In the original iteration of “The Queen of Bingo,” known as “the play you play along with” by Jeanne Michels and Phyllis Murphy, its central characters, two middle-aged, bingo-obsessed sisters, were played by men in drag. This is but one way the audience played along, as intermission also included a bingo game for which the winner received a 10-pound turkey.
An innovative program developed by Grand Rapids Art Museum positions the museum as an extension of the classroom.
Imagine you are brought to a mysterious room by someone you don’t know. You don’t know where you are, and there are two other people with you.
In 2001, the United States resettled 3,600 “lost boys” in cities across the country. Ten years earlier, these boys had walked 800 miles from Sudan to escape civil war, landing in Kenya. There, many of the boys ate nothing but grain every day.
Aquinas College’s free reading of Columbinus is, of course, a direct response to the recent school shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
Those on the hunt for world-renowned music should visit the Artemis Quartet at Kalamazoo College’s Stetson Chapel.
After working odd jobs for a couple of years in Traverse City, Andy Buelow, a graduate of Wisconsin’s prestigious Lawrence University, wasn’t sure of his career trajectory or what to do with a music degree.
Almost 13 years ago, the Grand Rapids Symphony (GRS) ventured beyond Michigan’s borders for the first time. The destination: Carnegie Hall, New York City’s iconic concert venue.
Dance has the power to interpret and recreate worlds of experience without explaining or intellectualizing. Without words, it invites us into an experience through the universal language of the body, of movement. When done well, that experience is transcendent, and elicits an emotional response born of communal creation as well as private connection.
A conversation was sparked after the first production of “Building the Wall” by playwright Robert Schenkkan premiered in Michigan last night. The 70-minute-play, directed by Carrie McNulty, has already sparked controversy and confusion in the city with its artwork of an angry Donald Trump on the poster. What’s important to be pointed out though, is that the Actors’ Theatre Grand Rapids production is less about Trump and more about the messages and ideologies that existed long before the last election.
For the first week of April, kids from all over Grand Rapids will indulge in all things writing and theater for the Ebony Road Players’ Spring Break Theater Camp.
Playwrights today are probably grateful they don't have to actively compete with someone of William Shakespeare's caliber. It goes without saying that he is considered one of the greatest playwrights of all time. He wrote everything from comedies like Merchant of Venice to tragedies like Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth. To this day, centuries after they were first performed, theaters across the world are still performing his work.
There’s never a question of the arts being alive in Southwest Michigan, but every now and then there’s an event that goes above and beyond our relatively high expectations.
In Terrence McNally’s delightful comedy “It’s Only a Play,” the play is the thing. And this particular play is very focused on the theater world, Broadway in particular. Amid name dropping and one-liners, a little bit of wisdom emerges about what those of us who love theater want from it.
