Calendar of Events
Upcoming events and things to do in Asheville, NC. Below is a list of events for festivals, concerts, art exhibitions, group meetups and more.
Interested in adding an event to our calendar? Please click the green “Post Your Event” button below.

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream – May 28 – June 19
by W. Shakespeare
Always our biggest Shakespeare hit of any season it’s performed, Midsummer is one of Shakespeare’s best works and funniest comedies. Not to be missed!


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Announcing an all-new scholarship for exemplary performing arts teens in Henderson County! Selected students will be invited to attend the following Studio 52 summer program with a full scholarship:
CONSERVATORY
Rising 8th – 12th Grades
Learn from industry professionals in this two-week, pre-professional program blending acting & music theatre training as teens hone their skills and find their voice.
Qualified Student Nominees Must:
– Be enrolled in HCPS as a rising 8th-12th grade student for the 2021-2022 school year.
– Exhibit a passion for theatre, music, or dance.
– Serve as a leader within their drama, dance, or music classes at school.
– Provide the name and contact of a HCPS teacher who can serve as a reference.
Need-based scholarships are still available for all Studio 52 Summer Camps. Applications for need-based scholarships can be found on the Studio 52 website. All scholarship applications are due June 1.
The One Act Festival is scheduled for June 11-26, 2021. Submissions are free and open to all local playwrights with plays 5-15 minutes long!
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
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Please limit your cast to a maximum of six actors
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Scripts with minimal set, costume and prop requirements are preferred
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We are not considering Theatre for Young Audiences at this time
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We will not accept Screenplays or Musicals at this time
The Magnetic Theatre tends to produce plays that have not received major/recent productions in the Asheville area. We respond primarily to plays with a sure command of language, that are accessible to a diverse and discerning audience, and clear dramatic action that truly uses the resources of live theater.
If you wish to submit a play for consideration, please include a complete manuscript, bio, resume, and any other supporting materials (e.g. reviews) that might help pique our interest in you and your work.
Work at Tanglewood!
Want to work at Tanglewood this summer? We’re looking for Instructors, Teacher Assistants, Junior Teacher Assistants, and Stage Managers! More information can be found in each application link, and those can all be found HERE!

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream – May 28 – June 19
by W. Shakespeare
Always our biggest Shakespeare hit of any season it’s performed, Midsummer is one of Shakespeare’s best works and funniest comedies. Not to be missed!


Direct from Broadway, Mean Girls is the hilarious hit musical from an award-winning creative team, including book writer Tina Fey (30 Rock), composer Jeff Richmond (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), lyricist Nell Benjamin (Legally Blonde), and director Casey Nicholaw (The Book of Mormon).
Cady Heron may have grown up on an African savanna, but nothing prepared her for the vicious ways of her strange new home: suburban Illinois. Soon, this naïve newbie falls prey to a trio of lionized frenemies led by the charming but ruthless Regina George. But when Cady devises a plan to end Regina’s reign, she learns the hard way that you can’t cross a Queen Bee without getting stung.
New York Magazine cheers, “Mean Girls delivers with immense energy, a wicked sense of humor and joyful inside-jokery.” USA Today says, “We’ll let you in on a little secret, because we’re such good friends: GET YOUR TICKETS NOW!”
Announcing an all-new scholarship for exemplary performing arts teens in Henderson County! Selected students will be invited to attend the following Studio 52 summer program with a full scholarship:
CONSERVATORY
Rising 8th – 12th Grades
Learn from industry professionals in this two-week, pre-professional program blending acting & music theatre training as teens hone their skills and find their voice.
Qualified Student Nominees Must:
– Be enrolled in HCPS as a rising 8th-12th grade student for the 2021-2022 school year.
– Exhibit a passion for theatre, music, or dance.
– Serve as a leader within their drama, dance, or music classes at school.
– Provide the name and contact of a HCPS teacher who can serve as a reference.
Need-based scholarships are still available for all Studio 52 Summer Camps. Applications for need-based scholarships can be found on the Studio 52 website. All scholarship applications are due June 1.
Work at Tanglewood!
Want to work at Tanglewood this summer? We’re looking for Instructors, Teacher Assistants, Junior Teacher Assistants, and Stage Managers! More information can be found in each application link, and those can all be found HERE!
We did a poll last month and set up the choices ahead this time, so next up we have The Night Tiger! It sounded like a few people were interested at the time, so we’re hoping to have a great turnout.
A few of us also discussed getting together in person again, and I think it’s time! I know we’re all excited to see each other again, and it’s been far too long sitting in front of a screen. I’m guessing our numbers will go back up once we meet in person again too, can’t wait to see everyone again and meet some new people too!
I thought it made sense to go back to the place where we met years ago and especially because of their great outdoor seating. If you’ve never been to a meeting with us at Smoky Park Supper Club, they have several picnic tables outside and it’s a perfect spot to meet as a club 🙂
What we’re about
Let’s start a book club and make friends while we enjoy some of the greatest books of all time!
This club will meet virtually via zoom during the Covid-19 pandemic. Please email [email protected] for the link to join!
Join host and Malaprop’s Bookseller Allison Beatty to dive into the wreck of the wily and wonderful world of sci-fi, weird fiction, speculative fiction, literary horror, and disturbing fiction with a healthy mix of underappreciated classic and contemporary books. The club normally meets at Malaprop’s on the last Monday of every month at 7:00pm.
Click here to see a full schedule of what the club is reading. Club attendees get 10% off the book at Malaprop’s!
Check the WILD book club’s Facebook page for COVID-19 related updates. Please RSVP the moderator at [email protected] for the Zoom meeting passcode for the meetings.
Join former Malaprop’s General Manager Linda-Marie Barrett for this woman-only book club that seeks to have fun by reading books (fiction & non) by women writers. Click here to see a full schedule of what the club is reading. Club attendees get 10% off the book at Malaprop’s!
The club meets at 6:30 P.M. on the first Tuesday of the month at the Battery Park Book Exchange. It will be held virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Join us Tuesday nights, beginning April 13th, as The Magnetic Theatre teams up with the wizards at Smoky Park Supper Club to host a live, outdoor variety show. We’ll be filling Smoky Park’s gorgeous, riverside outdoor space with comedy, theatre, music and so much more.
There will be food and beverages available for purchase.
- This is a BYOC (Bring-Your-Own-Chair) event.
- In accordance with safety guidelines this show will be staged outdoors, with mask and social distancing protocols enforced. There will also be temperature checks and COVID waivers that need to be signed by each attendee at the gate.
- Please arrive at least 15 minutes before the 7pm showtime.
- We do require that masks be worn at all times unless you are actively eating or drinking.

