Miller Auditorium

• 1341 Theatre Drive
• Kalamazoo, MI 49008
• (269) 387-2300
• Website

I love that my family loves the theater.  

I’ve mentioned it several times before, but J was involved in theater in high school and she’s passed that love on to the kids….who love performing.  

I always enjoyed the theater but I grew up in a small town where sports dominated.  I never had the courage to be that jock that tried out for the school play.  I wasn’t cool enough to pull it off.

I always went to watch the plays at my high school though.  I loved watching my friends so something I didn’t have the guts to do.  

We’ve been going to a show about every three months lately.  We’ve been to DeVos Performance Hall (Six), The Detroit Opera House (Beetlejuice), and Wharton Center (Wicked) since January.  

J and I have gone to several shows at Miller Auditorium in the years we’ve been in Kalamazoo.  The first time was way back in 2009.  I won tickets somehow to see The Wedding Singer…a show we likely wouldn’t have gone to on our own…but they were free so we went.  That was also the first, and only time I’ve written a blog about Miller Auditorium.  My writing style has changed a bit and so has the theater….so here we are.  

The James W. Miller Auditorium is on the campus of Western Michigan University on Theatre Drive just off Ring Road on the southwest side of campus.  If you’re going out to city roads, it’s near the intersection of Howard and Stadium at the edge of campus.  There are several parking lots and most people try to come in to the theater from Howard Street, but if you’re local and you know your way around, it’s best to come in from Michigan Avenue and take Ring Road to the back of the parking ramp connected to the theater. 

The show we were going to see was Mean Girls. L loves the movie and has watched it probably a 100 times. As soon as we saw the musical was coming to Miller this year, we made plans. It kind of sucked that it was a random Tuesday night but it was worth keeping the kids up a little late on a school night to see the show.

We got to the theater around 6:45 for a 7:30 show. We parked on the second level of the ramp like we usually do and headed for the skybridge to the theater. This is really the easiest and quickest way to get in and out of the building.

When you get across the skywalk, you still have a little bit of a hallway to navigate until you get to the main part of the theater. There are posters for upcoming shows and this is where the PNC Bank VIP Lounge is located. We are not VIP’s so we kept walking.

Coming in from the parking garage brings you to the Grand Tier level. This is the second floor of the theater so if you have orchestra seating, you have to go down. If you have upper row Grand Tier or balcony seating you have to go up.

There’s not a lot of space outside of the theater. The first floor is the wider of the two levels. This is where most of the merchandise and concession areas as well as the ticket office are set up.

The second level is about half the width of the first level. It’s mostly just for getting you from one place to the next. There weren’t any merchandise areas set up where I could see on this level but we were on the right side of the theater so we didn’t venture too far from the parking garage entrance.

There are a couple of concession stand/coat check areas. We passed one right as we went in. Of course, B can’t pass a concession stand without getting something. Like most theaters, options are limited, small portions, and a little expensive. They sell half bottles of water and Pepsi products as well as coffee, wine, and beer. I got two bottles of water, a Pepsi, and a bag of Skittles for $15.

When we take B to shows with us, we always sit in the back row and on an aisle somewhere. He loves the theater but it can get a little long and he can get a little restless. In this case, I got tickets in the back row (Row 25) of the Grand Tier on the right aisle. Miller is a pretty big auditorium…it seats about 3500 people making it the fifth biggest auditorium in Michigan..but the view is good from pretty much anywhere. We never have complaints about not being in the orchestra seating…even though we’ve done that many times as well.

For having that many seats, you’d expect the seats would be narrow and uncomfortable but that is not the case. The seats are wide enough for a bigger guy like myself and there’s plenty of room between the roads so you don’t feel like you’re putting your knees in the back of someone’s head.

I haven’t seen the Mean Girls movie in years so I pretty much forgot the plot. The show was fun. It was slightly inappropriate for a 7 year old…as most musicals are…but I really doubt he even understood the inappropriate parts…and if he did? Oh well…he probably sees and hears worse on YouTube.

L loved the show. She’s been watching the movie on repeat for a while now and knows a lot of it by heart. As we were leaving she asked what my favorite part was and I told her I wasn’t going to say. She guessed the lion mascot scene and she was right..and that was everyone’s favorite part…I just have to wonder if the kids liked it for the same reason J and I did.

As I’ve mentioned many times, we’ve seen several shows at Miller Auditorium over the last 14 years. Most recently, B and I went to see the Blue Man Group (something J and I saw about 10 years ago there too.) They don’t usually get the hottest new shows right as they come off Broadway but there is a solid line up every year and usually two or three shows we want to see (Come From Away is the other one on this season’s schedule we’d like to get to.)

It’s so great to have a quality theater like this just a few minutes from home.