In addition to being marvelously entertaining, fairy tales endure because they help children grow and develop emotional resilience, teach moral lessons, and ultimately lead to a greater understanding of what it is to be human.
To kick off its 80th summer season, The Barn Theatre in Augusta is packing the house with “fudge-sucking trolls”, as Albert Soady, patriarch and narrator of native son Jeff Daniels’ “Escanaba in Da Moonlight”, calls those of us who reside in lower Michigan.
It is incredibly heartening that a now-classic young adult novel, written by a teenager for teenagers, set in the 1960s, that has been adapted for film and television, provides the source material for a multiple Tony-Award-winning musical (including Best New Musical), the first profitable new Broadway musical to open since 2022.
Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park announced the lineup for Sunday Strings, a series of six live classical chamber music concerts featuring renowned musicians from West Michigan.
At first glance, James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s Tony Award-winning “Into the Woods” is a musical mash-up of classic fairy tales: Cinderella meets Little Red Riding Hood meets Rapunzel meets Jack and the Beanstalk.
The Barn Theatre is proud to announce its highly anticipated 2026 Mainstage Season, celebrating the theatre’s landmark 80th Anniversary Season with an exciting lineup of beloved musicals, comedies, and classic storytelling.
Dale Patrick Chihuly, born in 1941, was a teenager when his father died of a heart attack. He started running with a bad crowd.
Arts exhibitions and performances have returned in full swing to West Michigan.
If you don’t know where to start: Note the details. The way Esteban Castro throws their head back when a groove locks in. The little smiles exchanged between Lisa Kaplan and Matthew Duvall during a duet. The many flourishes of Kandace Springs as she seamlessly transitions from classical to jazz and back again.
Grammy-Award winning pianist and composer Sullivan Fortner, the inaugural winner of the Gilmore’s new Larry J. Bell Jazz Award, kicked off the 2026 Gilmore Piano Festival with a joyful, 75-minute solo performance in which he used four different keyboards to literally play with what’s possible musically on International Jazz Day Thursday night at The Parrish Theatre in Kalamazoo.
17th century writer, lawyer, and politician William Prynne wrote that “popular stage-playes are sinfull, heathenish, lewde, ungodly spectacles, and most pernicious corruptions.” Given that relatively widespread attitude, it’s perhaps unsurprising that English women weren’t allowed to act onstage.
The 2025-2026 Grand Rapids Ballet season has been record breaking in its numbers of ticket subscribers, and it’s ending with a bang. In The Countenance of Kings is an exquisitely high-octane celebration of the present and future of ballet, according to Michigan’s only professional classical ballet company.
In his heyday, Oscar Levant was a household name. A celebrated mid century composer, conductor, and concert pianist, he took turns on Broadway as a musician, and in Hollywood as an actor in feature films, including a role as Gene Kelly’s wingman in An American in Paris.
So much has changed on Broadway in the last 30 or so years in the ways big, live theatre productions push boundaries to transform theatre into artful spectacle unique to live performance. However, Disney’s The Lion King remains the same, for better and for worse.