Call it “musical comedy heaven” (Rolling Stone). Call it “the most uproarious new musical in years!” (The Hollywood Reporter). Call it Tootsie!
This laugh-out-loud love letter to the theater tells the story of Michael Dorsey, a talented but difficult actor who struggles to find work until one show-stopping act of desperation lands him the role of a lifetime. Featuring a hilarious Tony®-winning book by Robert Horn and an outrageously clever score by 2018 Tony winner David Yazbek (The Band’s Visit, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), this New York Times Critic’s Pick is “a joyful delight” (The Washington Post) that’s “so packed with punchlines, it should be called a jokebox musical!” (Bloomberg). “In these turbulent times, when the world seems out of balance, we need a place to let the good times roll,” raves Rolling Stone. “Tootsie is it!”

Like most of our events, this event is free, but registration is required. Click here to RSVP for this event. Prior to the event the link required to attend will be emailed to registrants.
If you decide to attend and to purchase the authors’ books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!
Shortly before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion, adoptee Megan Culhane Galbraith was born in a Catholic charity hospital in New York City to a teenaged resident of the Guild of the Infant Saviour, a home for unwed mothers. Decades later, on the eve of becoming a mother herself, she would travel to the former guild site; to her birth mother’s home in Scotland; and to Cornell University, where she discovered the startling history of its Domestic Economics program. There, from 1919 to 1969, coeds applied scientific principles to domesticity as they collectively mothered a rotating cast of babies awaiting adoption. The babies shared the last name Domecon and provided the inspiration for Galbraith’s art project, The Dollhouse.
The Guild of the Infant Saviour is a dizzyingly inventive hybrid memoir of one adoptee’s quest for her past. Galbraith pairs narrative with images from The Dollhouse as she weaves a personal and cultural history of adoption as it relates to guilt, shame, grief, identity, and memory itself. Ultimately, she connects her experiences to those of generations of adoptees, to the larger stories America tells about sex and motherhood, and to the shadows those stories cast on us all.
Megan Culhane Galbraith is a writer and visual artist. Her work was a Notable Mention in Best American Essays 2017, has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, and has been published in Tupelo Quarterly, Redivider, Catapult, Hobart, Longreads, and Hotel Amerika, among others. She is Associate Director of the Bennington Writing Seminars and the founding director of the Governor’s Institutes of Vermont Young Writers Institute.
Jill McCorkle’s first two novels were released simultaneously when she was just out of college, and the New York Times called her “a born novelist.” Since then, she has published six novels and four collections of short stories, and her work has appeared in Best American Short Stories several times, as well as The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Five of her books have been New York Times Notable books, and her novel, Life After Life, was a New York Times bestseller. She has received the New England Booksellers Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature, and the North Carolina Award for Literature. She has written for The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Garden and Gun, The Atlantic, and other publications. She was a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard, where she also chaired the department of creative writing. She is currently a faculty member of the Bennington College Writing Seminars and is affiliated with the MFA program at North Carolina State University.

