If there is something inherently funny about women’s breasts and the seemingly endless quest for the sexual capital that comes from an augmented female form, then “Gay Deceivers” capitalizes on it — with a pseudo-feminist twist. The humor in this almost-farce also relies on the audience’s delight in seeing ostensibly straight men dressed (badly) as women.
It was a truly unique night at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts last night with the first ever Off the Wall fundraising event. As I was leaving the event, feeling inspired and blessed to have seen so much talent in just three hours, I hoped that the UICA makes this an annual event, and I can safely assume the happy audience around me felt the same.
If there’s one thing the New Vic Theatre in Kalamazoo does exceptionally well, it’s down-home folksy storytelling with music. And that’s exactly what they have with “Radio Gals,” by Mike Carver and Mark Hardwick, which takes us into a delightfully kooky sort of Americana by way of retired music teacher Hazel Hunt’s front parlor where the Hazelnuts, a motley crew of local Arkansans, put on a radio variety show for the fun of it with a Western Electric 100-watt radio transmitter on their very own WGAL.
Perhaps what’s most striking about Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play “Angels In America” is how quickly it has become an American classic.
In Oscar Wilde’s triumphant Victorian novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray," the character Basil Hallward offers the critique that “(w)e live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography.” It was, no doubt, a jab at his critics, who couldn’t help but see his own story emerging in many of his literary works. Wilde also offered that “(t)he true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes, and he annexes everything.”
After finally seeing Into the Woods — it’s been on my bucket list for a while now — it both met and exceeded my expectations. The play honors the classic fairy tale stories like Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood, but also gives each character a more modern take on their traditional outfit, speech and general personality.
For one night only, the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts is taking art “off the wall and into the space.”
Director Todd Avery particularly enjoys the “dark side” of Into the Woods, the hugely successful musical penned by James Lapine and composed by the iconic Stephen Sondheim.
When Vadim Gluzman was a young music student, he didn’t like playing the violin. Instead of practicing for hours on end, he wanted to play ice hockey with his friends.
Ultra-realistic sculptures. Picasso prints. Vintage motorcycles. Local 1950s racing photos. And masterpieces from the Edward Curtis: The North American Indian collection.
Local artisans are breathing new life into the art of glassblowing, and their efforts will be on display at this year’s Battle of the Glass Blowers.
Had he not won a Gold Medal at the Stulberg International String Competition in 1979, Anthony Ross isn’t sure where his career would have gone.
The play “Mama’s Girls” by Marilynn Barnes Anselmi opens with two siblings in fraught play with Barbie dolls. Though symbols for conventional gender norms, the dolls’ are smooth between their legs, a revelation to Sammy, the emerging trans girl who both catalyzes and suffers from her family’s toxic dynamic.
Anyone who says ballet-based modern dance doesn’t go with hip hop has been proven entirely wrong by Wellspring Cori Terry & Dancers’ Spring Concert of Dance, Seeing/Seen, a collaborative performance that breaks down both real and perceived boundaries from start to finish and beyond.