Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire received two 2023 Tony Awards and won rave reviews for his musical adaptation of his play Kimberly Akimbo. In 2007 he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Rabbit Hole.

Director Gary Lehman is taking audiences back to a much earlier Lindsay-Abaire play, but one that combines humor with a dark undertone. PTD Productions in Ypsilanti is presenting Fuddy Meers through August 24 at the River Arts Center in Ypsilanti.

At the center of Fuddy Meers is Claire. Every morning Claire wakes she doesn’t know who she is, where she is, and how she got that way. A man who claims to be her husband explains the situation to Claire. The husband and her rebellious teenage son help fill in some of the gaps and tell that she will learn a lot during the day but lose all again at night. 

While the husband takes a shower, a masked man with a limp, a deformed ear, and part of a pair of handcuffs rushes to Claire’s bedroom and tells her that he’s her brother and is taking her to her mother’s house.

When you’ve created a new, twisty, sci-fi fictional podcast with a mystery at its center, how do you provide enough info to draw in listeners, but not so much that you spoil its surprises?

That was the question facing Michael Alan Herman and Josie Eli Herman, the Ann Arbor-based co-creators (and married couple) behind the just-launched podcast Silvertongues.

While emphasizing the adventure-blockbuster vibe of the show, Michael explained, “It’s about two people who discover a paranormal conspiracy on this tropical island, and that conspiracy blurs the lines between truth and lies.”

“A big theme in the show is this idea of emotional homelessness,” Josie said. “This idea that you don’t even feel at home in yourself. … That’s just something, post-pandemic, we’ve noticed is, a lot of people … having this feeling of, ‘I don’t know what to do with my life, or who I am.’ … That’s something that the characters feel in the show, and there’s a supernatural reason for that, but I think, at a human level, a lot of people can relate to that.”

It’s a bittersweet time in Brad Phillips’ life.

“My daughter Alyson is off to the University of North Carolina School of the Arts next month, and I’ve been weeping big dad tears on and off all summer,” said the Dexter singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.

Alyson is a singer, and she’ll join her dad for a special show at The Ark on August 8 along with bandmates Chris DuPont, Drew De Four, Brennan Andes, Keith Billik, and Mike Shea.

Brad has also been busy as a lecturer at the University of Michigan, a resident artist at The Purple Rose Theatre Company, touring with actress and singer Patti LuPone, and featuring on her new album, A Life in Notes, playing violin, mandolin, guitar, octave mandolin, and U-bass.

“Patti is an icon and it’s no accident. She’s a legend for a reason and to be on stage with her in front of her adoring fans is electric,” Phillips said. “Summer has been both chaotic, emotional, and wonderful all at the same time! It’s been a big year around here.”

To learn more, I spoke with Phillips about his work and tour with Patti LuPone and his family’s artistic accomplishments.

When Ann Arbor audiences think about Carla Milarch—co-founder of Theatre Nova and former artistic/executive director of the Performance Network Theatre (PNT)—they may recall a performance she gave, a production she directed, a theater she ran, or more recently, a play she wrote.

Chances are, they will not imagine her changing a litter box—for rabbits.

Milarch and her husband, actor/director Phil Powers, share a home on Ann Arbor’s West side with their son, William Tyrone Powers, a senior at Skyline High, and four rabbits. The family had tried adopting kittens, but William broke out in hives, and they had to give them up. They tested him for dog allergies. No dice.

Now there are rabbits—four of them.

”Rabbits are misunderstood pets,” says Milarch, who at first kept them in cages. Now they are free to roam the house. She finds them similar to other pets: like cats, they sometimes want to be left alone (and can be litter-trained); like dogs, they sometimes demand attention. Sometimes high maintenance, one rabbit with poor balance required a ramp to get onto the bed and watch TV with her. Milarch built one. 

As it happens, Milarch was trying to create an environmentally friendly landscape for her home and was studying permaculture, a mix of urban planning, gardening, and homesteading, when the pet crisis occurred. Rabbits made a lot of sense. “We grow things in a regenerative way, using compost. I like being outside a lot. It must be in my blood,” she reflects. “I grew up on a farm.”

Not that she wanted to spend her life on the farm. 

In May of 2023, a group of researchers, engineers, and corporate executives at the Center for AI Safety warned of the existential danger of artificial intelligence (AI): “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” they wrote. 

Later that year, the Screen Actors Guild negotiated a new contract. In addition to wage issues, the actors were concerned that background roles would be created through AI and fewer actors would be employed. Most of the union’s demands were met, but the producers won the battle over keeping AI as an option.

