Blog Post
Integrated Identities: "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" at the Power Center
by christopherporter
When two ordinary, scribbled-on pieces of paper in an envelope magically morph into a miserable woman’s key to happiness -- and your heart pounds as you hawkishly, breathlessly watch the precarious letter being set down, picked up, walked around the stage, and handed off -- that’s the power of live theater.
But it takes pros to achieve that level of emotionally tense stage magic, and when it comes to interpreting Martin McDonagh’s work, there may be none on Earth that can match Ireland’s renowned Druid Theatre Company, which performed The Beauty Queen of Leenane March 9-11 at the Power Center, courtesy of University Musical Society.
In the play, 40-year-old Maureen (Aisling O’Sullivan) lives alone with her demanding, manipulative 70-year-old mother Mag (Marie Mullen). When handsome former neighbor Pato Dooley (Marty Rea) briefly returns from London, where he works in construction, Maureen gets what seems like her last chance at love and a different life.
McDonagh’s script feels both Shakespearean, with its misunderstandings and intercepted messages, and like Williams’ The Glass Menagerie turned inside out: instead of a mother pushing a reluctant daughter out into the world, a mother repeatedly sabotages a frustrated daughter’s attempts to leave. But one thing is constant between Glass and Beauty Queen: both daughters are pushed to embody their mothers’ self-image. And as we learn more about Maureen’s past struggles, and how she ended up living with Mag, the push-pull bond between them seems all the more toxic but inescapable.
Francis O’Connor’s set felt like an externalization of Maureen’s inner life. The run-down, hopeless charcoal gray of Maureen and Mag’s rural home fittingly manages to suck the color out of anything that might threaten to flicker with life. Even the books on a couple of low shelves lay in toppled, sloppy piles, like the newspapers that provide a makeshift TV stand. In this way, items that might otherwise spark inspiration or the imagination are rendered powerless within this stagnant, contained world.
James Ingalls' lighting design, meanwhile, deftly guided us through the story while simultaneously offering a glimpse of teasing hope, by way of the blue sky projected above O’Connor’s set. And the production’s costume design (also by O’Connor) delineated the characters’ sense of themselves in the world: Maureen’s dressed in baggy, drab sweaters and long skirts with boots (until she buys a new, staid-but-more-flattering black dress to attend a party); shifty Mag is dressed in dark layers that seem to have no beginning nor end; Pato stands apart -- as a visitor from the outside world -- by way of his crisp attire, and the way the clothes fit his body; and Pato’s message delivering brother Ray (Aaron Monaghan), whose bright red and white jacket visually indicate his vitality, and thus his incongruity in Mag and Maureen’s home.
Director Garry Hynes allowed the script’s most comic moments build and breathe so that when the dark moments come -- and let’s be honest, with Irish dark comedies, you know they’re coming -- the tonal shift is all the more harrowing and stark.
Druid’s terrific ensemble was more than up to the task of navigating these hairpin turns. Monaghan provided blustery comic relief as a spark plug of a man who’s consistently baffled by what happens within Mag and Maureen’s walls. Rea’s Pato, meanwhile, was a gentle man shut out from two worlds: he can’t stay in Ireland, where there’s no work, but he also feels painfully out of place in England; and Rea’s winning performance during an inevitably awkward “morning after” scene in the play, during which he makes slack-jawed Mag her breakfast, managed to be both hilarious and moving. Mullen -- who was artistically living out the play’s anxiety about the daughter becoming the mother since she won a Tony Award in 1998 playing Maureen in the Broadway production -- plays Mag as an unflappable, immovable object in a rocking chair. And her most revealing moments came as Maureen brags about something Mag knows to be untrue. Instead of quietly letting the moment pass, and thus seeing her plan through, Mag smirks and pokes at Maureen, physically unable to contain her glee at her daughter’s secret pain. O’Sullivan, finally, stands tall at the play’s center, playing Maureen as a bitter woman who’s wholly resigned herself to her awful, circumscribed fate until the hint of hope arrives from London in a suit.
