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'23-'24 Season

From Autumn 2023 to Summer 2024, DPL will be presenting our first full season of live-action entertainment for your perusal and pleasure. Kicking off with The From Above/From Below Ball on October 27th & 28th, the year will continue with a full lineup of theatrical entertainment, from comedy to tragedy to everything in between.

Theatrical Lineup

The Dionysian Public Library is delighted to present our first full season of live entertainment, consisting of...

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Freud's Last Session

The Dionysian Public Library will be partnering with Western Michigan University's Department of Comparative Religion and Office of Health Promotion and Education for a special Theatre for Community Health presentation of Mark St. Germain's Freud's Last Session. Framed as a hypothetical debate between C. S. Lewis and Dr. Sigmund Freud, join us and watch two intellectual rivals discuss the nature of sex, the mind, and the soul. This collaboration is pursued as an educational opportunity for both students on campus and community members to grapple with the complicated role played by spirituality and reason in the field of psychoanalysis and mental health in a structured, mediated format.

~Cast~
C. S. Lewis........................................................Mars Wilson
Sigmund Freud................................................Tobin  Bates

Performances will be held at 6:30 pm (doors at 6) on Friday the 29th & Saturday the 30th of March at the Marguerite Clifford Film Auditorium (room 1025) in Brown Hall on campus at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, with faculty from each department providing a structured discussion on the covered topics following the show. Admission is free, though donations are welcome. 

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Knock Knock, Boo-Hoo!: 
A Stand-Up Tragedy Show

Comedy and Tragedy have long been lovers, complementary flavors that mediate between different emotional states. This April, come on down to Knock-Knock, Boo-Hoo! and laugh until you cry.

Come commiserate as eight stand-up comedians compete for the audience's pity to decide who can tell the saddest sob story while making it the funniest. Each comic will step up to the plate and tell their tale of woe, competing for the coveted title of Meister of Misery and a fifty dollar cash prize. At the end of the show, the audience will decide who most effectively garnered their sympathies, and the losers will never work in this town again.

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~Lineup~
❖ Sarah Wooley ❖ Matt Hybels ❖ Chris Karpinski

❖ tba ❖ tba ❖ tba ❖ tba ❖ tba

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The show will be held at 7:30 on Friday, April 19th at Waldo's Campus Tavern. Admission is pay-what you can.

Much Ado About Nothing
 

Capping off the season, join us this summer for our first annual Shakespeare-in-the-park production, Much Ado About Nothing. 

Mischief and mirth abound in the Bard's classic  comedy, where enemies become lovers, lovers become enemies, bonds break and are built and clever insults fly like daggers. Two sets of lovers dip in and out of infatuation, the bastard brother of a prince schemes and scams, and the party never dies as a flurry of lies and love letters sends the players tumbling. Join Beatrice, Benedick, Hero, and Claudio as they fumble and fall—right into romance.

Performance dates, location, and audition information TDB.

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The 1st Annual From Above/From Below BⒶll

We kicked off our '23-24 Season with the first annual From Above, From Below Ball, a two-night event of mind-bending magic and mystery to celebrate the release of our first annual horror anthology. Night I: From Below was held in Western Michigan University's Student Center in Kalamazoo on Fri. Oct 27th, with Night II: From Above occurring the next night at Books & Mortar in Grands Rapids on Sat. Oct. 28th. 

 

Both events featured live music from Akron, Ohio-based indie rock musician Skeleton Drive, with localish folk punk hero Batshit Bill joining for the Night I show. We released both the print edition of x/y: a junk drawer of gender exploration issue #2: knowledge & mystery and Trans Rites: An Anthology of Genderfucked Horror, with drinks, party favors, and charcuterie provided. We were also joined for Night II by Lennox Rex and C. C. Rayne, who remotely read their stories "Birthday Suit" and "Dr. Frankenstein Dabbles in Self-Discovery" for the assembly. 

Samson Agonistes:
A Benefit Performance to Support the Palestinian Social Fund
ft. One with the Riverbed

On February 3rd, 2024, we gathered a group of poets at the First Congregational Church of Kalamazoo for a recitation of John Milton's closet drama Samson Agonistes, a retelling of the tragedy of Samson and Dalila. Composed in the mid-1600s, the piece presents the story of one of mythology's first superheroes in tragic verse, opening with a blind Samson stumbling out onto the stage, beginning and culminating in an explosion of righteous Violence, played here by live musical accompaniment from metal band One with the Riverbed. 

~Cast~
Samson....................................................................Devyn Abdullah
 Dalila                                                                                                            Messenger...........................................................Alexandra Newton
Manoa, Father of Samson........Michael "Midnight Mike" Parker
Chorus.................................................................v.f. thompson
Harapha of Gath.......................................................Edward Draven
Violence..........................................................One with the Riverbed

This new abridged adaptation recontextualized Milton's original text, turning it into a multicultural meditation on the ways that war and holy terror ravage the land itself, a defiant statement of interfaith solidarity in a time of great strife, with proceeds benefiting the Palestinian Social Fund, an organization which supports grassroots cooperative farms on the ground. The new edition of the text was published as a zine distributed at the event and includes four recipes from the region that were researched, prepared and served at the event by chef Jack Keough, presented alongside a selection of jewelry from artist @irishhamsa.
 

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