R.I.P. is one of a few completely new pieces to be opening in Milwaukee this month. The musical comedy about the afterlife should be really interesting given the nature of the story. Director Alan Piotrowicz took some time out to answer a few questions about the show, which opens this coming week. It’s a musical comedy about life and death. There’s a really delicate balance there. Love, loss and auto accidents aren’t always the cheeriest things to cover. It must be kind of ominous to try to find the right balance between tragic drama. How are you handling the balance between comedy and drama? It’s an incredibly delicate balance! But the thing about death is that it is one of the truly universal experiences in life. We all will have to face it at some point, not only once ourselves, but also whenever we grieve a loss. But grief and love are inextricably intertwined, and so with the heartbreak also comes joy – happy moments, funny anecdotes, opportunity for growth, chances for reconnection – and so too are there moments of light and levity in our show. The fact of the matter is we don’t know for sure what happens after we die, and neither do the Dead in our show, as find themselves wait in the back rooms of a mortuary. When things are that crazy, what can you do but find the humor? Half the ensemble of characters is dead. The other half is alive. This should make for some rather interesting dramatic dynamics. Is there a whole lot of direct musical interaction between the living and the dead? How does the dynamic work on both sides of life and death in R.I.P.? One of the many conversations I’ve had with Robert Grede, the playwright and composer, is about the role of music in the show. Rob’s done an amazing job of defining the “rules” of how the living and the dead can and can’t interact, and as we explored those rules during an earlier workshop, we learned that perhaps it is actually the music that acts as the connective thread between them. There’s an adage in musical theatre (I think from Bob Fosse) that “the time to sing is when your emotional level is just too high to speak anymore,” so it just makes sense to me that the moment these characters are reaching their most emotionally vulnerable place is both when they would be singing and when they’d be able to connect (even across the barrier of death) to fulfil their hopes and dreams. My personal favorite song in the show, in fact, started as a solo piece for a grieving sister, but as we continued to develop the script, it evolved into a beautiful duet between both sisters (one living and one dead), finding how they’ll each be able to move on. The Next Act space can be VERY intimate. There’s an intimidating factor in staging something this delicate so close to the audience. This isn’t a simple staging either. There’s choreography and everything. How is the space of the show informing on the mood, music and movement of the piece? When we were looking for a venue for this show, I was a huge advocate for Next Act’s performance space. I’ve directed there before, including a production of Dead Man’s Cell Phone for Pink Banana Theatre Co, and actually designed lighting for several shows for Next Act Theatre, including 7 Stories, Four Places, A Sleeping Country, Grace, and Three Views of the Same Object – and those were all in some way about death! (I also did some not about death, too, I swear.) I love directing in intimate spaces, so it doesn’t seem so intimidating for me. Small, up-close spaces means that the storytelling is also more connected with the audience. We’re allowing folks to be a true fly on the wall, watching the lives (and in this case, afterlives) of these characters. Then when the music picks up and the dancing kicks off, the space feels as big and alive as it needs to be – and we definitely will have some "rock out" moments to share. There’s quite a range of different ages and experience levels in the ensemble of performers. Some of the people in the cast have been around for decades. There are a few who have only attained their BAs like...a couple of years ago. It must be exciting working with such a diverse group. How has the group dynamic been in rehearsal? We’re so lucky in Milwaukee to have an array of talent that includes both strong young talent and accomplished actors who have been seen on many different stages in the region. However, it’s not always the case that they get to work in the same room! One of the things I love about RIP is that Rob’s created characters spanning a wide range of ages and life experiences, and we needed a cast that reflected that. This gave us the opportunity to assemble a team of artists with so much awesome experience – spanning from Milwaukee’s historic Melody Top Theatre to the most recent class of Professional Residencies at Milwaukee Rep. We begin rehearsals in one week, and I couldn’t be more excited to get everybody together in the room. Thanks in advance for taking the time to answer a few questions about the show. The world premiere of RIP - A Musical Comedy of Life & Death runs Jul. 17 - 25 at Next Act Theatre’s performance space on 255 S Water St. For more information, visit the musical’s webpage.
