All invited to listen to guild members swap stories or bring their own to tell, at the AASG monthly meeting.
The 2019 Shakespeare in the Arb play is Twelfth Night, Shakespeare’s story of love and identity, mistaken and otherwise, brims with some of the bard’s most well-loved speeches and songs.
The performance dates and times: Thurs.-Sun., June 6-9; 13-16; 20-23, 6:30 pm.
Now in its 19th year, Shakespeare in the Arb is directed by Kate Mendeloff of the U-M Residential College, Carol Gray, and Graham Atkin, and performed by U-M students and community players. Matthaei-Nichols members receive a discount on tickets. Matthaei-Nichols members may reserve tickets through their online box office beginning in May, and reserve tickets for any performance up to 24 hours before show time and pick up at will call.
For member and non-member questions and information, visit mbgna.umich.edu
Shakespeare in the Arb came into existence in the summer of 2001, when Residential College Drama faculty member Kate Mendeloff was asked to direct an outdoor production as part of a three year Ford Motor Company grant for Arts in the Nichols Arboretum. She chose Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for its structure — the characters were transformed by the power of the natural world. The production was such a popular success that Mendeloff remounted it the following summer, and “Shakespeare in the Arb” became an Ann Arbor tradition!
The unique experience of Shakespeare in the Arb comes from the environmental staging of the plays. There is no fixed stage; instead, the audience follows the action through different locations in the Arboretum. The staging takes advantage of the vistas and valleys, the special arrangements of the natural settings.
The wide open space of the Arb becomes a panoramic stage, creating a more realistic setting than if every scene was played out directly in front of you. As one critic commented, “The actors used the vastness of its Arb stage to full advantage, making entrances from behind trees, appearing over rises and vanishing into the woods.”
Every year, many UM students, alumni, and faculty members gather to act in Shakespeare in the Arb. The RC offers Spring term class credit to students who participate. The experience blends community, student, and professional-style participation in a theatrical production with the delicate ecology and beautiful environment of the Arb, providing dynamic educational value for participating students.
Auditions occur every April, with rehearsals starting in the Spring term. Performances occur over 3 weekends in June. For information about participation, please contact founder Kate Mendeloff.
To find information about this year’s production of Shakespeare in the Arb, go to Matthei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum (MBGNA) , or like Shakespeare in the Arb on Facebook for updates on the production!
Kim Darst from Husky Haven Sled Dogs will share her experience competing in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Anchorage, Alaska. Husky Haven Sled Dogs was established in 1999 with two Samoyeds and a dream to run the Iditarod. In 2009 that dream came true, and they were the first team from New Jersey to qualify, enter, and run the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. Come learn about what it takes to train for the Iditarod, and meet one of Kim’s sled dogs! Copies of Cotton’s Tale, a children’s book about Kim’s story, will be available for sale.
Cozine Welch is managing editor of Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing. The program begins with open mike readings.
ONE PAUSE POETRY SALON is (literally) a greenhouse for poetry and poets, nurturing an appreciation for written art in all languages and encouraging experiments in creative writing.
We meet every Weds in the greenhouse at Argus Farm Stop on Liberty St. The poems we read each time are unified by form (haiku, sonnet, spoken word), poet, time / place (Tang Dynasty, English Romanticism, New York in the 70s) or theme / mood (springtime, poems with cats, protest poems). We discuss the poems and play writing games together, with time for snacks and socializing in between.
Members are encouraged to share their own poems or poems they like – they may or may not relate to the theme of the evening. This is not primarily a workshop – we may hold special workshop nights, but mostly we listen to and talk about poems for the sake of inspiring new writing.
Whether you are a published poet or encountering poetry for the first time, we invite you to join us!
$5 suggested donation for food, drinks and printing costs.
8-10 p.m., Argus Farm Stop greenhouse, 325 W. Liberty. $5 suggested donation. onepausepoetry.org, 707-1284.
Tom Grace is the internationally bestselling author of the Nolan Kilkenny thrillers “Undeniable”, “The Secret Cardinal”, “Bird of Prey”, “Twisted Web”, “Quantum” and “Spyder Web”; and the stand-alone thriller “The Liberty Intrigue”. His books have been translated into eight languages and sold in over twenty-five countries. Grace was born and raised in Michigan, and graduated twice from the University of Michigan with degrees in architecture. He is a member of the International Thriller Writers and resides in Michigan with his family.
The lights dimmed in the auditorium and the speaker for the OLLI Local Author lecture stood center stage. “Imagine if we were to discover a body among us,” he began, “that of a person who met a most unnatural end. There would be an investigation and we would have ourselves a mystery. But if, with the body, we found clues to a looming tragedy and the clock is ticking—then we have a thriller!”
