Ann Arbor’s Blackbird Theater Company returns to Ann Arbor’s West Park Band Shell this summer with Shakespeare West, Michigan’s newest outdoor Shakespeare festival, which will include a production of "Macbeth" June 15-30. “I have never worked in a more ideal space,” Blackbird founder Barton Bund said in a press release. ...
Local theater company Black Bag Productions, better known as the Blackbird Theatre, is venturing into film and recently launched a new web series titled "Unemployed." Written, directed, and edited by the Blackbird's founder, Bart Bund, and starring Jamie Weeder, Analea Lessenberry, and Qmara Peaches Black, the series—according to its (adults ...
In the wake of the death of a member of its company, the Blackbird Theatre has announced the cancellation of its upcoming production of "Othello." The Blackbird has been producing Shakespeare works for much of the summer in the bandshell at West Park, under the umbrella name "Shakespeare West." "Othello" ...
Review by Bridgette M. Redman For Encore Michigan The exuberant beginning featured tie-dyed hippies and spaced-out peaceniks grooving out to '60s music in what promised to be one big party. Had the party continued in that vein, Shakespeare West's opening night performance of "Twelfth Night" would have been an evening ...
The Blackbird Theatre’s inaugural season of Shakespeare West, an outdoor theater series, continues with a unique take on the comedy “Twelfth Night.” Shakespeare’s shipwrecked protagonist Viola washes up on the shores of a different kind of Illyria in Shakespeare West’s version of “Twelfth Night.” In this version, she is thrown ...
The Blackbird Theatre continues the inaugural season of its outdoor theater festival, Shakespeare West, with “Much Ado About Nothing”—complete with same-sex couples and a Queen soundtrack. “I came up with the concept after reading the play and realizing how much it’s steeped in archaic gender roles,” said director Brian Carbine. ...
To say that the Blackbird Theater has been tested while preparing for the debut of its outdoor summer theater festival, Shakespeare West, would be a gross understatement. Difficulties have plagued the fest’s inaugural, production of “The Tempest” in Ann Arbor's West Park—originally planned for a five-person cast—since the actress cast ...
This Friday, May 13, tickets for the Blackbird Theatre’s summer-long outdoor Shakespeare Festival in West Park are just $13. Ann Arbor’s new Shakespeare Festival is offering this one-day deal to kick off the summer festivities. To purchase now, go to www.blackbirdtheatre.org and click on "Our 2010-11 Season." There you will ...
Meeting two human-sized, English-speaking lizards is no day at the beach — unless you happen to be a character in Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prize winning play “Seascape,” now being staged at the Blackbird Theatre. For the fantastical, absurdist comedy, which debuted on Broadway in 1975, focuses on a couple (Nancy ...
Who could resist a theatrical event that employs “smell design”? That’s one of the more unusual elements employed for the Blackbird Theatre’s new, original, radio-show-style show based on the short life of poet Arthur Rimbaud: “Je est un Autre (I is another).” Using sources like letters, poems, and court documents ...
Which is worse: feeling pain, or feeling nothing? That’s one of many questions driving Peter Shaffer’s “Equus,” now playing at the Blackbird Theatre. (Note for those lining up a babysitter: the production runs nearly three hours.) The Tony-winning drama focuses on a psychiatrist, Martin Dysart (Lee Stille), who’s asked to ...