Anton Anderssen

The Downriver Actors' Guild announced its 2018 2019 season on Saturday with a festive reception and teasers. The reception included heaps of shrimp cocktail, fresh hummus, and home-baked cookies. Each upcoming show was featured during the special event.

The Village Theatre of Canton will host auditions for the Aaron Sorkin groundbreaking play, A FEW GOOD MEN, on September 4th and 5th from 6:30pm - 9:30pm. The production is being produced by BTEP of Canton and will offer performances November 16th, 17th and 18th 2018.

It's the sly inversion of good and evil that makes WICKED fascinating. It's wrestling with doing what's fashionable versus doing what's right that makes WICKED timeless. Now, those brilliant minds at Broadway in Detroit reprise this killer musical for us to fall in love with, all over again. Whether you prefer Idina Menzel, or Kurt and Rachel's version on Glee, 'Defying Gravity' sends chills up and down one's spine; in this production, Mary Kate Morrissey nails the part and sends electricity throughout the Opera House way to the highest rafters. Based on a satirical novel by Gregory Maguire, WICKED has awed audiences for 15 years with its massive steampunk set, its dazzling costumes, and a bewitching score by Stephen Schwartz. Declared 'The Best Musical of the Decade' by Entertainment Weekly and 'A Cultural Phenomenon' by Variety, WICKED is the recipient of over 100 international awards including the Grammy Award and three Tony Awards.

With book, music and lyrics by former Oak Park resident Andrew Lippa, The Wild Party is set in the Roaring Twenties, a time of explosive social and cultural upheaval. It's the Jazz Age, Prohibition is in full swing and postwar America is booming, with a seemingly insatiable appetite for new fashions, fads and excitement. Amidst this backdrop, vaudeville stars Queenie and her lover, Burrs, live a desultory, decadent life.

Now on stage at Canton Village Theatre is Spotlight Players' production of the musical ANNIE. Directed by John Sartor, this version adds wonderful scenes that improve the storyline even better than before. During the awkward moments when the curtain was down and set changes were being made, Sartor had little boys walk about the stage, selling apples - it was a brilliant use of time. Sartor also added interesting scenes, such as FDR reading a fireside speech from one of the side satellites, opening the show with Annie's parents dropping her off at Hudson Street home for girls as an infant, an amazing subway set where pedestrians rose to the stage from the pit as if exiting the subway line, and a climax with jetted streamers and pyrotechnics.

The Hawai'i Symphony Orchestra offered another of its wildly successful pop up concert series at the Bank of Hawaii headquarters downtown on March 28. Joseph Stepec, Assistant Professor of Music at The University of Hawaii at Manoa, Director of Orchestras, conducted the free concert, which received thunderous applause throughout the event.

The Macomb Symphony Orchestra (MSO) presents The Baroque Experience on Sunday, March 18th, 3:00 p.m., at the Macomb Center for the Performing Arts (located on Garfield at Hall Road in Clinton Township). Join the Macomb Symphony Chamber Orchestra for a program of glorious music from the 17 th & 18 th Centuries featuring music of Albinoni, Handel, Bach, Biber and Vivaldi. Featured will be Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #3, a sonata for trumpet and strings by H.I.F. Biber as well as the Handel's cononation anthem Zadok the Priest featuring the Macomb Chamber Choir.

Are you a fan of the great composer, Pytor IIyich Tchaikovsky? Do you want to know more about the great composer who wrote such masterpieces as the ballet scores for "The Nutcracker" "Sleeping Beauty" and "Swan Lake" as well as symphonies, concertos and operas?

I am the Lord of Hartforth, an ancient village located aside Yorkshire Dales National Park in northern England. Not a lot goes on there. It is highly conservative, where people pride themselves on proper behavior. 42 miles to the south is Rylstone, an equally proper village. The Rylstone Women's Institute shot to fame with its 1999 society calendar because its distinguished ladies were photographed nude. Angela Baker, whose husband John, an assistant national park officer, died from non-Hodgkins lymphoma in July 1998 at age 54, inspiring the idea for the calendar. There were a lot of people riled up in Rylstone; this simply was not proper English protocol. When Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, was caught topless in August 1992, she was kicked out of Balmoral Castle and banned from the royal household for some 16 years. Likewise, the 11 women featured in the nudie calendar certainly raised eyebrows, even among the liberal folks; however, the women also raised £2million for leukaemia research and their publicity stunt spawned a hit movie starring Helen Mirren. The movie spawned a stage play, CALENDAR GIRLS.

