An older nun’s hard “certainty” pushes against a popular, easy-going priest in John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Doubt, A Parable.

When the play was first staged in 2004, it drew on the sexual scandals in the Catholic church and the very real doubts about the line between compassion and transgression.

PTD Productions is staging Doubt, A Parable Feb. 13-15 and 18-21 at the Riverside Arts Center in Ypsilanti.

The play opens with Father Flynn presenting his Sunday homily to the congregation. His theme is doubt, and like Jesus, he uses parables to make abstract ideas easy to understand.

“Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty,” he tells his congregation.

Director Josiah Jackson writes in his director’s note of the play's theme, “It’s a story much simpler and smaller than our real world, a fictional place where one could find certainty, wrapped in a nice package with a crisp bow on top, but that is not what this story does. Instead of offering certainty, this play asks us to consider that doubt is, in fact, not something to run from, but rather to embrace.”

After Richard Johnson retired as print editor for Crain Communications’ Automotive News, he used his automobile creds to work on a play about the history of the Ford Motor Company after World War II.

He met with Jeff Daniels, founder and artistic director of Chelsea's Purple Rose Theatre, about staging his play. Daniels told Johnson his play about Lee Iacocca at Ford was too big and asked him, “What do you know?” Johnson replied, “I’ve been writing about the automotive industry for 35 years. I know cars.”

Johnson understood Daniels' suggestion and began again with a different car story. It wasn’t a story about auto executives, hotshot designers, or top-drawer new-car dealerships. 

The result is The Classic King, Johnson’s beautifully detailed comedy-drama set in a used-car shop. It's at The Purple Rose Theatre through March 15.

Playwright Jordan Hall opens Kayak with a woman floating down a river. Annie Iverson is afraid, unable to navigate her boat properly or use a GPS to figure out where she is. So, instead, she stacks a s’more (her only food) and begins to share her woes.

She’s got a lot to complain about, but mostly she’s concerned about her son and his relationship with this “awful” girlfriend who goes around the world trying to save the environment and leads “dangerous” rallies and gives loud and angry speeches. Why, she wonders, can’t her son find a nice girl who will one day give her grandchildren?

Theatre NOVA’s production of Kayak seems to have chosen just the right play to perform at just the right moment. Events in American cities and around the world are making people wonder what their obligations are in troubled times.

I know we were all supposed to be “holding space” for "Defying Gravity" at this time last year, but if I’m being honest, the iconic movie musical moment between two young women that really destroyed me appeared on screens long before Wicked (spoiler alert—if you’ve been living under a rock for quite some time): Anna using the last of her strength to save her sister instead of herself in Disney’s Frozen in 2013.

And thanks to Dexter’s Encore Musical Theatre Company, you (alongside lots of little ones in sparkly blue Elsa dresses) can now see that moment reenacted live via its production of Frozen: The Broadway Musical.

Why did that moment elicit such a strong reaction in me?

Despite all attempts to project Norman Rockwell vibes onto Thanksgiving, the holiday has long been associated with stressful travel, flaring tempers, and tears, thanks to relations with diametrically opposed beliefs gathering in close quarters for a long, leisurely meal.

Throw in a conversation about the brutal, non-mythologized history of the American Thanksgiving holiday, and, well, you’ve likely lit a powder keg. Yet this is essentially what two white, politically progressive characters in Larissa FastHorse’s satire The Thanksgiving Play, now being presented by The Penny Seats Theatre Company, aim for: to devise an original holiday play for elementary school students that tells the truth in a culturally ethical way.

As you might guess, this turns out to be a far harder and messier task than they expect.

It’s long been a tradition to make Shakespeare more accessible to modern audiences by staging the Bard’s plays in a more familiar setting. I’ve seen stage productions and movies of Romeo and Juliet as spoiled brats in Los Angeles, the Taming of the Shrew in the New York mob scene, and Macbeth in the competitive scramble of corporate America.

Director Karl Sikkenga, founder and artistic director of Brevity Shakespeare, has moved Shakespeare’s Othello and his army from Venice and Cyprus to the Old West of San Francisco and Santa Catalina Island. The story remains the same, but in a more condensed version and with some adjustments to match the play with its new setting.

Sikkenga’s Brevity Shakespeare and PTD Productions are collaborating on the staging of Othello at the Riverside Arts Center in Ypsilanti.

In Brevity’s version of Othello, it’s 1881, and a U.S. Army company is stationed in San Francisco. Othello is a decorated leader, devoted to his men and devoted to his beautiful wife, Desdemona.

For a while, Ethan was doing great in Chicago. He had a good job, a relationship that seemed strong, and was embracing the freedoms that a big city offers. Then the job, the relationship, and the big city merged to create a breakdown. It was time to go home to Ann Arbor.

Theatre Nova is presenting the world premiere of playwright Robert Axelrod’s Dry Summer. It’s a sensitive play about depression, alcohol abuse, and family relations. But it’s also a play that balances drama with humor, emotional pain with a determination to forge ahead.

The Purple Rose Theatre Company’s new revival production of Jeff Daniels’ comedy Norma & Wanda, first staged in Chelsea 20 years ago, has a notably self-aware coda: an upbeat recorded cast announcement that brings the actors bounding back onto the stage, similar to that of a “recorded in front of a live studio audience” sitcom curtain call.

Frankly, nothing could be more apt for the slapstick-y Norma & Wanda. The play aims to be an over-the-top romp with loads of physical comedy and double entendres. It tells the story of the titular sisters: Norma (Kristin Shields), who’s frantically decorating her home for the holidays while also making peanut butter balls for the Baby Jesus Memorial Christmas Brunch; and Wanda (Jamie Elvey), the crass, unlucky-in-love sister who’s seething about being stood up yet again.

But whether you do more laughing or wincing, well, that will depend on how funny you find a woman repeatedly summoning her cat by yelling, “Where’s my Pussy?” and if the phrase “peanut butter balls” makes you giggle.

The University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance is taking over The Encore Theatre stage this weekend and next for a play that director Sydney Morton calls tailor-made for U-M students.

She Loves Me, with book by Joe Masteroff, music by Jerry Bock, and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, is a musical adaptation of a play by Hungarian playwright Miklos Laszlo. The play has been the source for the 1940s movies Shop Around the Corner and The Good Old Summertime, and was the inspiration for You’ve Got Mail.

She Loves Me is the story of two star-crossed lovers who have never met but exchange heartfelt love letters. But the musical is also about the people at Mr. Maraczek’s very successful parfumerie in Budapest. Everyone has a story, a song, a dance. The play is about a work family in which each character has a story.

Director Morton writes that the play has many connections to U-M, including lyricist Sheldon Harnick’s friendship with the Musical Theatre Emeritus Chair, Brent Wagner. But, until now, the musical has never been produced by the university.

The Radar tracks new music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This week: Loamsy, DASHpf, BigPlanet, Mei Semones, Chris DuPont, DJ Myint, Hemmingway Lane, Hey Look Listen, Latimer Rogland, Modus Operandi, and G.B. Marian.