It may be strange to confess that while watching The Beauty Queen of Leenane, I kept thinking of Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher. Not because of the nature of their mother-daughter relationship -- they seemed, late in life, far more functional then Maureen and Mag, not to mention more capable of joy -- but because their bond with each other always seemed far more intense and powerful than any they could possibly establish with anyone else.
Beauty Queen takes this notion to a darker end, of course, but the main principle remains: when our identity is deeply, inextricably integrated with another’s, that person takes a significant part of us with them when they go.
Jenn McKee is a former staff arts reporter for The Ann Arbor News, where she primarily covered theater and film events, and also wrote general features and occasional articles on books and music.
Blog Post
A Family Affair: "I'll Be Seeing You" at U-M’s Arthur Miller Theatre
by christopherporter
Because nearly 900 letters were exchanged between soldier-journalist Charles Kiley and his fiancee, Billee Gray, during World War II, Ann Arbor’s David Kiley has an amazing window into not only his parents’ courtship, and their lives as young adults, but also what it was like to live in that era, both on the front lines and at home.
For this reason, he collaborated with his sister (Anne Kiley) and brother-in-law (Thomas Pellechia) to edit their 2015 book, Writing the War: Chronicles of a World War II Correspondent. But because Kiley -- director of communication at U-M’s Ross School of Business and publisher/editor-in-chief of the professional theater website EncoreMichigan.com -- is passionate about theater, he soon started thinking about how to adapt the material into a stage play.
The resulting show, I’ll Be Seeing You, will have its world premiere at U-M’s Arthur Miller Theatre this weekend, with performances on Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm, and Sunday at 2 pm. In the show, two actors play Charles and Billee as they write and read each other’s letters; plus, two radio singers perform music from that era, while a radio announcer -- played by Kiley, who’s also making his directing debut -- offers news from the front.
Blog Post
Shine On: Timothy Monger's new album, "Amber Lantern," is full of illuminating moods
by christopherporter
Singer/songwriter Timothy Monger's career peaked in middle school.
Despite three albums during a decade-plus run with the acclaimed folk-rock band Great Lakes Myth Society and a solo career that has also produced three records, including the new Amber Lantern, Monger said the loudest cheers he's ever received was when his middle school band, All the Young Dudes, rocked his former elementary.
Perhaps Monger's fans will take that as a challenge and make some noise when he celebrates the release of Amber Lantern at The Ark on Wednesday, February 8 at 8 pm. (Caleb Dillon of Starling Electric will open.) The album is slightly more rock-oriented than his past works, but Monger also made a conscious decision to set aside his guitar at times and experiment with instruments outside his wheelhouse, such as an organ, a hurdy-gurdy, and a Pocket Piano synth, which he checked out from this library's Music Tools collection.
Monger, who grew up in Brighton and lives in Saline, recently answered questions about his new songs, crowdfunding rewards, never finishing Moby Dick, and the world's greatest elementary school rock concert.
Q: I read that you started your first band back in 1989 when you were in seventh grade.
A: Yeah, I’d been playing guitar for a year or two by then, and could put a few chords together, so I started nagging my friends about it. We were called All the Young Dudes, I think, after the David Bowie song. … I remember bugging a bunch of kids to try and raise money for a snare drum for our drummer. I think we raised $14. And then I’d say to one of my friends, “So, do you want to play bass? You should tell your parents you want a bass for Christmas.” … One of our early gigs was playing at this Enrichment Week thing in the gym of Lindbom Elementary, which was where I’d gone to school, and these kids thought we were The Beatles or something. We were these seventh graders playing for fourth graders and they were just screaming their heads off. We thought, “This is great! We’re rock stars.” I don’t think I’ve ever had crowd screaming like that since. I guess I peaked early.
Q: What had gotten you so excited about music from an early age?
A: Music was always a big thing in my family. My parents were enormous fans. Just like I did later, they went to a lot of concerts. They’d seen The Beatles play at Comiskey Park. And my brother, who’s four years older than me, he was getting into cool stuff, bringing home hair metal and Dead Milkmen records. And there was folk music -- Neil Diamond and John Denver and stuff. So there was a real mix, but I took to it, and pretty quickly everything else -- well, I won’t say everything else became irrelevant, but music became one of the most important things in my life.
