On Saturday, May 27, Kalamazoo’s Chenery Auditorium will welcome to its stage two world-renowned musicians: soprano Renée Fleming and pianist Evgeny Kissin. Audience members will experience some of the best music ever written, including pieces by Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and Duparc, performed by musicians who have demonstrated mastery of the art form for decades.

As long as humans exist to share stories, we will undoubtedly reimagine and retell those tales that originated as classic mythology.

Middle school is its own world, one populated by awkward creatures and overhung with threatening skies. If you live there, you’re still discovering who you are, and deciding how much of yourself you want to reveal. Or maybe not; maybe you’re openly yourself, in all your bonkers glory.

The central conceit of Hadestown easily numbers among the best of any Broadway musical ever: the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice set in a post-apocalyptic New Orleans, soaked in that near-mythic city’s distinctive music. 

2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio, the first-ever collection of William Shakespeare’s plays. A copy sold at auction in October of 2020 for $9,978,000, which is a lot, but not so bad when you factor in the free shipping.

If there’s one thing Grand Rapids Ballet has proven in its 50-plus years, it is the company’s terrific versatility. This isn’t simply the only professional ballet company in Michigan; Grand Rapids Ballet continuously stretches the boundaries of what’s possible for magnificently classically-trained dancers to create on stage, from the lexicon of classical ballet, yes—but also beyond.

“Lord, bless me with the patience to deal with my family, for they know not what they do. . . .” says Jenkins family matriarch Baneatta at the start of Douglas Lyons’ comedic play Chicken and Biscuits, currently in production at Farmers Alley Theatre in Kalamazoo.

After other such entertaining productions as School of Rock, Mary Poppins, and Once On This Island, the Grand Rapids Civic Theatre is finishing out their mainstage season with yet another musical: “Something Rotten!”

To say that What to Send Up When It Goes Down by Alesha Harris is a powerful piece of theatre—or even that it is theatre unlike anything you’ve likely seen before—is an understatement. 

As a culture, we love transformation. We clamor for stories that involve improvement, of transition to a better place, makeovers of one variety or another.