Southeast Michigan has become a hotbed of new play activity, with numerous theaters producing world premieres, new play festivals and staged reading series as a part of their regular offerings. This season nearly every theater that I cover here, has, at some point, produced new work.

This week’s listing features six new plays, five of which are by Michigan playwrights. You can see them in various states of production, from fully staged in the gorgeous “Consider the Oyster,” to minimally staged (and dressed) in the critically lauded “Posing,” to bare-bones, script-in-hand readings of all four plays in the Network’s Fireside Festival.

Dress up or dress down, but come on out and support Michigan playwrights this week!

Theater listings for the week of August 22 - 28

Show: “Twelfth Night,” by William Shakespeare, through Aug. 27
Company: Shakespeare West
Type of Company: Professional Non-Equity
Venue/Location: West Park Band Shell, 300 N. Seventh, Ann Arbor
Recommended ages: 17+
Description: A late 60's romp, full of bikers, booze, and psychedelia! Shakespeare's classic comedy gets a new spin from director Barton Bund.
Fun fact: The play is believed to have been written around 1601-02 as an entertainment for the close of the Christmas season, incorporating the riotous disorder of the occasion, with plot elements from the story "Of Apollonius and Silla" by Barnabe Riche. The first recorded performance was on 2 February 1602, for the feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple (Candlemas.)
For tickets and information: 734-657-4290 or online at www.blackbirdtheatre.org
Discounts and special offers: Online ticket buyers receive a $5 discount. Simply print out your receipt, and bring it with you to the gate in front of the West Park Band Shell.

Show: “Inherit the Wind,” by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, through August 27
Company: The Carriage House Theatre
Location: Carriage House Theatre, 541 Third St, Ann Arbor (between Jefferson and Madison).
Description: A modern classic about one of the most important trials of our time, Tennessee vs. Scopes. It's July of 1925, and two of the most renowned lawyers in the country are battling it out in a small-town Tennessee courtroom over a schoolteacher who has intentionally broken the law and taught evolution in the classroom.
Fun fact: In the forward to the play, the playwrights state that it is not meant to be an historically accurate portrayal of the Scopes trial, but rather a critique of the, then current, anti-Communist investigations of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Lawrence later commented in an interview that, "we used the teaching of evolution as a parable, a metaphor for any kind of mind control. It's not about science versus religion. It's about the right to think."
For tickets and information:www.carriagehousetheatre.org/about.html

Show: “Posing” by Jason Sebacher, extended through August 28
Company: The New Theatre Project
Type of Company: Professional Non-Equity
Venue/location: Mix Performance Space, 130 W. Michigan Ave., Ypsilanti
Recommended ages: 18 +, Posing contains strong language, simulated sex, drug use, and nudity. No one under the age of 18 will be admitted without a parent or guardian.
Description: Inspired by the life of Oscar Wilde, “Posing” is the story of two men: each running from his past, each escaping his present, and each keeping an impossible secret. They are bound together for days with the mutual goal of using each other for sex and drugs, until they must confront the consequences of trying to stay young forever.
Examiner article
Fun fact: WDET's afternoon host, Travis Wright, lists “Posing” as one of his events of interest in his column “Weekend the Wright Way.”
For tickets and information: Call or text 734-645-9776 or email tickets@thenewtheatreproject.org.

Show: “Marie Antoinette, the Color of Flesh” by Joel Gross, extended through Sept. 4
Company: Performance Network Theatre
Type of Company: Professional Equity (SPT)
Venue/location: Performance Network Theatre, 120 East Huron, Ann Arbor
Recommended ages: 12 +
Description: Called “A touching story of love" by The New York Times, this play gives history a refreshingly sexy face. A sumptuous blend of fact and fiction, it creates an imagined love triangle between Marie Antoinette; her official portraitist, Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun; and a fictitious aristocrat and lover to both, Count Alexis de Ligne. Spanning two politically explosive decades surrounding the French Revolution, this boudoir drama weaves politics, history, romance and art.
Broadway World article
Fun fact: Playwright Joel Gross, a New Yorker, wrote “Marie Antoinette” in English, but it was recently translated into French for a staged reading in Paris.
For tickets and information: 734-663-0696, www.performancenetwork.org/