Q: You used a Kickstarter campaign for Amber Lantern, after having great success crowdfunding your previous solo album New Britton Sound in 2011. Two of the reward options for that first campaign were going birding with you or going running with you. Did anyone take you up on that?
A: No, no one did. One guy … settled for having a drink, but no one wanted to go birding or running with me. … Doing a cover song of their choice seems to be the most popular reward. I’m still working on them from this last Kickstarter.
Q: The lyrics on Amber Lantern suggest that lately, you’re thinking a lot about approaching middle age and making peace with where you are while still striving.
A: It’s more personal than anything I’ve ever done. There’s certainly some personal work on all my albums -- I lean toward introspection and reflection -- but this was really therapeutic for me. As I approach middle age, I’m definitely reconciling the past and the present. … There’s some nostalgia on this one, but I think it’s more about how I feel now and looking forward as well as a self-examination in the present. I also tried to reflect that a little in the music. It’s a little less sepia-toned, with more modern instruments. Well, I say that, but there’s a hurdy-gurdy in the first track. But that’s me. I tend to mix the new and old.
Q: On your website, the first thing you see is a Herman Melville quote -- about how sadness and a foul mood signal that he should go back to sea -- that’s paired alongside new song, “Grey’s End.”
A: I added that [quote] after my fourth attempt at finishing Moby Dick. I love that quote, with its “damp, drizzly November in my soul.” … “Grey’s End” is a song about coming out of a depression, and coming back from the ledge and to joy and happiness, and I thought of that quote. Taking to the sea seemed like the right metaphor for the journey of the song, about finding your way back. And I also love anything maritime, like sea shanties, and all kinds of nautical concepts.
Q: It’s ironic that for so many of us, Moby Dick is our literary great white whale -- the book we never finish.
A: I’ve certainly read things that are more difficult, or less gripping. Maybe we have this preconceived notion that it’s going to be difficult, because it’s widely acknowledged to be, and we psych ourselves out and never finish it.
Q: I understand that every song you write has its own point of entry, so tell me about how the album’s opener, “Plough King,” got started.
A: A melody. It was originally a finger pick -- another quiet, folky finger pick -- and I can’t remember the original set of lyrics. I went through three or four sets of lyrics, which I don’t usually do. But my girlfriend and I were still living in Britton, on a farm, so I was in, like, a 10 by 10 carpeted bedroom with all this equipment, and it was in the middle of winter. And I remember I was listening to Love and Rockets, and there’s this sparseness to their sound. I wondered what happen if I completely dis the guitar and do a song with completely different instruments, and put the emphasis in different places, like the fuzz sample that you hear throughout the song and an organ, and remove the guitar entirely. And the final lyrics came at the same time. I was looking out the window and thinking about how a person re-creates the world in their own image, and then I started imagining a guy stealing a plow truck, driving around and making roads in all the wrong places, where there were none before.
Q: Your label is Northern Detective. What’s behind the name?
A: I’m just a big fan of detective novels. For years, I’ve had this idea about writing a concept album or a musical with a noir detective story based in Michigan.
Q: You’ve probably heard that the Blind Pig is for sale. What’s your take on Ann Arbor’s live music scene these days?
A: I’m getting older, so I’m less involved with the cutting edge of it. But ever since I started playing music in and around Ann Arbor in the early '90s, the main venues were the Blind Pig and The Ark. They’ve been the two national touring venues for different kinds of artists. Occasionally you’ll see someone at a University venue, or some house shows, or someone will try and revive the Heidelberg, but I don’t know. If the Pig goes away, I think it will be a huge loss for this community. And in Ypsi, there’s no more Woodruff’s or Elbow Room. If there’s not a touring rock venue to bring people in, those bands that would skip Michigan will just hit Detroit or not come at all. … So I hope someone buys the Pig. People complain because it’s a classic, divey, smelly nightclub, but it’s exactly those places that are the lifeblood of the touring circuit in the Midwest.
Jenn McKee is a former staff arts reporter for The Ann Arbor News, where she primarily covered theater and film events, and also wrote general features and occasional articles on books and music.
