Popeye, boxing gloves, skulls, speaker cones, even UFOs — references to events and symbols from 20th century popular culture permeate the work of the late Billy Mayer, a well-known and well-liked Hope College art professor.

“We are addicted to our devices, we are glued to screens for work, for entertainment and for our social lives — at some point we need to find something that can provide a break. And for many, this is music,” said Julian Kuerti, the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra’s new musical director.

A hub for social enterprise, creative pursuits and arts and job training, West Michigan Center for Arts and Technology helps teens explore creative careers and adults build sustainable futures.

Dixie Longate is the brainchild of Kris Andersson, who both created and plays the fabulously sassy, bawdy, twangy fast-talking, gum-smacking, hard-drinking, glamorous, shameless truth-telling, Tupperware-slinging, nymphomaniacal motivational speaker whose high-energy shows are like exceptionally-timed stand up.

There are some shows for some audiences that never grow old. No matter how dated the music or how lacking in narrative beyond that which the audience brings to it, “Godspell” is one of those shows, and perhaps for nowhere more than conservative Christian stronghold Holland, Michigan.

What’s not to love about a gleeful, limp-wristed Adolf Hitler surrounded by exquisite, sparkling show girls donning giant bratwurst and pretzels? Absolutely nothing. And this is but one highlight of many hilarious spectacles among many in Farmers Alley’s “The Producers,” the theater’s 10th anniversary season closer and biggest production to date.

It’s been a big year for Well Strung, the hunky New York City based string quartet known for mashing up classical music with contemporary pop songs in what they call “POPssicals.”

Dramatizing war and its effects often makes the most potent anti-war statement among art forms. Therefore, it is for good reason there is a long list of deeply moving anti-war plays, from Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” to Euripides’ “The Trojan Women” written in the 5th Century to Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children” and rock musical “Hair” in the 20th Century and beyond.

Ray Cooney’s hilarious 1983 classic British farce “Run For Your Wife” has the potential to go terribly wrong, and not just for the the taxi driver who is leading a double life with two wives he tends to in two different areas of London.

Walking to my seat at last night’s production of The Lion King, I heard an usher comment on how this show was “something different.”