An MLive headline on January 10 may have caused the heart rates of local theater fans to spike for a second:

"96-year-old Ann Arbor theater hopes to continue despite lease nearing its end"

The article discusses the history of Ann Arbor Civic Theatre (A2CT) and the difficulties that this scrappy troupe, which started in 1929, has faced in recent years:

Theater is communal by nature, with different departments—costumes, set design, acting—coming together to create something of artistic value.

But Ann Arbor's Forge Theater is built entirely on community.

Creatives become members to gain access to the space; once their productions and performances are ready to go, Forge supports the artists with ticketing, marketing, and house management duties, among other things. (Nonmembers can also rent the space, but members get a discount and additional support.)

The idea for Forge Theater came from the mind of local theater vet Catherine Zudak, but its success will be the result of artists rallying around the plan.

The collaborative studio space on Packard Street soft-launched in the fall, and it recently announced its initial 2026 performances.

The Ann Arbor Civic Theater was planning to stage Stephen Karam’s Tony Award-winning Thanksgiving play The Humans just before the holiday. But first, there was a Halloween play of an off-beat Dracula comedy that had to be produced.

The Humans' director Cassie Mann said there wasn’t enough time to squeeze in the play for Thanksgiving. So instead of opening the holiday season, The Humans is winding up the holiday season with a play that combines drama, humor, and a chance to reflect on the meaning of our holiday gatherings.

“I saw it on Broadway in 2016 in its first original run, and I just loved it,” Mann said. “I kept thinking about it, and Broadway prices what they were, I wasn’t about to go back and see it again, but I just kept thinking about it, and I thought I would love to do this at some time.”

Karam’s play deftly captures the tensions of an ordinary family on that very important holiday, a mixture of tension, humor, and love.

If you're an Ann Arbor District Library cardholder, you receive a weekly email newsletter listing news, upcoming events, and a slew of recommendations from the catalog. Those recs are also available at aadl.org/reviews, and we're always happy to make suggestions for books, audiobooks, streamable content in the catalog, DVDs, board games, tools, etc., if you visit us at the branches.

But our 2025 Staff Picks allow the AADL crew to go beyond the library catalog—and the calendar year.

We don't limit our year in review to things that came out in 2025 or items that can be checked out from AADL; the staff comments on whatever favorite media and events they experienced this year, no matter when or where they originated. Maybe a favorite album of 2025 came out in 1973, or the best book someone read this year is so old that it's out of copyright. It's all good, and it all counts.

Here are the categories of AADL's 2025 Staff Picks:

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.

In Jessica Dickey’s dark comedy The Convent, six women fly to the south of France to participate in a spiritual retreat, donning the clothes of medieval nuns under the leadership of Mother Abby.

What takes place at the retreat is described as “80s pop, mysticism, hallucinogens (sparingly) and sexual energy”. Dickey’s play uses comedy to deal with strong personal issues, and it opens the door for female actors to balance comedy and drama.

The University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance will present Dickey’s The Convent, Nov. 20-23 at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre.

For director Halena Kays, The Convent is a great casting opportunity with significant roles for every actor in a play that raises important issues.

“It’s a play that is an ensemble that is starring seven women, so that’s unusual for any play to have an all-female cast, and it’s unusual to have an ensemble-based cast where everyone has a lead role and where every character has a full arc, and that's very exciting,” Kays said during an interview.

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.

It’s that time again when howling wolves, moaning ghosts, mad scientists, and bloodthirsty vampires all gather for the annual Halloween festivities.

When Ethan Gibney was looking for a play to direct for the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre, he found the perfect one for the season in Gordon Greenberg and Steven Rosen’s Dracula: A Comedy of Terror.

Irish playwright Bram Stoker’s seriously scary book has been the inspiration for numerous plays and film adaptations, and it has also opened the door for this topsy-turvy comedy. Gibney saw a chance to have fun while giving a tip of the hat to Stoker and his brilliant classic.

“A couple reasons I like this play. First, that it’s funny, which seems like an obvious answer, but we all need to laugh,” Gibney said. “I think the play does a good job of having fun with the source material while respecting it. It doesn’t just throw away the book and make fun of Dracula, the concept. It enjoys the book and revels in it. It is a comedy, but it keeps the emotional core of the book.”

Attempting to describe the setting for her Neighborhood Theatre Group’s annual Black Cat show, group co-founder Kristin Anne Danko said audience members can expect similar vibes to a ‘90s TV classic anthology series that aired on Nickelodeon.

“They should expect horror stories—it's going to be a little scary, a little silly, and it should get everyone in the mood for Halloween,” Danko said of the upcoming production of Black Cat: Folklore. “A good thing to think about is something like Are You Afraid of the Dark?”

Regardless of whether you’re a fan of scary campfire stories or nostalgia television programming, the Ypsilanti nonprofit theater company’s annual fall production aims to provide an immersive experience, Danko said, with “campfire seating” available for audience members who want to sit close to the stage.

The Neighborhood Theatre Group has been producing “theatre from scratch” since 2015, Danko said, performing plays, musicals, sketch comedy, and even short films in recent years. Black Cat: Folklore is the ensemble theater group’s latest devised production, written entirely by its eight-person cast, along with Danko, Director Marisa Dluge and ensemble members A.M. Dean, Kim Gray, and Aeron C. Wade. Shows are scheduled for October 17-19 and 23-25 at The Back Office Studio in Ypsilanti.