Ever heard a pre-show “turn off your cell phones” speech delivered by a whistling bird and her human translator before? No?

Well, that’s just the first of many surreal elements in Carla Milarch’s play Jorge Luis Borges Gives a Lecture on Anatomy, now having its world premiere at Theatre Nova, in a production directed by Kat Walsh.

I will confess up front that while I studied literature for years, I never read Borges’ work, so this review comes from a place of ... ignorance? Curiosity? Both?

Yet given the boisterous, life-embracing version of Borges that appears on Theatre Nova’s stage, courtesy of actor Phil Powers, I think it likely that the author himself would approve of me tiptoeing into his literary imagination by way of Milarch’s play.

And make no mistake. Lecture is a trippy vibe of a ride, which shouldn’t surprise those who have read Borges.

When Encore Musical Theatre Company co-founder Dan Cooney, in a pre-show speech, emphatically warned the crowd at West Side Story’s opening night to keep the aisles clear (“They’re 20,” he joked, referring to the cast’s youth), it was for good reason.

Indeed, the production’s performers often bounded onto the stage, swung (or hung, or twirled) from the set’s poles and bars, and prowled the theater’s aisles as if they were the streets of Manhattan.

That’s where this classic American musical theater riff on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet takes place, of course, in the summer of 1957. Instead of feuding families, West Side Story focuses on two territorial teen gangs (the white working-class Jets and the Puerto Rican immigrant Sharks) who regularly fight to “own” the local territory. But when a former Jet named Tony (Conor Jordan) locks eyes with young, Puerto Rican Maria (Daniela Rodriguez Del Bosque) at a dance, the two fall passionately, impetuously in love, despite their differences, and set a series of events into motion that will alter not just the path of their own lives, but those of everyone around them.

Despite its iconic, instantly recognizable music (Leonard Bernstein) and lyrics (Stephen Sondheim), book (Arthur Laurents), and choreography (Jerome Robbins, re-created in Encore’s production by Deanna Aguinaga-Whyte), West Side Story (directed here by Michael Berry) is not a show we have lots of opportunities to see performed live—in part, because this classic American musical demands a lot from the many, many young artists it takes to stage a production.

Earlier this year, Andy Jones began the process of launching a new sketch comedy troupe in Ann Arbor. He started writing sketches, reaching out to friends and fellow actors, and hosting rehearsals in his home. All of this led to the founding of The Imposters, who will make their debut June 12-14 at the hear.say brewing in Ann Arbor.

While The Imposters are a new group the names of the six members—Jones, Kara Williams, Elizabeth Wagner, Will Myers, Ken Wood, and David Widmayer—should be well known to those in the Ann Arbor theater community. The troupe has also enlisted some veteran help from stage manager Alexa Duscay.

“A lot of us have done improv comedy before, but none of us really have done sketch before, hence The Imposters,” says Jones. 

“I think everybody in the group has some interest in [sketch]. All of us have been wanting to do something new, challenge ourselves, wanting to write a bit. A way to just kind of have some fun with friends.”

In 1891, German playwright Frank Wedekind shocked theater goers with his sexually explicit play Spring Awakening, urging adults to be more open and understanding to adolescents who are trying to understand changes in their bodies and their desires.

In 2006, a musical adaptation of Spring Awakening, with book and lyrics by Steven Sater and music by Duncan Sheik, became a Broadway hit and winner of multiple Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Score.

Ronald Baumanis is directing Spring Awakening for the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre, June 5-8. He also directed a staging a few years back in Jackson. This is the 56th musical he’s directed and the 17th musical he’s directed for the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre.

“I love this show,” he said. “I saw the Broadway show and the traveling show and everyone who’s ever done it. I just love this show. I love the mix of the music with a more classic story, and I think it resonates with modern audiences based on the problems these young people had in 1891. It’s not quite to that extent because we have more access to information now. But the same thing about teenage angst, trying to find yourself when you’re told one thing by adults and other things that are more accurate.”

Carol Gray proudly describes herself as an Ann Arbor townie who began acting in youth theater with Kate Mendelhoff, a University of Michigan professor of theater who taught acting classes.

“The first musical I ever did was with Kate when I was 8 years old,” Gray said.

Gray was a freshman at U-M in 2000, the year Mendeloff founded Shakespeare in the Arb.

The annual celebration of Shakespeare in the Nichols Arboretum was a happy accident.

“Kate actually founded Shakespeare in the Arb because she couldn’t book time for an indoor space,” Gray said. “She said, ‘Where can I do this play, let’s just try to do this outside.’ She had colleagues who worked at the Arb and she was ‘why not here’ and a tradition was born.”