Call it “musical comedy heaven” (Rolling Stone). Call it “the most uproarious new musical in years!” (The Hollywood Reporter). Call it Tootsie!
This laugh-out-loud love letter to the theater tells the story of Michael Dorsey, a talented but difficult actor who struggles to find work until one show-stopping act of desperation lands him the role of a lifetime. Featuring a hilarious Tony®-winning book by Robert Horn and an outrageously clever score by 2018 Tony winner David Yazbek (The Band’s Visit, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), this New York Times Critic’s Pick is “a joyful delight” (The Washington Post) that’s “so packed with punchlines, it should be called a jokebox musical!” (Bloomberg). “In these turbulent times, when the world seems out of balance, we need a place to let the good times roll,” raves Rolling Stone. “Tootsie is it!”
The Crime and Politics Book Club will be held virtually during the Covid-19 pandemic. Please email [email protected] for info and instructions to attend.
Join host and Malaprop’s Bookseller Patricia Furnish to discuss a range of books across true crime and public affairs. The club meets the first Thursday of the month at 7 p.m. Click here to learn more about the club, view important news, and find the pick for this month.
We’re pleased to be part of the Reader Meet Writer series of online events hosted by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance.
This event is free but registration is required. Click here to RSVP. Prior to the event we will send an email with the link required to complete your registration and attend on Zoom.
“If or When I Call is a novel about desperate people shot through with arrows of grace that only a writer as sensitive and insightful as Will Johnson can wield. Lives in small towns are not small, and neither is this author’s heart.”
– Wiley Cash, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Ballad and A Land More Kind Than Home. Writer-in-residence at UNC-Asheville
Between interstates and county lines, life in rural Missouri unfolds in a progression of simple moments that carry the weight of every hard thing gone by. Parker and Melinda are searching for themselves in the hollows of their estranged marriage. Parker, haunted by the demons of addiction, lives every moment at the edge of an undiagnosed disorder — a darkness that steals his awareness and throws him into convulsions. Melinda, on an odyssey of her own, knows Parker’s struggles all too well, and as they try to help their teenage son come to terms with their lives apart, they have only their memories of a brighter life to get by.
Haunting and lyrical, Johnson’s powerful debut is a hymn to the lives we overlook in the quiet places around us. And how close we are to living them ourselves.
Will Johnson is a musician and songwriter who has played in the bands Centro-matic, South San Gabriel, Marie/Lepanto, Overseas, New Multitudes, and Monsters of Folk. He also releases records under his own name, and makes paintings centering on the subject of baseball and its history. His work has appeared in American Short Fiction. He was born in Kennett, Missouri, and currently lives in Austin, Texas. If or When I Call is his first novel.

Call it “musical comedy heaven” (Rolling Stone). Call it “the most uproarious new musical in years!” (The Hollywood Reporter). Call it Tootsie!
This laugh-out-loud love letter to the theater tells the story of Michael Dorsey, a talented but difficult actor who struggles to find work until one show-stopping act of desperation lands him the role of a lifetime. Featuring a hilarious Tony®-winning book by Robert Horn and an outrageously clever score by 2018 Tony winner David Yazbek (The Band’s Visit, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), this New York Times Critic’s Pick is “a joyful delight” (The Washington Post) that’s “so packed with punchlines, it should be called a jokebox musical!” (Bloomberg). “In these turbulent times, when the world seems out of balance, we need a place to let the good times roll,” raves Rolling Stone. “Tootsie is it!”

| Appalachian Wildlife Refuge is a registered non-profit rescuing, rehabilitating, and releasing orphaned and injured wildlife, and serving 18 counties across WNC. They provide conservation education to the community, support the wildlife rehabilitation network, and offer a Wildlife Emergency Hotline to the public. For help with wildlife in need, call 828-633-6364 ext 1 and leave a message or email [email protected], and a member of the hotline team will reach out right away. To learn more and support their cause, visit www.appalachianwild.org |
Tanglewood Summer Camp
Tanglewood Youth Theatre has long been a successful and inspirational part of children’s creative education in Western North Carolina. Our theatre camp has been extremely popular and is well-suited for any young person interested in exploring the exciting world of theatre. Our faculty represents some of the finest talent in the area, and we are thrilled to have them at Tanglewood.
For each session, classes include acting, music, movement, film, and design. Each session ends with a showcase for family and friends!
For ages 8-13:
All camp sessions will meet 9:00 am – 3:00 pm. Each session will enroll up to 30 students total split into 3 groups of 10 students. Masks will be required. This summer, there will not be a final showcase for an audience of family and friends. Tuition: $275 / Scholarships available.