0 Comments
The RNC rolls into town next week. So y’know....there’s that... This weekend Quasimondo Physical Theatre opens a critical theatrical analysis of the events of the attack on the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Red, White and Coup runs throughout the month at an immersive space on the North Side. Writer/Director Brian Rott took some time out to answer a few questions I has about the show for a preview I’ve written for The Shepherd-Express. He was nice enough to let me post the entirety of those responses for The Small Stage.... The Small Stage: January 6th, 2021 was horrifying and disgusting on a whole bunch of different levels. Not a whole lot of people would have taken a look at what happened and though, "Y'know? I think this would really work onstage." Where did the specific inspiration come from? Brian. Rott: I’m actually surprised that we haven’t seen much in way of plays or popular media addressing January 6th. Someone recently said to me that politics don’t mix well with theatre. I think there may be some truth to that, regarding not wanting to alienate half of your audience, but for myself and our ensemble this piece isn’t about spreading a political agenda or fueling partisanship. It’s about presenting the truth and history of what we know happened. Jan. 6th was horrifying. I remember stopping my day to follow the TV coverage, as did probably a lot of people. We remember those images, but I think most people don’t know the details of how we got there. They don’t know that Jan 6th was the result of a meticulously crafted plan carried out by dozens of people, and more so how it could have gone much worse if not for a few individuals who stood up to adversity. The inspiration first came because I followed the televised January 6th committee hearings which fueled my interest to learn more, and my research led me to believe that this is an important story to tell now, in our City of Milwaukee, as a companion piece to hosting the RNC and their presidential candidate nominee, in an election year where history has the potential to repeat itself. The Small Stage: The events of January 6th were crazy and chaotic on a number of different levels. How are you bringing that chaos to the stage? How are you framing the action of history for the production? Brian. Rott:The show follows the events leading up to January 6th, the day itself, and a little of the aftermath to the present day. With an abundant amount of story to tell, we focused on the planners - Donald Trump and his lawyers, the foils - public officials who opposed their actions to overturn the election, as well as a handful of rioters who marched on the capital. I think the show follows the chaos of Trump’s team grasping at straws and spreading misinformation to the physical chaos enacted by marchers at the capital on January 6th. The Small Stage: Quasimondo shows always manage a really engaging sort of a surrealistic circus atmosphere. How are you using that energy to peer into January 6th? Brian. Rott: Entering the world of politics, pundits, lawyers, and Washington D.C, is new dramatic territory for us. Our goal was to write the script from available public sources; news articles, court filings, press conference transcripts, etc., many sources of which were somewhat dry. We were faced with the challenge of how to convey this story factually while also making it digestible and entertaining. This is where the fun came in. While most of the text is “on the record”, we’ve taken a number of liberties playing with form and switching style to create an accessible piece that showcases the spectacle and circus of politics. In many cases we didn’t need to add much, as the content alone proved absurd enough as is. The Small Stage: The space of the North Milwaukee Arthaus has a lot of space and a lot of potential. How are you staging that space for the purposes of the show? Brian Rott: Our building, the North Milwaukee Village Hall was built in 1901 as an all-in-one municipal building for the Village of North Milwaukee. We’re staging the production upstairs in the main hall, which was utilized as the primary hub for community events and local politics until 1929. I think of this performance at the Arthaus as site specific, given the building’s history in housing local politics and serving the public, which serves the content of “Red, White, and Coup” perfectly, and creates an immersive environment to experience the show. Quasimondo Physical Theatre’s Red, White and Coup runs July 13- 27 at North Milwaukee Arthaus on 5151 North 35th St. For more information visit Quasimondo online. July is the first month of official summer. Local theatre migrates to all kinds of weird stages all over the place including various places outdoors for some of the nicer months for weather....providing the stage can manage to avoid all of the rain and heat and bug-related itchiness that sometimes accompanies outdoor shows. Here's a look at some of what's upcoming at various places next month. Hamlet is one of the most intricate and complicated works of drama in the history of the English language. Someone would have to be really, really crazy to think that they could do it alone. Thankfully, that someone happens to be Libby Amato. She’s one of the most talented actresses in Milwaukee. If anyone can fully tackle the abject absurdity of trying to do Hamlet all by themselves, it’s Amato. She’s got a remarkably magnetic stage presence...and it’s a presence she will be bringing to various parks in and around Milwaukee as she performs a one-woman Hamlet with The Optimist Theatre this summer. Directed by the equally talented Michael Stebbins, the show opens June 29th at Humboldt Park and runs through July 7th. The show is 90 minutes long. Admission is free. For more information, visit Optimist Theatre online. Milwaukee-baed actor/director Dimonte Henning helms Door Shakespeare’s classic The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet this summer in a production that opens at the beginning of the month. There are some great Milwaukee actors in the cast including Mark Corkins and Todd Denning. The charismatic George Lorimer plays Romeo in what promises to be another satisfying production in the woods in Bailey’s Harbor this summer. Road construction in Door County has paused for the summer season, so a trip out to Door County to see a classic dramatic tragedy should be relatively stress-free. The show runs July 3rd - August 16 at Björklunden Lodge on 7590 Boynton Lane. For more information, visit Door Shakespeare online. Former ad guy Robert Grede debuts RIP - A Musical Comedy of Life & Death. It’s a show with one foot in the grave. Set in and around a mortuary, the cast is split evenly between the living and the non-living as people on both sides of death deal with loss in different ways. Directed by Alan Piotrowicz, the two-act musical makes its world premiere at the Next Act/ Renaissance Theaterworks space on 255 S Water St. The show runs July 17 - 28. For full cast info, a preview of songs on the program, ticket reservations and more, visit RIP online. The title alone tells you all you need to know. It’s a bedroom-style farce. Only it’s not a farce. And it’s a contemporary interpretation on then classic farce that has two cops, three criminals and eight doors. Lots of slamming of doors and misunderstandings and misdirections and so on. Paul Spade Smith’s law enforcement farce debuted about a quarter century ago. This summer the farce makes its way to Lapham Peak. State Park as SummerStage of Delafield presents the comedy as directed by local theatre veteran Michael Pocaro. The show runs July 18-August 3. For more information, visit SummerStage online. It’s unfortunate that there’s so much going on here in Milwaukee the week of July 19th. I’d really love to go up to Green Bay for their big, inaugural Green Bay Fringe Festival. There are a lot of clever-looking, little acts. Whitewater’s Sarah Beth Nelson is doing a one-woman show called I'm Not Joining the Marching Band: Two Truths and a Lie About High School Band. That sounds really interesting. And how could an absurdist comedy show called Mister Nibbles the Amazing Talking Cat be anything other than really cool? (That one is written be Seymour-based playwright Martin W. Prevost. There’s also a guy named Monster Matt who is doing a presentation about cryptids in Wisconsin. The big show here, of course, is Songs Without Words--Jenifer Vosters’ one-woman show about Fannie and Felix Mendelssohn that made such a profound impact on the Milwaukee Fringe Festival not too long ago.