Kona Nui Nights is a free monthly event that honors and highlights Hawaiian language, music, and the art of hula. Hosted beneath a large tent behind the IBM building, Ward Village presents one of the best cultural experiences on Oahu. December's special night featured Kupaoa (Kellen and Lihau Paik ) and Mark Yamanaka. This special Kona Nui Nights was a family-friendly event with holiday-themed activities and treats throughout the night. Guests had to RSVP well in advance, and the event was completely booked to capacity. However, some disabled guests found they were robbed of this Christmas celebration due to a Grinch who decided to block the handicap ramp with his Lexus. Instead of allowing the path 50 inches for a wheelchair to pass through, he decided handicapped people only needed about 13 inches for their wheelchairs and walkers in the space between his car and the cement wall. (See photo)

Music Hall welcomes back The MOSCOW FESTIVAL BALLET, Saturday, Jan 13, 2018 at 8:00pm with a performance of the timeless ballet- SWAN LAKE: Ballet in Four Acts with Music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikowski

Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year for many people. It's that season when people dress in glitzy couture and do all kinds of fun stuff. I'm a big fan of theatrical spectacle, and right now at Fisher Theatre's Broadway In Detroit CHRISTMAS WONDERLAND is the dazzling feast for the eyes and ears. In many ways it is similar to the production shows often seen in Branson, but this troupe has come to us. There are five main singers and more than a dozen chorus who dance, sing, and some who even ice skate.

Gershwin talent is inimitable; in 1932, Of Thee I Sing was the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. George wrote the orchestral piece, An American in Paris, in 1928, inspired by the time he spent in Paris. In 1951, MGM released the musical film An American in Paris. It won Best Picture Oscar. Directed by Vincente Minnelli (Judy Garland's husband), the film featured many tunes of Gershwin, and concluded with an extensive, elaborate dance sequence built around the An American in Paris symphonic poem. The 2015 stage musical, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS won four Tony Awards, three Outer Critics Circle Awards, a Drama League Award, two Theatre World Awards, four Drama Desk Awards, three Fred and Adele Astaire Awards.

John Sartor stars as Atticus Finch in Livonia Community Theatre's upcoming production of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, a play based on the award-winning novel by Harper Lee that explores the timely subject of race relations through the eyes of a young girl growing up in a small southern town in the 1950's. The book has been banned throughout the years in various parts of the country. More recently, it was banned by Mississippi's Biloxi School Board because it 'makes people uncomfortable.' Such a vague excuse is BS by most intellectual standards.

LOVE NEVER DIES is a very misunderstood musical, much like the charactor 'Phantom of the Opera.' This show is the sequel to 'THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA', and it turns PHANTOM upside down. If you watched The Wizard of Oz on television for many years, then went to see WICKED, you were probably in shock that two sides to the same story can be so radically different. What we thought we were seeing in PHANTOM, was Raoul's view. The new show is from Christine's perspective.

Moore was astounding in this performance; it was mostly about his life and what he believes in. I don't find many comedians funny, but I surrendered to Moore's clever monologue, joined by uproarious laughter from the audience throughout the show. His type of humor is sophisticated and intellectual; he presented his show as a 12-step program for liberals. I'm neither a liberal nor an alcoholic, so going through a 12-step recovery session was a novel experience. One of the traditional steps in such programs involve turning one's problems over to God. Moore confessed, My higher power is Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Remember those educational cartoons when you were a little kid, like Conjunction Junction, I'm just a Bill, and Interjection? Now is your chance to hear all of those timeless tunes in one setting, at Spotlight Players in Canton, where director John Sartor works his unique brand of magic bringing out enthusiasm and energy with a school room filled with kids in the musical production SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK LIVE! JR.

Now on stage at the Encore Theatre is the musical '9 to 5.' I'd love to invite you to enjoy seeing this show, but due to its overwhelming popularity, it's completely sold out. The only possible way to get tickets is if there are cancellations. This is a smash hit for Encore Theatre, and of course, everything they do is performed to perfection. You are best off buying a season ticket so you can always see their shows.

Now on stage at Beef and Boards is the ogre-sized, greatest fairy tale never told: the breathtaking Broadway musical adaptation of the hit movie Shrek. On one level, SHREK THE MUSICAL is silly family fun, but digging deeper into the story, there are messages that are crucial in life. The Princess, Fiona, never loses her faith in her fairytales. She is trapped in a tower, surrounded by boiling lava, with a fire-breathing dragon Hell-bent on keeping any interloper at bay. I greatly admire her character; how many people would give up on their dreams and just off themselves? I wanted to escape the cornfields of the Amish countryside desperately when I was young, and the odds were greatly against me. I never gave up on my dreams, and today I own a house by the ocean in Hawaii, and have my own knight in shining armor. Theatre gives you the chance to dream about how life can be, should be, or will be. It's like a seed that gets planted in your mind and one day can grow into a mighty oak.

St. Dunstan's Theatre Guild of Cranbrook closes out their season this year with the show-stopping 42ND STREET.   Experience "theatre under the stars," as this classic musical is performed in the beautiful outdoor Greek Theatre, located right behind the St. Dunstan's pavilion in Bloomfield Hills.