Show: “Consider the Oyster” by David MacGregor, through September 3
Company: The Purple Rose Theatre Company
Type of Company: Professional Equity (SPT)
Venue/location: Purple Rose Theatre, 137 Park Street, Chelsea
Recommended ages: 16+
Description: During the celebration of a Detroit Lions Super Bowl victory, Gene Walsh impulsively proposes marriage to the love of his life. When she joyously accepts, he tumbles over the coffee table. This chance fall begins a hilarious cascade of startling twists that turn the happy couples’ future upside down and inside out.
AnnArbor.com preview
Fun fact: The show's entire cast and crew signed the cast that Gene (actor, Michael Brian Ogden) wears on his leg in the show.
For tickets and information: www.purplerosetheatre.org/onstage/production-archive/consider-the-oyster

Show: “Rust” by Austin Bunn and the Working Group Theatre, one-time event: Sunday, Aug. 28, 7 p.m.
Company: Performance Network Theatre
Type of Company: Professional Equity (reading contract)
Venue/location: Performance Network Theatre, 120 East Huron, Ann Arbor
Recommended ages: 16+
Description: In October 2008, General Motors announced it would shutter the 75 year-old stamping plant on 36th street in Wyoming, Michigan. Over 1,500 people, including the former Wyoming mayor, would be out of work, displaced, or forcibly retired. The plant, the largest taxpayer in the city, would be razed to the ground. This play follows those affected by the close of the plant - the "GM gypsies," tool and die third shifters, the corporate "ax men" who select plants for closure - to understand the real experience of job loss, and the history of the Rust Belt.
Fun fact: A talk back with the playwright will take place after the reading, with refreshments in the lobby immediately following.
For tickets and information: 734-663-0681, www.performancenetwork.org/1011fireside.php

Show: “Lines” by Jeffrey Allen Steiger, one-time event: Monday, Aug. 29, 7 p.m.
Company: Performance Network Theatre
Type of Company: Professional Equity (reading contract)
Venue/location: Performance Network Theatre, 120 East Huron, Ann Arbor
Recommended ages: 16+
Description: Claire, a new grievance investigator at the University of Alabama, is assigned a case that proves to be far more complicated than it appears. When a professor with a very unique expertise is accused of sexual harassment, tables are turned. Starting as a case of fact, the investigation becomes less about "he said/she said," and more about Claire. “Lines” explores the division between thoughts, feelings, and action, and whether those borders are definitive or frighteningly blurry.
Fun fact: A talk back with the playwright will take place after the reading, with refreshments in the lobby immediately following.
For tickets and information: 734-663-0681, www.performancenetwork.org/1011fireside.php

Show: “Call me Cass” by Margaret Edwartowski, one-time event: Tuesday, Aug. 30, 7 p.m.
Company: Performance Network Theatre
Type of Company: Professional Equity (reading contract)
Venue/location: Performance Network Theatre, 120 East Huron, Ann Arbor
Recommended ages: 16+
Description: This play with music follows Mama Cass Elliot from her time as a teenage Broadway hopeful, through her untimely death at the peak of her career. Featuring music from The Mamas and the Papas, The Big Three, The Mugwumps and her solo career, the play explores Cass' struggle with being a big woman with a bigger voice in the image oriented music industry, as well as the complicated relationships between the members of The Mamas and Papas as they sat at the forefront of the hippie music movement.
Fun fact: A talk back with the playwright will take place after the reading, with refreshments in the lobby immediately following.
For tickets and information: 734-663-0681, www.performancenetwork.org/1011fireside.php

Show: “Bronzeville Gold” by Anitria Cole, one-time event: Wednesday, Aug. 31, 7 p.m.
Company: Performance Network Theatre
Type of Company: Professional Equity (reading contract)
Venue/location: Performance Network Theatre, 120 East Huron, Ann Arbor
Recommended ages: 16+
Description: Set in 1933 Chicago, this powerful African American family saga revolves around a gambling numbers wheel, and a young Mississippi newcomer as he chases the elusive American dream. Willie Jenkins, a 22-year-old African-American sharecropper, wants to live the American dream, but Tupelo, Mississippi will not afford him that opportunity. When he meets a numbers runner from Chicago, who promises him the good-life, Willie escapes. Are the streets of Bronzeville really paved with gold? Or is the American dream just a dream?
Fun fact: The show will be followed by a panel discussion at 9 p.m. - a moderated talk with the playwrights on the state of new work in American theater, with refreshments in the lobby immediately following.
For tickets and information: 734-663-0681, www.performancenetwork.org/1011fireside.php