Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features sample-heavy electronica by Obsolete Aesthetics, fuzz-fi by Lantern Lens, Irish-steeped instrumentals by Kitty Donohoe, multigenre pop by Andrés Soto, and an experimental jam by Laserbeams of Boredom.

The Neighborhood Theatre Group’s small, minimalist theater is an intimate space for what it calls an anthology play in four parts.

The seating is limited. The stage area is small. The audience is practically part of the scene.

All these limitations are a plus for a theater that emphasizes a tight story, engaged actors, and a very different theater experience, especially for a production like The Hotel Del Gado.

The anthology drama will conclude its two-weekend schedule March 14-16 at The Back Office Studio in Ypsilanti. 

Its four plays are set in a cheap, rundown hotel room. The time is the 1970s. The Neighborhood Theatre Group (NTG) co-founder and literary manager A.M. Dean created a conceit that many of the NTG plays will be set in a place called the Huron Valley Universe, drawing on the college towns of Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor, and East Lansing.

Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features worldly improv-rock by Jesse Stiles and Bombici, healing ambient by Golden Feelings, political metalcore by Loss of Life, hyper-pop emo by Sacha, and electronica by Delphine Delight.

You realize which adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic novel Sense and Sensibility has left the strongest impression on you when—in the opening moments of a stage performance—you find yourself thinking, “OK, that’s the Emma Thompson sister, and that’s Kate Winslet.”

Yes, the much-celebrated 1995 film, directed by Ang Lee, casts a long shadow, but Sense & Sensibility: The Musical, now having its Michigan premiere at Dexter’s Encore Theatre, nonetheless offers its unique spin on the material.

With a book, music, and lyrics by Paul Gordon (who also previously adapted Jane Eyre into a Tony-nominated stage musical), Sense streamlines Austen’s world of characters down to the bone, a move that—given the economic and relational complexities of the story—occasionally makes plot turns confusing.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, dear reader, but first, a synopsis.

Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features hip-hop from Dre Dav, drumcentric world-music jams by Muruga-Sikiru-Trance Tribe, noise-rock by Horse Bomb, big-synth music by Orka Veer & Zakoor, and chamber-pop by Cedar Bend.

Dark, steel gray walls loom ominously as the moody setting for Aaron Sorkin’s breakthrough, lacerating portrayal of a troubled military.

Sorkin’s A Few Good Men seems like just the right play at just the right time for the University of Michigan Department of Theatre and Drama's on-point production at the Power Center.

Director Geoff Packard writes in his program notes that he began to see the play through “a different lens with a new set of images in my mind.”

“Like many of you, I find myself grappling with a complicated relationship with America today, questioning who we are, who we’ve been and where we are headed as a nation,” he writes. “The world in the play, as I read it now, is no longer the hopeful vision I once imagined. It has become grayer, darked and more monolithic.”

Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features folktronica by Rabbitology, disco-house by John Beltran, soundtrack grooves by KUZbeats, synth-pop by Same Eyes, and indie by Luna Pier.

Even as I accepted the assignment to attend and write about asses.masses—a daylong collaborative video game art installation brought to Ann Arbor on February 15-16 by UMS—I wondered why I’d made this choice.

It would take me away from my family for nearly an entire Saturday (the program ran from 1-9:30 pm); I’d have to drive from Farmington to Stamps Auditorium on a snowy, freezing February day, all too aware that I’d also be hosting guests in my home the next morning; I had no idea what kind of food would be provided at the event; and while I’m an absolute puzzle fiend, I’m decidedly not a gamer. (The whole idea of Twitch, where viewers can watch others play video games, is something I still struggle to wrap my head around.)

If I’ve learned anything in recent years, though, it’s that I should always follow my curiosity, and I’d repeatedly wondered what this collective all-day video game experience would look and feel like.

My short answer, after attending asses.masses? Community-building. But let’s start with the basics.

Created by Canadian duo Patrick Blendarn and Milton Lim, the game’s narrative involves a herd of donkeys who have been replaced, as workers, by machines, so many of them decide to confront their human overlords and push back against their (existential) obsolescence.

Imagine a time in the near future when scientists develop a procedure that will allow some people to become near immortals.

Lisa Sanaye Dring’s play Kairos is an interesting idea but her real subject is how precarious relationships can become when threatened.

Theatre Nova is presenting Kairos as part of the National New Play Network Rolling World Review, which includes stagings by other theater companies in Cincinnati and Los Angeles.

Kairos doesn’t begin as a sci-fi thriller. The challenge of immortal life is offered up as a unique test of human relations. So the play opens not with mad scientists but with two people looking for love.

It begins when two drivers have a minor car accident, which opens the door to romance. David and Gina are in their early 30s. David is black, Gina is white. David is attracted to Gina and she’s interested in learning about him, and so begins their sometimes blissfully happy and sometimes darkly unhappy relationship. Dring tells their story in a series of short vignettes.

Funerals can be sad, yes, but they can also be funny and even life-changing.

The Purple Rose Theatre is presenting the Michigan premiere of Eric Feffinger’s Fourteen Funerals, a very funny comedy with a very serious look at friendship, family, and life from the perspective of two very different women from two very different places.

Sienna is a young Chicago woman with aspirations of becoming a published writer. She has received a confusing call to come to small town Blissfield, Indiana, to present a eulogy for a relative she’s never met. She’s intrigued, she’s curious, she needs money, she needs to escape from Chicago if just for a day. But when she arrives she’s informed that 14 relatives have all died in an explosion of fireworks and she must give a eulogy for all of them at 14 separate funerals.

Millie is the funeral director’s daughter who has asked her to come. Millie is a young woman who loves Blissfield and hates Blissfield. But she’s ever optimistic. She’s learning all the ins and outs of being a funeral director. She’s funny, even a little goofy and leary about the woman from the city.