There is something undeniably delightful about watching people have a wonderful time. At its heart that is the experience of seeing “School of Rock”, the infectious musical at Farmers Alley Theatre.
Second-wave feminism taught us that “the personal is political” and the power of that truth underscores “Detroit ’67”, the first of celebrated playwright Dominique Morisseau’s Detroit Project, a trilogy of provocative, classically-structured dramas that each bring to life a pivotal moment in the history of Detroit, which, in turn, inevitably tells a larger American story at the intersection of race, class, and gender.
It starts with a tour. James Brandess, smiling under a baseball cap, serves as guide for you and the dozen or so people who’ve enrolled in his landscape class. The Oxbow Lagoon: gorgeous.
Screen-to-stage adaptations and jukebox musicals abound in contemporary theatre, and the new musical “Mystic Pizza”, is both.
In the 2022 film Tár, Cate Blanchett plays a formidable and intimidating conductor. She suffers no fools. She demands of musicians that they sacrifice – even destroy – themselves.
"It felt like catching the Holy Spirit in church,” Michael Jackson, the character created in “MJ” the musical, says describing the moment he felt he arrived, making music with his brothers and performing to huge applause at the Apollo Theatre. “It felt like love.”
It’s 2024 and arts organizations in West Michigan are thriving, with incredible, jam-packed seasons of art, conversations, fun and community involvement.
“If you’re going to have a story, have a big story or none at all,” wrote Joseph Campbell, the writer responsible for popularizing the hero’s journey as central to myth making and storytelling as we know it, and it’s advice taken to heart by Edward Bloom, the tall-tale teller central to the fantastical musical “Big Fish”, currently in production at Hope Repertory Theatre.
“Sometimes when life doesn’t go the way you want, you find something beautiful,” declares Katie Fay Francis as Carole King, singer and songwriter extraordinaire, from behind a piano at the start of “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” at Saugatuck Center for the Arts.
“Fiddler on the Roof” made its stage debut in 1964, during the heyday of the American musical, and it’s both timeless and a product of its time.