Carla Milarch, whose play Doctor Moloch opens July 12 at Theatre Nova, absorbed all of this.  She also read articles by those who thought AI would enrich our lives and by people who believe there are pros and cons. [Read Pulp's profile of Milarch here.]

She couldn’t get the question out of her mind: Is AI a friend or foe? She thought about it while gardening. She thought about it while doing dishes. And a play began to take shape. “I have an idea bubbling, and characters, and then it takes on a life of its own,” she says of her writing process. 

That’s how her title character—a doctor created by artificial intelligence—was born.

Playwright Carey Crim has conjured up a rollicking, raunchy and, at times, revealing comedy about summer, friendship and the perils of Michigan outdoors.

The Purple Rose Theatre is presenting the world premiere of Crim’s What Springs Forth. 

Director Kate Thomsen and her four-women cast serve up a comedy that combines more than a bit of raunch, expertly executed physical comedy, some quiet reflection on unfulfilled dreams, and most importantly, the strength of female bonding.

As the play begins, two women are driving up to meet their other bestie who has invited them to enjoy Michigan outdoors. Sallie Ben and Robyn are imagining a posh spa, invigorating massages, and quiet walks on a summer evening. 

That would be a great weekend away from Robyn’s rambunctious boys and Sallie’s troubled daughter. 

Of course, it doesn’t work out that way.

The Encore Theatre’s artistic director and co-founder Daniel Cooney takes the helm of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s game-changing and beloved musical Oklahoma and has given it a youth infusion.

Just down the road from Dexter is the University of Michigan’s School of Music and Theatre with some of the most talented young performers anywhere, many of them bound for Broadway and Hollywood. The Encore has a group of excellent actors who perform at the highest level. Put them together and the result is magical.

From the moment a swaggering Curly greets Aunt Eller with the rousing declaration, "Oh, what beautiful morning, oh, what a beautiful day" we get the idea that we will be given a jolt of boundless energy. The electricity never flags.

Oklahoma opened on Broadway in 1943. It was the first of an unprecedented run of hit musicals. Rodgers' music and Hammerstein’s book and lyrics dominated Broadway for the next 20 years. Hammerstein stepped in to write the book and lyrics after Rodger’s long-time lyricist, the brilliant but troubled Lorenz Hart, declined to participate and suggested Hammerstein as a replacement. 

An ambitious, idealistic young American woman with an engineering degree comes to Kenya with a dream of building a four-lane highway and helping Kenyans move forward. She has financial support and encouragement from the Kenyan government but this is her first time in Africa and she has a lot to learn.

She’s hired a young Kenyan man to drive her and they quickly develop a friendship. She values his knowledge and he is offered a rare opportunity to be involved in the project.

This is the plot of Will Snider’s play Death of a Driver, an examination of just how complicated it is to communicate across the historic, cultural, and fiercely political landscape of post-colonial Africa. 

Theatre Nova is presenting the Michigan premiere of Snider’s one-act play through June 9. 

The engineer and her driver form a close bond. They like each other, they are attracted to each other but they are from two different worlds. Snider tells the story in a series for vignettes across 18 years from 2002 to 2020. 

David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Glengarry Glen Ross is about double-dealing, backstabbing, power plays, American striving, and the rage of real estate salesmen in a heartless Chicago, circa 1980s. 

It’s also about language—Mamet’s sharp, snappy, multi-layered, and riveting symphony of words. They call it “Mamet-speak,” a mastery of street language, the language of the locker room, the real estate office, the street, and a perfect voice for the raging anger and dashed hopes of his characters.

It’s not an easy language to master. PTD Productions has taken the challenge in a lively production of Glengarry Glen Ross under the direction of Liz Greaves-Hoxsie. 

The first act is set in a Chinese restaurant near the real estate office. It’s a set of three one-sided dialogues each fueled by alcohol and grievance. 

When the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre had to find a substitute for a previously announced play, Cassie Mann stepped in as director and suggested staging Scott McPherson’s Marvin’s Room, a play that walks that thin line between comedy and drama.

Two sisters have taken different paths in life. Bessie, now in her early 40s, left Ohio for Florida to be a caregiver for the last 20 years for her chronically ill father and an aunt confined to a wheelchair. She accepts her burden lightly but knows she’s missed a lot. Her sister Lee stayed in Ohio 20 years ago and never looked back. She is now the single mother of two teenage sons.

Bessie receives bad news from her doctor. She has leukemia and needs a bone marrow donor. Lee has to come to Florida to help her sister.

Sound heavy?

Cassie Mann calls it “one of the funniest plays about a serious subject I’ve encountered.”