband were living outside of Toronto in the 1990s when they visited Ann Arbor and stumbled upon the cutting edge annual film fest (happening March 20-25 this year, at the Michigan Theater and other venues). “It became part of the story of why we loved Ann Arbor, and why we wanted to move here,” said Sober, a retiree who now works as a leadership consultant. She and her husband Ron arrived in 1999 and have lived in Ann Arbor since. “ … We tended to always travel to university towns, because they generally have an open-mindedness that we like, and used books and music stores, and things like that that we appreciate. When we came to Ann Arbor, the town had that, but it also had something special beyond that. And that’s the Ann Arbor Film Festival, which is so near and dear to us now – to the point where Ron and I sponsor an experimental film award as part of our contribution to the festival.” READ THE REST HERE

Mary Dilworth and Vanessa Sawson in Kickshaw Theatre’s “Or,”. (Sean Carter Photography)

When a character in Kickshaw Theatre’s production of Liz Duffy Adams’ “Or,” observed that “freedom, especially for women, is only possible under an enlightened monarch,” a shudder made its way through my body.

Guess I’m just a little extra tense these days, for some reason?

Yes. I suppose I am. But the moment also points to how timely Adams’ 2009 “neo-Restoration” comedy often feels, despite its historical setting. Focused on the pioneering seventeenth century playwright Aphra Behn (Vanessa Sawson), who’d previously worked as a political spy, the 80 minute play begins with Behn in a debtors’ prison’s private cell, writing a letter (in verse) to King Charles II to plead her case. Through this letter, we learn that London’s been ravaged by fire, war, and Plague, and that she landed in jail because her work for the beleaguered government – perhaps not surprisingly – went uncompensated.

However, when an amorous, mysterious visitor wearing a mask (Charles, played by Dan Helmer) arrives in her cell, everything changes. Aphra’s debts are paid; she regains her freedom; and she plans to focus her time and talents on writing plays for the theaters recently re-opened by Charles (they’d been shut down by Oliver Cromwell’s Puritans). The rest of the play thus unfolds in Aphra’s workspace, where she’s visited by one of the first and most successful stage actresses of the day, Nell Gwynne (only men had performed on stage previously), played by Mary Dilworth; King Charles II; patroness Lady Davenant (Dilworth); a former lover from her spy days, William Scot (Helmer), who may or may not have information about a plot to kill King Charles; and elderly servant Maria (Dilworth).

“I can write and chat at the same time,” Aphra tells Nell early on. It’s a good thing, because the playwright’s supposed to write an entirely new stage drama in the course of one night for Lady Davenant, despite all the amorous and cloak-and-dagger goings-on. Continue reading →

A U-M student costume designer gives notes to the cast of “Shel” during a break in rehearsal. (Photo by Jenn McKee)

On one night in mid-February, I watched a production of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s song cycle “Edges” at Ann Arbor’s Kerrytown Concert House, then rushed over to the Power Center’s rehearsal room to observe a run-through of a U-M senior’s original musical, titled “Shel.”

I couldn’t shake the sense that the pairing was more than a coincidence.

Why? Because songwriting super-duo and U-M musical theater grads Pasek and Paul (’06) – who have recently won Oscars (“La La Land”), Tonys (“Dear Evan Hansen”), Golden Globes (“The Greatest Showman”), and Grammys (“Dear Evan Hansen”) – wrote and premiered “Edges,” their first major artistic collaboration, at KCH while they were students in Ann Arbor. Noah Kieserman’s “Shel: A Historically Fictionalized Musical,” meanwhile, staged as an independent production at the U-M’s Duderstadt Center on February 22-23, offered several lucky locals (who snapped up every ticket available) first crack at seeing yet another musical, also starring U-M students, being born.

Opportunities like this are unique to an area that’s both relatively small, compared to urban centers, and far removed from the theater world’s capitol, New York City. But they stem in large part from U-M’s musical theater department being consistently ranked among the top programs in the country, so that many of the most promising young theater talents out there find their way to U-M.

This is how Benj (from Pennsylvania) met Justin (from Connecticut). READ THE REST HERE

Cast members in rehearsal for “Shel,” including the show’s composer/lyricist/book writer Noah Kieserman. (Photo by Jenn McKee)

Normally, selling tickets for a new show that no one’s heard of is slow-going, to say the least.

But U-M musical theater senior Noah Kieserman’s two world premiere performances of “Shel: A Historically Fictionalized Musical,” happening Thursday and Friday at the Duderstadt Center’s Video Studio, sold out in three hours when tickets went on sale Jan. 26.

Yes, the studio is a relatively small venue – about 65 seats – but even so, excitement surrounding Kieserman’s Hopwood Award-winning exploration of the life of children’s poet/songwriter Shel Silverstein is pretty high. The student production team has even arranged to live-stream “Shel” to a nearby room with four HD screens, in order to accommodate 30 additional people.

Though “Shel” was workshopped for two weeks in Washington D.C. last summer – a group of high school students performed readings and some partially staged scenes – this week’s independent U-M campus production marks the first fully-staged version of the show.

And not only was it easy to find an audience for “Shel”; it’s also been easy to find student artists who want to be involved. READ THE REST HERE

Finally got back into the WEMU studio to talk about what’s happening in local theater, as well as Ron White and Weird Al Yankovic’s upcoming Ann Arbor shows. We also talked to Pointless Brewery and Theatre co-founder/owner Tori Tomalia about improv comedy and other offerings on tap at the venue. Listen to this month’s eight minute segment here.