Fifty comics from around Michigan, both veterans and upstarts, take turns telling the 1st joke they’ve written in 2018. Similar events, which began at the Bell House in Brooklyn more than a decade ago, now also take place in New Orleans and L.A.
8 p.m., The Ark, 316 S. Main. Tickets $10 in advance at the Michigan Union Ticket Office (muto.umich.edu) and theark.org, and at the door. To charge by phone, call 763-TKTS.
AADL storyteller Laura Pershin Raynor and local drum teacher Lori Fithian lead a storytelling program with movement and music for kids in grades preK-3.
4-4:45 p.m., AADL Downtown Youth Story Corner, 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. 327-4200.
Jan. 8 & 15. Open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit that also produces a weekly public radio show. Ten storytellers are selected at random to tell a 3-5 minute story–this month’s themes are “Backwards”(Jan. 8) & “Drive” (Jan. 15)–judged by a 3-person team recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Seating limited, so arrive early.
7:30-9 p.m. (doors open and sign-up begins at 6 p.m.), Greyline, 100 N. Ashley. General admission tickets $10 in advance only at themoth.org beginning a week before each event. 764-5118.
Jan. 8 & 15. Open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit that also produces a weekly public radio show. Ten storytellers are selected at random to tell a 3-5 minute story–this month’s themes are “Backwards”(Jan. 8) & “Drive” (Jan. 15)–judged by a 3-person team recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Seating limited, so arrive early.
7:30-9 p.m. (doors open and sign-up begins at 6 p.m.), Greyline, 100 N. Ashley. General admission tickets $10 in advance only at themoth.org beginning a week before each event. 764-5118.
Talk by this CNN political commentator and bestselling writer, author of For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Still Not Enough, winner of the American Library Association Stonewall Award for Nonfiction in 2013.
2 p.m., EMU Student Center Auditorium, 900 Oakwood, Ypsilanti. Free. 487-1849.
Literati is proud to be the bookseller at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute of Ann Arbor’s event with Kentaro Toyama at the Washtenaw Community College.
The Future of Work
Speaker’s Synopsis: Will artificial intelligence (AI) take away jobs or usher in a prosperous utopia? Will self-driving cars reduce our use of fossil fuels or accelerate emissions? What will a college degree be worth when knowledge work can be done by machine? This talk considers these and other questions through the lens of technology’s “Law of Amplification.” Paradoxically, what is needed most in a world of advanced technology is greater attention to human values.
Kentaro Toyama is W. K. Kellogg Professor of Community Information at the University of Michigan School of Information, a fellow of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT, and author of Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology. In previous lives, Kentaro taught at Ashesi University in Ghana and co-founded Microsoft Research India, where he did research on the application of information and communication technology to international development.
Yale law professor James Forman, Jr. reads from his Pulitzer-winning book examining the response by African American elected officials and citizens to the surge in crime and drug addiction that began in the 1970s.
4-5:30 p.m., 1010 Weiser Hall, 500 Church. Free. 615-8482.
Open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit that also produces a weekly public radio show. Ten storytellers are selected at random to tell a 3-5 minute story–this month’s themes are “Delusions” (Feb. 5) & “Flight” (Feb 19)–judged by a 3-person team recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Seating limited, so arrive early.
7:30-9 p.m. (doors open and sign-up begins at 6 p.m.), Greyline, 100 N. Ashley. General admission tickets $10 in advance only at themoth.org beginning a week before each event. 764-5118.
Feb. 14, 16, 22, & 23 (different programs). U-M students and faculty perform staged readings of works by this acclaimed English playwright in honor of her 80th birthday. Today: The 2006 play Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?, an allegory about U.S. foreign policy and international relations told through the story of a relationship between 2 men. Here We Go (2015) is a 3-part meditation on death, beginning with a funeral and continuing into the afterlife.
7:30 p.m., East Quad Keene Theater, 701 East University. Free. 647-4354
Feb. 14, 16, 22, & 23 (different programs). U-M students and faculty perform staged readings of works by this acclaimed English playwright in honor of her 80th birthday. Today: U-M drama students in 2 different Residential College drama classes direct and perform Love and Information, Churchill’s 2012 play about relationships in the digital age presented as an evolving mosaic of more than 50 fragmented and superficially unconnected scenes. The U-M theater department also performs Love and Information(see 21 Thursday listing).
7:30 p.m., Keene Theatre, East Quad, 701 East University. Free. 647-4354.
