In its juried exhibition Way Opens (Disability Arts and Culture), Riverside Arts Center asks, “What does ‘disabled’ mean to such a broad range of people who identify as such?”

Works in the show certainly address artists’ personal experiences with disability, but also offer opportunities for audiences to explore what this means interactively, ideally working toward empathy and interrogation into internalized perceptions of disability. Artists in the show grapple with questions of identity and disability, mostly in America, through multimedia installations, interactive exhibits, painting, fiber arts, video, sculpture, and written word. 

The Riverside Arts Center gallery space included multiple changes to the layout typically used for a group exhibition. The center space, instead of being open, or containing installations that require physical engagement, contained tables and chairs to allow visitors to sit and enjoy the show from many positions. The gallery’s book of artist statements is printed in large type and, in addition to the usual statements and bios, includes detailed descriptions of each exhibit for visually impaired visitors. 

The clouds were racing overhead as the winds pushed me toward the Duderstadt Center, the imposing Art, Architecture, and Engineering Library on North Campus that is also home to the U-M Computer and Video Game Archive.  

Looking up at the towering mouth of the glassy citadel, it's easy to imagine yourself as an avatar on a digital map, an adventurer about to set foot in a new world.

What challenges await inside?  

Generally, when we’re suffering and in pain, we know the cause.

But when it comes to identifying what will heal us -- let alone knowing whether healing is even possible -- that’s another matter entirely.

This all-too-human struggle makes up the core of the 1991 stage musical adaptation of The Secret Garden -- book and lyrics by Marsha Norman, music by Lucy Simon -- on stage at Dexter’s Encore Theatre.

Inspired by Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic 1911 children’s novel, the story begins -- rather confusingly, to be honest -- with a young British girl, Mary Lennox (Jojo Engelbert), surviving a cholera epidemic that leaves her an orphan in India. She’s dispatched to the country home of her Uncle Archibald (Jay Montgomery), but he doesn’t bother to greet her, so steeped is he in his own grief for his deceased wife, Lily (Sarah B. Stevens). 

Mary’s only company at first is a maid named Martha (Dawn Purcell), but then Mary befriends Martha’s nature-loving brother, Dickon (Tyler J. Messinger), who feeds Mary’s curiosity about the walled-off, locked-up secret garden that was once loved and tended by Lily. Plus, Mary soon stumbles upon another young resident of the house: sickly, bedridden Colin (Caden Martel), who fears that his father, Archibald, hates him because his birth caused Lily’s death.

If this all sounds pretty dark and gloomy, well, it is.

The Leo and Mary Sarkisian Collection at the University of Michigan contains a rich variety of artifacts from the longtime Voice of America broadcaster, whose creation, Music Time in Africa, is the longest-running English language radio program that broadcasts throughout Africa. There are audio recordings and documents from the Leo Sarkisian Library (on loan from Voice of America), as well as personal papers and musical instruments donated by the couple. 

But the latest addition came not from Leo and Mary, who died in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

According to a story written for the U-M Arts & Culture site, the current Music Time in Africa host -- and Michigan alumna -- Heather Maxwell let the Sarkisian Collection team know sundry tapes and scripts for old MTIA shows dating back to the mid-1960s were about to be boxed up and shipped to VOA's storage facility: salt mines in Western Pennsylvania. Knowing that if these items were sent to a cave, they'd essentially be inaccessible, Paul Conway, a U-M School of Information professor, and Kelly Askew, U-M professor of anthropology and Afroamerican and African studies, sprang into action.

Conway and Askew initially sought funding to digitize 30 Music Time in Africa shows, but once they saw how extensive and well-preserved the collection was, the duo boosted their target to 900 programs. The Sarkisian Collection team is digitizing 10,000 reel-to-reel tapes, cassettes, and vinyl records -- as well as original scripts, scrapbooks, letters, etc. -- and the first batch of these preservation efforts are online at the Music Time in Africa website.

