Emily Luyk is an adventurer. After growing up in Byron Center, she moved to San Francisco at 19, spending two years there before moving to Grand Rapids.

Arts exhibitions and performances have returned in full swing to West Michigan. This season, there’s absolutely no shortage of concerts, symphonies, plays, musicals, ballet, visual arts and beyond.

Every now and then in theatre, you come across a performance so delightful, so inspired, the material from which it springs hardly matters.

The fun-loving resort entertainer/playboy Tully, the central character in “Jimmy Buffet’s Escape to Margaritaville” declares within the first few minutes of the show, now in production at The Barn Theatre, that “romance is better enjoyed on the surface—like the ocean.”

There is a moment in Saugatuck Center for the Arts’ production of the multiple Grammy- and Tony-Award winning “Jersey Boys” in which an image of the Four Seasons on a black and white television is projected above the band as they perform their hit “Sherry” on stage—in technicolor of the variety one can only experience in person—and the crowd goes wild. 

“Singing is living to me,” declares Desiree Montes as a deeply inebriated Billie Holiday in one of her final performances in a South Philly club. This is the proclamation we must keep in mind throughout this phenomenal yet bleak performance of Hope Repertory Theatre’s “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill” because otherwise it could merely be an exercise in trauma voyeurism.

Currently on display at Grand Rapids Public Museum now through September 3 are three captivating new exhibits, delving into the intriguing world of the most recent North American Ice Age, highlighting the significance of snow, and offering a thought-provoking exhibition examining the troubling legacy of the Jim Crow era.

It all starts out quietly enough, with a group of musicians killing time before the arrival of Ma Rainey, their singer. They joke a little; they bicker.

The road to The Barn Theatre in Augusta is paved with yellow bricks for a reprise of The Wizard of Oz, a faithful musical adaptation of the beloved 1939 MGM film last produced at the theater in 2006. 

Are you looking for Broadway-caliber performances at a fraction of New York City prices? What about a beautiful outdoor setting to explore and enjoy while listening to eclectic showtunes and beloved standards?