There has been a performance of Shakespeare in the Arb every summer from 2000 to 2025 except for two years during the pandemic. Mendelhoff died in 2023, but the program continues with Gray and Graham Atkins as co-directors. They have both been with the program since its inception.

“I started out as an actress and then sort of morphed into playing a bunch of different roles since 2000,” Gray said.

This year's Shakespeare production is The Merry Wives of Windsor. The story goes that Queen Elizabeth I was amused by the character of Falstaff, the roustabout knight who leads Prince Hal astray until Hal matures, turns Falstaff out, and goes on to become King Henry V. The Queen thought it would be fun to see Falstaff in a comedy. And when a Queen demands, a playwright obliges.

When Karl Sikkenga was teaching middle school students, he began writing pared-down scripts of Shakespeare’s plays. He developed a plan to make it easier for his students to understand Shakespeare’s plays by streamlining the Bard without changing the language or meaning of the plays.

“When I had the idea of doing it in community theater rather than in school, I thought if I’m going to do this, I might as well see if it will work or not,” he said.

In 2019, Sikkenga launched Brevity Shakespeare in Ypsilanti with a production of Hamlet in 2019, just as the pandemic hit. When the theater started up again in 2023 with As You Like It, Sikkenga had a clear vision of a new approach to Shakespeare and community theater.

“The idea behind Brevity is threefold,” he said. ”One is we are deep lovers of Shakespeare, but for me, frequently when I’m watching Shakespeare, I don’t have any idea what people are talking about. The language is the most gorgeous and at times the most obscure. When I was doing Shakespeare with secondary students, I started distilling the play, retaining the language, retaining the plot, and telling the stories in ways that we make sure everyone there understands what’s going on at all times.”

Trimming scripts also meant weeding out nonessential characters.

The Neighborhood Theatre Group (also known as NTG) is ending its 9th season with an off-the-wall and hilariously funny send-up of the always predictable Lifetime movies.

The original musical trauma comedy is called—take a breath, the title is long—The Stranger in My Breakfast Nook: A 90’s Lifetime Original Musical Parody, written by Kristin Anne Danko and Kylista Geiger. Geiger is the director and Danko, the founder of NTG, directs the music.

NTG’s minimalist approach to theater is a necessity in the tight confines of the Back Office Studio. Those limitations only add to the laughs. Another interesting quirk is something called the Tree County Universe—very Marvelish. The universe was created in 2019 and centers on the sister cities Shouting Oaks and Whispering Pines, home of the Silverspoon’s Serving Spoons, South North University, and a lot of trees.

Evelyn is showing those signs of growing old. The memory isn’t what it used to be, she gets confused at times and longs for a little more fun in her life.

Rory is a drifter, a 25-year-old man always on the go. He wasn’t getting along with his family, especially his father, so he ditched college and has been rambling ever since.

Evelyn and Rory meet on a plane flight to a Caribbean island where Evelyn owns a beachfront house. The two of them hit it off. That’s how it usually goes, young adults often find they get along with people who are two or more generations older. They don’t judge, they don’t presume, but they often pass along some well-earned wisdom.

This is the theme of Julie Marino’s play Welcome to Paradise, a comedy that celebrates a chance encounter. Ypsilanti's PTD Productions is presenting Marino’s play through May 17 at the Riverside Arts Center.

Robert Harling originally wrote Steel Magnolias as a short story to help cope with the death of his sister in 1985. She had given birth to a son but died from diabetes complications shortly after.

Rather than emphasizing a sad situation, Harling balanced the tale with humor. The short story became a play, a hit movie, and most importantly, a tribute to his sister and the comfort and support of a group of women in a small Louisiana town.

The Ann Arbor Civic Theatre is staging Steel Magnolias May 8-11 at the Arthur Miller Theatre on the North Campus of the University of Michigan.

Lindsey Brown is directing her first play for Civic.

“I was really drawn to the Magnolias because there is really something extraordinary about the communal aspect of the show,” she said. “Why this play now? I really think it’s very poignant in 2025 because there was something we missed from that timeline. At the risk of sounding regressive, not cool, not young, it’s a fact that we have our phones in our faces all the time. I think there is something I really miss about being in a room with people and being in touch with people who care about each other.”

Oscar Wilde’s most famous play, The Importance of Being Earnest, has a subtitle: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People.

In a time of strife, trivial comedy is just what people need. Even better is a play that mocks the well-to-do who are never serious (at least in Wilde’s point of view).

The Encore Theatre, usually a musical theater, makes way for an energetic, well-choreographed, and expertly staged presentation of Wilde’s masterpiece.