Timothy Monger’s CD release party for “Amber Lantern” happens at The Ark on Wednesday, February 8 at 8 pm. Tickets are $15. Visit theark.org. Monger returns to A2 on March 25 at the Ann Arbor Distilling Company.
Blog Post
Animating Theater: The Burns Park Players wrestle with "Shrek"
by christopherporter
Directing the Burns Park Players’ annual stage musical, particularly for the first time, comes with unique challenges.
“Sometimes an actor goes, ‘I’m on call for heart surgery. I may have to leave because of that,’” said Matt Kunkel, who’s at the helm of BPP’s upcoming production of Shrek. “And it’s like, they all put in more work [in rehearsal] because they don’t know when they might have to go, so rather than giving 100 percent, they put in 125 or 200 percent. And when they’re not there, they’ll meet with someone the next day to learn everything they missed. It’s a very professional group. They’re incredibly hard workers.”
These performers aren’t professional actors, of course. They’re Burns Park students, parents, teachers, staff, and neighbors who come together, working both on stage and behind the scenes, to put on a big musical each winter. Money raised by the production goes to support arts programs in the Ann Arbor Public Schools.
Blog Post
No More Cakes in the Rain: Colson Whitehead at Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre
by christopherporter
Bestselling author Colson Whitehead spoke in Ann Arbor on January 12 as part of U-M’s bicentennial celebration theme semester, but it wasn’t his first visit to Treetown. Apparently, in 2001, Whitehead gave a reading at Borders to “about five people,” on a night when the Red Wings were playing for the Stanley Cup.
“It seemed like a good excuse,” said Whitehead with a shrug –- this time, to a near-capacity crowd packed into Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre.
Whitehead now has many more published books and years of experience under his belt, of course. But his mainstream profile spiked most dramatically in the last few months, when the publication date of his newest novel, The Underground Railroad, got bumped up a month (from September to August) due to it being named an Oprah’s Book Club selection -- and nothing makes an author’s career explode quite like receiving Oprah’s imprimatur.
That’s far from Railroad’s only distinction, though. The novel also won the National Book Award for fiction and was named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, Newsday, and more.
Blog Post
Ageless Melodies: A2SO’s 21st Annual Mozart Birthday Bash
by christopherporter
If the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra’s annual Mozart Birthday Bash concert was a person, he could legally, for the first time, buy an alcoholic beverage this year to celebrate.
So let’s collectively raise a toast this local cultural tradition, born shortly before conductor Arie Lipsky first took over A2SO’s podium in 2000.
“It seems like Mozart is almost everybody’s favorite composer," Lipsky said, "so we just decided to celebrate him every year."
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria on January 27, 1756 -- that's 261 years ago, but who’s counting? -- and because he wrote more than 600 works in his too-short life (he died in 1791 at age 35), A2SO’s annual showcase never has to worry about repeating itself.
In fact, this year, the first work in this year’s program is Tchaikovsky’s Suite No. 4, “Mozartiana,” wherein Tchaikovsky built original orchestrations around four piano pieces by Mozart.
“Mozart was also Tchaikovsky’s favorite composer, and he dedicated the piece to Mozart,” Lipsky said. “One of the movements goes a little romantic, but that’s OK. He was a Russian romantic. We forgive him for that.”
Three out of the piece’s four movements are, according to Lipsky, “note by note transcriptions of pieces Mozart wrote for piano, with Tchaikovsky orchestrating it. By the sheer act of orchestration, the music is made richer. In the orchestra, the nature of orchestral instruments is that you’re able to sustain notes, unlike the piano, so the music becomes more evocative, and there are more colors to hear.”
The second piece in this year’s program, Piano Concerto No. 21, is sometimes called “Elvira Madigan,” because it was famously associated with a 1967 Swedish movie of that name, which told the scandalous, dramatic tale of a Danish tightrope walker and trick rider.
“In the second movement, the piano sings a beautiful aria that was used extensively in the movie,” Lipsky said. “Some say that everything Mozart wrote was an opera, and there’s some truth to that. … Even the piano, which is by definition a more percussive instrument, is singing the entire time.”