This story was originally published on May 9, 2018, ahead of Nellie McKay's May 13, 2018, concert at The Ark in Ann Arbor. McKay is returning to The Ark on Monday, November 19 in support of her new 8-song EP, "Bagatelles," which you can hear below in addition to her 2018 LP, "Sister Orchard."

Nellie McKay often seems like she’s at a loss for words.

During our phone conversation to promote the pianist-singer-songwriter’s show at The Ark on May 13, her answers were often preceded by a swarm of ums, uhs, I means, and various other utterances. And when McKay did get to the answers, it wasn’t necessarily in response to my questions, instead offering long vignettes about politics and the stark realities of being a full-time musician. 

On stage, McKay has a similarly discursive way of speaking, mixing funny anecdotes, political pleas, and stammering self-effacement.

But once McKay strikes a piano key, everything flows. Words stream from her gorgeous voice with confidence and warmth. The quirkiness that defines her conversations gives way to sass and power, and listeners get invited into her world -- which is not of this era.

To say that Heed the Hollow by Malcolm Tariq is about the queer black experience is both true and also too simple. The poetry collection engages with the American South, the history of slavery, and sexuality and eroticism in candid, unexpected ways.

In the introduction, Chris Albani, who selected the book for the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, aptly illuminates what this book does, writing, “This is where we find Malcolm Tariq’s work, on the cusp of a new south, a new Black, a new self-love, a new history. He is one of a new emerging crop of writers that is redefining Blackness in the United States….” The collection shares perspectives on this history and lineage in relation to today.

One of the poems -- a cento that borrows lines from other places -- states, “We give narrative to experience every day. Being born and living lawfully in my / humanness, I live a reality denied to the enslaved and formerly enslaved.” This contrast between today’s way of life and the not-too-distant past offers insight into how this country’s history still shadows the experience of the present.

On Saturday, Dec. 7, a cohort of teen artist-activists from Ypsilanti, Michigan, and Richmond, California -- collectively known as Staying Power -- will put on a multigenre production that will culminate a year-long cultural exchange program between teens from these two communities.  

"Staying Power: Concrete, Not Wood" will blend original poetry, music, theater, and film to stage conversations around gentrification and housing injustice experienced across the U.S, centering the voices and vision of youth of color who are using their art to create change.

Jua’Chelle Harmon, 17, is one of Staying Power's participants and below she reflects on what the project and poetry mean to her.

On November 6, Bob Dylan visited Hill Auditorium for the 7th time as part of his Never Ending Tour -- 57.5 years after his initial performance in Ann Arbor on April 22, 1962.

The Pulp feature "Highway I-94, M-14 & US-23 Revisted: A Comprehensive History of Bob Dylan in Ann Arbor" noted that this was the legend's 12th concert in town. But unlike his early shows here, which were marked by banter with and by the audience, Dylan's most recent show at Hill Auditorium was defined by his longtime approach to performing: he did not once address the audience verbally, instead only interacting through the music.

Theatre Nova has chosen, appropriately, a showbiz musical as a fund-raiser for the innovative professional theater that specializes in new plays and new playwrights.

This play isn’t new nor are the writers, but the show-business environment and its emotional ups and downs are perfect for reminding theater-goers why live theater matters. Follies, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Goldman, is a tip of the hat to obsessions, from being on stage to matters of the heart.

Nova recently received a matching grant of $15,000 from the Michigan Council of Arts and Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts. The two-weekend limited run of Follies is one of several fund-raisers to meet the match. Nova is presenting a stripped-down, concert version of the musical that puts the spotlight on the songs and keeps the focus on the central story of two former showgirls and their unhappy marriages. Actors double up on some roles and side plots are eliminated. 

The story concerns a reunion of Weismann Follies showgirls (a fictional Ziegfeld). They gather together in an old Broadway theater in 1971, 30 years since they last performed just before the U.S. entry into World War II.

Wilco and special guests Deep Sea Diver played Hill Auditorium on November 5. Photographer Doug Coombe was there. See below for more of his pictures.