A Scottish fairy, La Sylphide, enters the dream of a young Scotsman, then allures him when he wakes. On the eve of his wedding, a sorceress reveals that his fiancé and best friend are actually a better match. Spirited Scottish dances infuse the first act’s pre-wedding celebration as the fairy makes her flirtations clear to the Scotsman. Sadly, if a human touches the fairy, she will lose her wings and perish. As the second act descends into the Scottish woods, the sorceress offers the Scotsman a charmed scarf and an ill-fated plan to romance the fairy.
Ballet Conservatory offers excellent classical training in its comprehensive pre-professional program and full schedule of open classes for all ages in ballet, modern, jazz & tap. Faculty include ballet mistress, Nadia Iozzo (KC & Alberta Ballet), director Angie Lynn (Arts Educational, UK; Vienna Festival Ballet) and Gavin Larsen (PNB; principal, Oregon Ballet Theatre; SAB). BCA hosts a popular four week summer intensive, plus frequent master classes with world-class guest teachers like Karen Averty (“Etoile”, Paris Opera Ballet; principal, San Francisco Ballet; JKO & Boston Ballet faculty); Daniel Ulbricht (principal, NYC Ballet); Paul Taylor Dance Company; John Selya (American Ballet Theatre dancer & choreographer, Tony Nominee-Broadway’s “Movin’ Out”); Amanda Edge (NYC Ballet, Broadway’s “Phantom of the Opera”), Parson’s Dance Company.
Recent students have trained year-round at the prestigious American Ballet Theatre JKO School, The Royal Ballet School in London, School of American Ballet (NYC Ballet’s school), Harid and Nutmeg Academies; trained summers at ABT & SAB in NYC, Royal Ballet School, Boston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Miami City and Chautauqua; and were accepted with scholarship to Indiana, Oklahoma, and Butler Universities, plus Marymount-Manhattan.

“Always a Bridesmaid” is the rollicking tale of four loyal and determined women who definitively answer the question, “Just how far are you willing to go to keep a promise to a friend?” If you’ve ever elbowed a stranger out of the way to catch a bride’s bouquet, seriously questioned the mental stability of the duo saying “I do” or been forced to wear the world’s ugliest bridesmaid dress, this deliriously funny JONES HOPE WOOTEN COMEDY is definitely for you…and your dearly beloved!
HELLO DADDY!
Featuring DELIGHTED TOBEHERE
Every performer is a two-sided coin – the glowing, delightful side you see on the outside, and the one on the inside who is longing for genuine connection. Come see DELIGHTED TOBEHERE, a world-traveling Drag Queen who will sing live and make you think, cry and laugh your a*% off all in one night. Special engagement – TWO NIGHTS ONLY!
A Midsummer Night’s Dream – May 28 – June 19
by W. Shakespeare
Always our biggest Shakespeare hit of any season it’s performed, Midsummer is one of Shakespeare’s best works and funniest comedies. Not to be missed!


Call it “musical comedy heaven” (Rolling Stone). Call it “the most uproarious new musical in years!” (The Hollywood Reporter). Call it Tootsie!
This laugh-out-loud love letter to the theater tells the story of Michael Dorsey, a talented but difficult actor who struggles to find work until one show-stopping act of desperation lands him the role of a lifetime. Featuring a hilarious Tony®-winning book by Robert Horn and an outrageously clever score by 2018 Tony winner David Yazbek (The Band’s Visit, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), this New York Times Critic’s Pick is “a joyful delight” (The Washington Post) that’s “so packed with punchlines, it should be called a jokebox musical!” (Bloomberg). “In these turbulent times, when the world seems out of balance, we need a place to let the good times roll,” raves Rolling Stone. “Tootsie is it!”

| Appalachian Wildlife Refuge is a registered non-profit rescuing, rehabilitating, and releasing orphaned and injured wildlife, and serving 18 counties across WNC. They provide conservation education to the community, support the wildlife rehabilitation network, and offer a Wildlife Emergency Hotline to the public. For help with wildlife in need, call 828-633-6364 ext 1 and leave a message or email [email protected], and a member of the hotline team will reach out right away. To learn more and support their cause, visit www.appalachianwild.org |

Call it “musical comedy heaven” (Rolling Stone). Call it “the most uproarious new musical in years!” (The Hollywood Reporter). Call it Tootsie!
This laugh-out-loud love letter to the theater tells the story of Michael Dorsey, a talented but difficult actor who struggles to find work until one show-stopping act of desperation lands him the role of a lifetime. Featuring a hilarious Tony®-winning book by Robert Horn and an outrageously clever score by 2018 Tony winner David Yazbek (The Band’s Visit, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), this New York Times Critic’s Pick is “a joyful delight” (The Washington Post) that’s “so packed with punchlines, it should be called a jokebox musical!” (Bloomberg). “In these turbulent times, when the world seems out of balance, we need a place to let the good times roll,” raves Rolling Stone. “Tootsie is it!”