Special guest performer Alon Goldstein will be featured on piano during A2SO’s presentation of Concerto No. 21. “He has a wonderful Mozart touch, and there’s such grace about his playing,” said Lipsky. “I think the audience will really enjoy that.”
Finally, A2SO will wrap up this year’s birthday celebration with Mozart’s Symphony No. 39.
“This was one of the last three symphonies that Mozart composed,” said Lipsky. “It was written three years before his untimely death, and as far as we know, he never wrote it for a special event, and the public never heard them. He wrote them for his legacy, for the generations to come. And as with many of his pieces, you look at his original scores, and he does not even alter one note. It’s as if they’re dictated to him by God.”
Lipsky also noted that Symphony No. 39 played a role in ushering in the Romantic period, in which artworks grew more emotional and expressive.
“It’s quite a tour de force for the orchestra,” said Lipsky. “Everyone’s quite busy throughout, doing very different things … and he jumps from a dramatic and tense moment to a gracious and sweet moment of relaxation. Which is what makes Mozart so great. But it also shows off his amazing compositional technique. He could pick three or four notes and make a ten-minute movement out of those three notes. Very few composers were able to do that. … It’s like watching a juggler with one ball. If he’s really good, after a while, it feels like he has five or six, because he’s juggling all over -- up, down, behind his body, underneath. You begin to wonder if anyone else can do something like that, and the answer is obviously ‘no.’”
Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra’s Mozart Birthday Bash happens Saturday, January 14 at 8 p.m. at the Michigan Theater, 603 E. Liberty St. in Ann Arbor. Tickets cost $15-$67, available at a2so.com or 734-994-4801.
Jenn McKee is a former staff arts reporter for The Ann Arbor News, where she primarily covered theater and film events, and also wrote general features and occasional articles on books and music.
Blog Post
Word Up: U-M's Zell Visiting Writers Series Winter 2017 Lineup
by christopherporter
Bestselling author Colm Toibin’s November 2016 reading/talk in Ann Arbor -- part of the U-M’s fantastic Zell Visiting Writers Series -- drew a big enough crowd to not only fill all the 185 seats in UMMA’s Helmut Stern Auditorium, but also the wall end of both side aisles and the back wall.
Toibin, best known for his novel Brooklyn, the basis for an Oscar-nominated film, was one part of ZVWS’s star-studded lineup for fall 2016, which also included Everything I Never Told You author (and U-M MFA program grad) Celeste Ng and Tony Award-winning playwright/actress and Michigan native Lisa Kron (Fun Home).
“That was a large turnout for one of our readings, but not unprecedented,” said Douglas Trevor, director of U-M’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, in reference to Toibin's event.
With big and/or rising literary stars on the roster, and increasing community awareness of the series, Trevor and HZWP assistant director Maya West (who oversees the reading series) should probably expect more full houses in future.
“Our list to date is pretty incredible,” said Trevor. “We really hope and strive to provide more opportunities for literary engagement in Southeast Michigan.”
“And we’ve cast a wider net with our marketing, especially in the last year or two,” said West, who noted that Literati has partnered with the series to be the bookseller on-site while also including the readings on the indie bookstore’s event calendar.
The new semester’s lineup includes:
➥ poet Mary Szybist (2013 National Book Award winner for Incarnadine) on January 12
➥ short-story writer Kelly Link (2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist in fiction for Get in Trouble), in-residence January 17-19
➥ poet and playwright Tom Sleigh on February 2
➥ poet/visual artist Terrence Hayes (his Lighthead won the 2010 National Book Award for poetry), in-residence February 14-16
➥ Jenny Offill (author of one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2014, Dept. of Speculation) on March 9
➥ poet Marie Howe (2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist for The Kingdom of Ordinary Time) on March 16
➥ fiction writer Victor Lavalle (The Devil in Silver, listed as one of the best books of 2012 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Publishers Weekly) on March 30
➥ novelist and multimedia artist Tanwi Nandini Islam (Bright Lines) on April 6
➥ and U-M MFA grad and faculty member Michael Byers (whose fiction has earned a spot in the annual Best American Short Stories anthology, among others) on April 13.
