A2SO Link Up
The local orchestra program broadens young people’s horizons—and has a broader reach than just Ann Arbor.
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Culture
Kass Academy
I’m a writer who believes in multiple beginnings. And at the root of one of my origin stories is Jeff Kass’s classroom at Pioneer High School, where I sat nearly two decades ago, age thirteen, and began to love poetry for the first time.
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The Great Tail of Time
Set in 1812 Moscow, Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 is a musical adaptation of seventy pages of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Natasha, a young countess, is torn between her love for two men, neither of them Pierre, who is dealing with his own crisis. Among the events in this saga are scandals, a suicide attempt, a duel, an awakening, and the arrival of a comet.
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The Dude Revue … Reviewed
White Russians will flow April 4 at the Blind Pig for the “Dude Revue,” a celebration of the music of the Coen Brothers’ 1998 cult comedy.
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Where the Car Is King
I’ve never been much interested in the inner workings of a car dealership, and since watching the Purple Rose Theatre’s latest play, The Classic King, I can’t say that has changed. The comedy, which runs until March 15, follows four car salesmen on a mission to save their failing dealership. Directed by Jeff Daniels, the show is a world premiere and the first professionally produced play by Richard Johnson. Johnson began playwriting after retiring from a career as an automotive journalist, including serving as editor of Automotive News.
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Charcoal and Chill
When I try to capture, in charcoal, the foreshortened foot of today's model, the drawing looks a bit like a potato. No time to fix it; we're immediately on to the next 5-minute pose.
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Changing the Station
WEMU’s music director Michael Jewett and news director David Fair will retire in June.
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So You Think You Can’t Dance?
Founded by Werderitsch in 2024, Elemental Ecstatic Dance is inspired by his experience of two decades of Gabrielle Roth’s 5Rhythms classes in California, which combine physical workouts with meditation, along with the West Coast ecstatic dance scene. He combines these two approaches with his own free-form dance history that includes everything from disco roller skating to warehouse parties to grass roots festivals.
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Comedian Jacob Barr
“I put my disabilities right out in front,” says Jacob Barr, who, at twenty-eight, has become one of the city’s most distinctive standup comedians. “That was my cheat code when I started. Comedy is mostly straight white guys. Lots of guys have faces like mine, but not bodies like mine. So I use that to my advantage.”
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Fragments Made Whole
Elisabeth Thoburn has covered her home on Silver Lake in Pinckney with second-quality tiles from Motawi, creating a home-sized work of art—and a love letter to local clay.
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Live to Tell
Public speaking consistently ranks as people’s number one fear. It comes before spiders, the dark, nuclear war, death. Death? Yes, before death.
Read MoreThe Yellow and Blue
Some years back, I went to the Michigan Union Ticket Office to get tickets for a U-M Men’s Glee Club concert. But when I finally got to the front of a long line, the young clerk politely told me MUTO didn’t sell Glee Club tickets. This surprised me, I told him, because the Glee Club website said this was in fact the only place that sold them. He assured me that no, MUTO did not sell Glee Club tickets. I gently persisted: “Another indicator is the sign behind you that says ‘Glee Club Tickets Sold Here.’” This observation delighted the people in line behind me.
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The School of Yoga’s Uncertain Future
There’s a secret room in the basement of the Ann Arbor School of Yoga (AASY). Below the studio space, behind the changing areas, there’s a room where three huge shelves groan under the weight of Blakeney’s collection of yoga books. Her students are allowed to read the books, but not take them home, so many of them peruse the private library before and after class.
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Cluster Museum Is Coming Out Swinging
A former ballet studio on N. Main is ready for a star turn in a new artistic direction. Cluster Museum, a new collaborative of local artists, hosts a small commercial gallery with art supplies for sale in the front section. Behind the wide viewing window is an ample floor for contemporary thematic exhibits, workshops, and author readings.
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The Mighty Fitz
The “Mighty Fitz,” the biggest ship on the Great Lakes when it was launched in 1958, went down with all hands in a storm on Lake Superior in November 1975. Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot immortalized it in “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” and now it’s the subject of Bacon’s latest book: The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
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Theatre NOVA
Theatre NOVA is heading into its eleventh season in 2026 in the face of financial uncertainty. In the summer of 2025, the Trump administration called for a 35 percent cut in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. Its grants are vital to many creative organizations, and Theatre NOVA is no exception.
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The Play’s the Thing
Eva Rosenwald, the actress who initiated and is developing the series she calls “Acting Out,” told spectators that actors like to get together to read plays when they’re between productions. Why not read them in public? she wondered. Why not take the opportunity to bring the community together for a free theater experience?
Read MoreArking for a Friend
When a friend texted that her niece had signed up for open mic night at the Ark and invited me along, I said sure. Despite proofing the Observer’s listings for the event for nearly a decade, I had never checked it out, and I thought it could be an interesting way to spend a rainy spring evening.
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