This is the second in a three-lecture series. The subject is A Celebration of Local Authors. The next lecture will take place July 11, 2019. The title is William W. Cook and His Michigan Law Quadrangle.
We welcome the eight participants from Literati’s first Fiction Writing Workshop, reading original prose as a culmination and celebration of the eight-week course run by Literati bookseller and Creative Programs Manager, Gina Balibrera Amyx. Free and open to the public.
About Literati’s Fiction Writing Workshop: Literati Bookstore’s Fiction Writing Workshop is an 8-week writing intensive to be held in May and June 2019. The workshop will focus on elements of prose–narrative structure, context, and especially, voice. The arc of this course will be shaped by the curiosities and obsessions of the group. Each writer will be workshopped by the group, and will write and receive in-depth, typed critiques of work from other participants and the instructor. At the conclusion of the session, participants will receive two craft texts, as well as three texts selected personally for them by the instructor, to complement and inform their writing, a one-on-one conference with the instructor, and the opportunity to give a public reading of original work. The workshop is taught by Gina Balibrera Amyx, graduate of University of Michigan’s Helen Zell MFA program in Prose, and currently, Creative Programs Manager at Literati. Her writing has been featured in the Boston Review, Ploughshares, Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Wandering Song, an anthology of the Central American diaspora.
You had a great idea for a novel or a memoir and then it just sort of…fizzled. Where did the magic go? And is there any way to get it back? In this workshop, Alex Kourvo and Bethany Neal will help diagnose story problems to help you restart your novel, with no-nonsense solutions to reclaim your narrative and get that book finished.
This is part of the monthly Emerging Writers Workshops, which offer support, learning, and advice for local authors. Each month, two weeks after the workshop, there is a meet-up where the instructors will read samples of your work and offer advice and assistance in a casual, supportive atmosphere.
Do you have a completed manuscript? Consider submitting it to the library’s imprint Fifth Avenue Press.
We welcome authors Joe Sacksteder and Matt Kirkpatrick in support of their latest, Make/Shift: Stories and The Ambrose J. and Vivian T. Seagrave Museum of 20th Century American Art, respectively, as part of our ongoing Fiction at Literati series. A book signing will follow the reading. The event is free and open to the public.
Situated in the absurd and pop-culture, the stories in Make/Shift land athletes, actors, musicians, and grievers at the center of more dire spectacles than they’d anticipated.
A strange museum, an even stranger curator, the deceased artist who haunts him, and the mystery surrounding the museum founders’ daughter, lost at sea as a child . . . The Ambrose J. and Vivian T. Seagrave Museum of 20th Century American Art is by turns a dark comedy, a ghost story, a romance, a whodunit, a family saga, and an exhibition catalog
Joe Sacksteder is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Utah. Fugitive Traces, his album of Werner Herzog audio collages, will be available from Punctum Books. His writing has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Florida Review, The Literary Review, Passages North, Hobart, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. He is currently a visiting instructor at Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan.
Matthew Kirkpatrick is a writer and associate professor of creative writing at Eastern Michigan University.
We welcome the world’s preeminent writer of comics and graphic novels about science back to our store in support of his latest, Hawking. Signing to follow. Free and open to the public.
About the book: From his early days at the St Albans School and Oxford, Stephen Hawking’s brilliance and good humor were obvious to everyone he met. A lively and popular young man, it’s no surprise that he would later rise to celebrity status.
At twenty-one he was diagnosed with ALS, a degenerative neuromuscular disease. Though the disease weakened his muscles and limited his ability to move and speak, it did nothing to limit his mind. He went on to do groundbreaking work in cosmology and theoretical physics for decades after being told he had only a few years to live. He brought his intimate understanding of the universe to the public in his 1988 bestseller, A Brief History of Time. Soon after, he added pop-culture icon to his accomplishments by playing himself on shows like Star Trek, The Simpsons, and The Big Bang Theory, and becoming an outspoken advocate for disability rights.
In Hawking, writer Jim Ottaviani and artist Leland Myrick have crafted an intricate portrait of the great thinker, the public figure, and the man behind both identities.
Jim Ottaviani (Feynman, Primates) is the world’s preeminent writer of comics and graphic novels about science. Notable works include a biography of Niels Bohr and the fast-paced tale of the desperate lives of early paleontologists and T-Minus: The Race to the Moon, from Aladdin books. He has worked as a nuclear engineer and is currently employed as a reference librarian in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