You might wonder if Chicago-based philanthropist Helen Zell’s 2013 gift (via the Zell Family Foundation) of $50 million to U-M’s graduate creative writing program -- on the heels of her “seed funding” gift of $10 million in 2004 -- is driving the vibrancy of the series, which offers 8-10 author events each semester (fall and winter). The answer is “yes,” but the series is only one small part of the generous gift’s scope.
“The lion’s share provides a tuition waiver for all of our students and supports our students being here for a post-graduate third-year residency, on a stipend,” said Trevor. “It basically turned a two-year program into more of a three-year program.”
U-M’s MFA program -- originally launched in 1982 -- was already considered to be one of the best before Zell’s generous gifts, but it has since established itself on most lists as the No. 2 training ground for writers, second only to the storied Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. More than a thousand applicants compete annually for 22 spots in U-M’s program, which was understandably renamed the Helen Zell Writers’ Program in 2013.
Those talented students, as well as faculty, submit nominations for the reading series. “Rising second-year students can invite one fiction writer and one poet,” said West. “There’s no guarantee that we’ll get the person they want, but it at least helps us generate a list of options.”
Of course, U-M writing students get to spend additional time with the visiting writers throughout the day of the reading via craft lectures, roundtable Q&As, lunch, and dinner, etc. And this is part of what makes U-M’s program strong.
“Sometimes, our students are getting feedback on their work from someone who made them want to be a writer,” said Trevor. “And sometimes, it might be from an incredible writer they’re not familiar with, but the feedback can just as valuable. … An amazing thing happens when you demystify the process of being a writer. And the more contact our students have with people who make up that world, the better they’re able to imagine themselves as part of that world.”
For a more information and complete list of dates and times, visit the Zell Visiting Writers Series events page.
Jenn McKee is a former staff arts reporter for The Ann Arbor News, where she primarily covered theater and film events, and also wrote general features and occasional articles on books and music.
Blog Post
New Year's Japes: 50 First Jokes at The Ark
by christopherporter
Organizing 50 people to be part of a show is never easy. But organizing 50 comedians?
“It’s cuckoo,” said Shelly Smith, who programs and hosts Ann Arbor’s 50 First Jokes show at The Ark, happening Tuesday, January 3 at 7:30 p.m. “It’s completely ridiculous.”
But that’s part of the fun, of course.
The show was the brainchild of comedian John F. O’Donnell, whom Smith met as part of the Ann Arbor comedy scene in the early 2000s. When O’Donnell moved back to New York more than a decade ago, he had the idea to gather comedians in Brooklyn to deliver their first new joke of the year.
“The first show was not exactly super-organized,” said Smith.
Now, though, 50 First Jokes has taken root in 10 different cities across the country, and three years ago, at O’Donnell’s urging, Smith brought the annual tradition to Ann Arbor. The show combines comedians of all ages, backgrounds, and experience levels -- from headliners to those now earning their stripes -- and seats 25 at a time on stage, where they have a maximum of two minutes to lay their first joke of 2017 on the crowd.
“It goes really fast,” said Smith. “It’s like, name, joke, name, joke, name, joke. The energy is crazy, but it’s so fun.”
Herding dozens of comedians, whose schedules can change on a dime, has involved a steep learning curve for Smith.
“The first year, I was at a party in September where there were a whole bunch of comedians, and I went around explaining it, saying, ‘I’m doing this show in January,’” said Smith. “And then last year, I was overwhelmed by too many people wanting to do it. But because of the number of things that happen when you’re working with 50 different individuals, I’d think, ‘I’ve got too many,’ then ‘I don’t have enough,’ then ‘I’ve got too many,’ then ‘I don’t have enough.’ Some who had committed backed out, others would text me that they wanted in -- it was crazy. This year, I’ve been much more in control of that flow. Before we even announced, I had 47 people, and between bumping into people and going through the list over the last two months, I got to 50, and I put in five or six alternates.”
It helped, of course, that Smith sought out help from co-producers after her first experience with the show.
“Right before the first show, I was talking to John on the phone, and he said, ‘Who’s your co-producer?’ And I said, ‘What would they be doing?’” said Smith. “I had no idea. Then I realized when I got there that, oh, you really need more than one person doing this.”
