In 2023, arts organizations are largely back on their feet and offering incredible seasons of art, conversations, fun and community involvement.

If ever there were a rock musical fit to be staged in a music venue with a bar, it’s “Rock of Ages”, the hilarious five-time Tony Award nominated 1980s hair metal parody.

Without a stage to call their own, it may seem that Betka-Pope Productions is hidden from the view of Grand Rapids’ wider theater community.

Established in 2018, the biannual Bennett Prize fosters the artistic careers of women figurative artists by providing winners $50,000 and the opportunity to create, over the next two years, a solo exhibition, which afterward tours.

The very best theatre hits you on many levels. Great performances of excellent material that make you laugh, make you feel, make you think, and maybe even make you change are what theatre enthusiasts know is possible—and hope for every time we sit down to see a show.

There’s a moment, near the end of the first act of Frozen, that’s as magical as anything I’ve seen on stage. Audience members gasped aloud, me included. 

When Lauren Gunderson, the most often-produced playwright in the United States (save for Shakespeare), wrote “Natural Shocks” , currently in production at Hope Repertory Theatre, in 2018, gun violence, inexplicably, wasn’t anywhere near the crisis it is just five years later in this country. 

The wonderfully stylish, effervescent romp “Anything Goes” is light-hearted fare to say the least, and exactly the kind of summer musical experience one hopes for from The Barn Theatre in Director Patrick Hunter’s capable hands. 

If ever there were the perfect show at the perfect time in the perfect place, it’s Kinky Boots at Mason Street Warehouse in Saugatuck this summer.

One fateful day in December 1956, four budding musicians came together by chance in Memphis for an impromptu jam session. It turned out to be a historic event because those up-and-coming rock and rollers were Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash.