Calendar

Jan
2
Wed
5th Annual Ann Arbor 50 First Jokes @ The Ark
Jan 2 @ 8:00 pm – 9:30 pm

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.

Jan
3
Thu
Laura Pershin Raynor and Lori Fithian: Drumming Up Stories @ AADL Downtown
Jan 3 @ 4:00 pm – 4:45 pm

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
Tue
The Moth Storyslam: Backwards @ Greyline
Jan 8 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

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
15
Tue
The Moth Storyslam: Drive @ Greyline
Jan 15 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

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.

 

Feb
5
Tue
The Moth Storyslam: Delusions @ Greyline
Feb 5 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

 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
11
Mon
Panel Discussion: Elemental: A Collection of Michigan Creative Nonfiction @ Literati
Feb 11 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Literati is excited to host this special panel discussion with contributors from the new book Elemental: A Collection of Creative Nonfiction

About Elemental: A Collection of Creative Nonfiction:
Elemental: A Collection of Michigan Creative Nonfiction comes to us from twenty-three of Michigan’s most well-known essayists. A celebration of the elements, this collection is both the storm and the shelter. In her introduction, editor Anne-Marie Oomen recalls the “ritual dousing” of her storytelling group’s bonfire: “wind, earth, fire, water-all of it simultaneous in that one gesture. . . . In that moment we are bound together with these elements and with this place, the circle around the fire on the shores of a Great Lake closes, complete.”

The essays approach Michigan at the atomic level. This is a place where weather patterns and ecology matter. Farmers, miners, shippers, and loggers have built (or lost) their livelihood on Michigan’s nature-what could and could not be made out of our elements. From freshwater lakes that have shaped the ground beneath our feet to the industrial ebb and flow of iron ore and wind power-ours is a state of survival and transformation. In the first section of the book, “Earth,” Jerry Dennis remembers working construction in northern Michigan. “Water” includes a piece from Jessica Mesman, who writes of the appearance of snow in different iterations throughout her life. The section “Wind” houses essays about the ungraspable nature of death from Toi Dericotte and Keith Taylor. “Fire” includes a piece by Mardi Jo Link, who recollects the unfortunate series of circumstances surrounding one of her family members.

Elemental‘s strength lies in its ability to learn from the past in the hope of defining a wiser future. A lot of literature can make this claim, but not all of it comes together so organically. Fans of nonfiction that reads as beautifully as fiction will love this collection.

Anne-Marie Oomen is author of Love, Sex, and 4-H, House of Fields, Pulling Down the Barn, and Uncoded Woman, among others. She teaches at Solstice MFA at Pine Manor College, Interlochen’s College of Creative Arts, and at conferences throughout the country.

Feb
14
Thu
Caryl Churchill Festival: Drunk Enough To Say I Love You? And Here We Go @ Keene Theater, East Quad
Feb 14 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

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
16
Sat
Caryl Churchill Festival: Love and Information @ Keene Theater, East Quad
Feb 16 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

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.

Feb
17
Sun
Margit Strassburger: Bonjour Berlin @ Keene Theater, East Quad
Feb 17 @ 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm

German actor Margit Stra�burger sings cabaret songs set to poetry by German Jewish poet Mascha Kaleko that longs for pre 1933-Berlin. In German with piano accompaniment by Toledo-based pianist Michelle Papenfuss. Q&A follows.
5-7 p.m., Keene Theatre, East Quad, 701 East University. Free. 647-4354

Feb
19
Tue
The Moth Storyslam: Flight @ Greyline
Feb 19 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

 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.

 

lsa logoum logoU-M Privacy StatementAccessibility at U-M