“SpongeBob,” Barn Theatre producer Brendan Ragotzy chanted from his curtain speech at the start of every show this season to the refrain at his behest from the audience, “is for everyone!”
It’s a story dancers live over and over again: They fall in love with dance at a young age (through the obligatory three-year-old ballet class everyone takes, of course) and train throughout their entire childhood, only to part ways with their passion to choose a profession.
The trailer for The Vagrancy’s 2016 production of Macbeth presents three figures — lovely but feral, they are more than women; they are witches, restored through expert lighting, fine sound design, and powerful choreography to their rightful place, which is in our nightmares.
In “Signs and Symbols,” Vladimir Nabokov wrote of Aunt Rosa, “a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths — until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about.”
Is there a place in the post #metoo cultural moment for a workplace comedy in which the narrative builds around a “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” of a boss who runs roughshod over his female employees, inspiring both imagined and real revenge fantasies that involve poisoning, shooting, and stringing him up?
Live theater is back, and at Mason Street Warehouse/Saugatuck Center for the Arts, it’s outside at the lakeshore, and everything we could hope for.
Last year, the arts world spent most of the summer trying to figure out what to do next. In 2021, a majority of organizations are managing to make something work, whether it’s being done safely in-person or virtually, for now.
Maryjo Lemanski, visual artist, had been thinking about what to do after the world opened up again; not only what she would do, but what the community would do.
The Urban Institute of Contemporary Art has found a new home downtown Grand Rapids, leaving behind its spacious 2 Fulton location for a charming and historic change. Though only a few blocks away on 17 Pearl Street, the new building will bring about massive shifts for the UICA.
Last year, the arts world spent most of the summer trying to figure out what to do next. In 2021, a majority of organizations are managing to make something work, whether it’s being done safely in-person or virtually, for now.
Summertime offers renewed hope for more than just the winter blues; it also allows performing arts to return in a safe, socially distanced way.
In Hollywood, Calif. many old movie theaters have been converted into churches. For Face Off Theatre Company in Kalamazoo, a former church is now their home in Dormouse Theatre.
As the weather finally turns to spring in Southwest Michigan and we look to spend more time outside and less in front of our screens, watching what otherwise would have been a live performance on the computer may be the last thing people thought of doing this weekend.