Ann Arbor’s 50 First Jokes of 2017 will mark the first time that the public will be invited in to see The Ark’s recently remodeled bar/merchandise area, and Smith promises that the show will be unlike any you’ve previously seen.
“Everybody’s so different,” Smith says of the show’s lineup. “A joke may kill, it may suck, it may be dirty, it may not be dirty -- but you only have a second to think about it before there’s someone else up there.”
But in addition to entertaining patrons in need of a laugh, 50 First Jokes is an inviting atmosphere for comics at all levels of experience.
“There’s a friend of mine, Mark Sweetman, who’s been doing comedy for 20 years, and he refers to it as ‘the annual meeting,’” said Smith. “It’s so true because there’s no other time during the year when that many comedians get together in one place. And a bunch that didn’t get on the roster will be in the audience. … So community happens. … Plus, what’s fun about it is, in the comedy scene, we know a lot of other comics’ sets. We know what a comic is going to say. Like, ‘Here comes the basketball joke, the Kanye joke,’ that’s their set. But because this is the first new joke of the year, we’re all surprised. It’s really funny, and it can be really scary, too, because nobody can just rely on their tried and true stuff. … It’s one chance, one joke, and that’s it.”
Jenn McKee is a former staff arts reporter for The Ann Arbor News, where she primarily covered theater and film events, and also wrote general features and occasional articles on books and music.
50 First Jokes happens on Tuesday, January 3 at 8 p.m. at The Ark, 316 S. Main St. in Ann Arbor. Tickets cost $10, available at www.theark.org.
Blog Post
Reviving the Romance: Ann Arbor Musical Theater Works' "Love Story"
by christopherporter
Mounting new musicals that haven’t been locally staged before is quickly becoming Ron Baumanis’ calling card.
“It’s one of the things I love to do,” Baumanis said.
In January 2015, for example, Baumanis directed an Ann Arbor Civic Theatre production of the stage musical Bonnie & Clyde,” which won over audiences so much that Baumanis went on to stage the same musical at Dexter’s Encore Theatre and Wyandotte’s Downriver Actors Guild. Now, Baumanis’ company, Ann Arbor Musical Theater Works, will present the regional premiere of the stage musical adaptation of Love Story at Ann Arbor’s Children’s Creative Center from January 5-15.
Based on the 1970 bestselling novel by Erich Segal -- with a book by Stephen Clark, music by Howard Goodall, and lyrics by Stephen Clark and Goodall -- Love Story tells the story of a young man (Oliver) from a wealthy East Coast family who falls in love with a poor young pianist (Jenny) of Italian descent. Against his father’s wishes, Oliver marries Jenny, so then he must find his way in the world without his family’s wealth. He goes to law school while Jenny works as a teacher, but when bad news arrives, both Oliver and Jenny have no choice but to alter their plans for the future.
“The musical is based more on the book than the [1970] movie, which kind of ‘60s-ized’ it,” said Baumanis. “It takes a lot of that stuff out of it and goes back to the basics of the story.”
Blog Post
Review: Owen Gleiberman Discusses His Book, "Movie Freak: My Life Watching Movies
by christopherporter
Nationally known film critic Owen Gleiberman appeared in his hometown -- specifically, the University of Michigan’s Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library Gallery -- on the evening of December 7 to talk about his book, Movie Freak: My Life Watching Movies.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Ann Arbor plays a key supporting role in Gleiberman’s story. Gleiberman moved to Treetown with his family when he was about five, and he grew up during the '60s and '70s -- which happened to be the heyday for U-M’s campus film societies. Gleiberman wrote about film while a student at Pioneer High, and he continued to do so for The Michigan Daily as a college student.
“I don’t know if i would have ever wanted to become a film critic, or a film buff, or everything this book is about if it hadn’t been for Ann Arbor, and the way this place kind of nurtured me,” Gleiberman said before reading a passage from his book on Wednesday night.
But in addition to chronicling his descent into movie madness, Movie Freak also, Gleiberman noted, turned out to be a kind of valentine to analog culture.