The inaugural Green Bay Fringe Festival runs July 19 - 21. For a complete lists of shows and times, visit the Green Bay Fringe Festival online. The Brick House is a comfy, little space nestled into Mad Planet area of Riverwest. There’s a quaint, little reading taking place there this weekend. Local playwright Deanna Strassse is staging a fun, little reading of her supernatural comedy Boo. An enjoyable cast settles in front of a set of music stands in a dimly-lit room as sunlight from early summer slowly drains from the sky outside. There’s a snuggly, little bar in the far corner with a couple of beers on tap and a few other drinks. The casual immediacy of the comedy asserts itself as the story begins to settle-in. Amanda Schumache lends a warm and welcoming presence to the proceedings as the narrator for the reading, which runs 90 minutes without intermission. She establishes the setting: a hotel in Boston in which a group of paranormal investigators look to explore for the sake of their online viewers. Melody Lopac is generously endearing as Alex--the charming ghost-hunter who draws-in viewers for Kai--the more serious paranormal explorer whose expertise drives the show. Alex and Kai are accompanied by a crew that includes a skittish video editor (Lauren Heinen) and a curmudgeonly videographer (David Parr.) The team tumbles into its place in an otherwise closed hotel. No one else is staying there, but there IS a rather cheery midwestern woman (played with unsettlingly happy energy by Mary Ferwerda) who works the hotel looking to help Alex and Kai in whatever way she can. There’s something strange about her, though. Strasse’s script plays with some grace as it fumbles around establishing the basic parameters of the world that she’s engaging in. Is it really a place occupied by ghosts or is it all entirely surface-level realism? There IS a plot twist that develops in the course of the story, but it mgiht not necessarily be one everyone’s expecting. The drama at the heart of all of the comedy IS enjoyable enough to keep everything moving. There’s just enough variation in the cast to maintain a balance of comedy without overloading the script. Every character in the cast is clearly defined and there’s more than enough for every actor to play with in the course of what turns out to be a thoroughly enjoyable show. Strasse continues to show a great talent for constructing a fun, little ensemble of comedic characters and juggling them in a variety of different ways that manage to ricochet off each other in just the right way to form themselves into a cohesive plot. Deanna Strasse’s staged reading of Boo has two more performances: today, June 8th at 7:30 pm and Sunday, June 9th at 2:30 pm at the Brick House on 504 E. Center St. For ticket reservations and more, visit the show’s Facebook Events Page. It’s all very intimate at the Next Act/Renaissance Theaterworks performance space. It’s a simple stage. There are a couple of chairs. There’s a little bit of greenery. There are some white pedestals. A couple of tiny suits of armor. It’s a cozy, little romance as Brew City Opera stages its one-weekend performance of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte. A studio theatre performance of Mozart’s classic crazy romantic comedy might normally run the risk of coming across as being a bit too casual. Typically some three hours long, the Brew City production clocks-in at a very comfortable 2 hours with intermission.. Though there IS an impressively breezy sense of momentum about the opera, the speed of the show might casually compromise the lavishly dreamlike transformation of Mozart. Thankfully, Music Director Tim Rebers, and Stage Director Edson Melendez manage to maintain a sense of historical elegance about the show that still feels quite classy. The exaggerated insanity of romance flutters across the stage with a delightful sense of action that still manages to feel quite voluminous on a small studio stage.
The plot has echoes of Shakespeare. A couple of men are challenged to prove the faithfulness of the women in their lives by masquerading as strangers--each attempting to seduce the fiancé of the other. It’s light comedy that plays well with the playfulness of Mozart from a variety of different angles on a minimalist stage with some tastefully colorful illumination by Encore Theatrical Lighting. ETL makes the visual reality of the comedy feel that much more rich without the many, many layers of scenic design and costuming that might otherwise inhabit a period comedy. The intensity of the emotions are amplified by rich blues, purples, red and pinks projected against the background which catch the color of the period costuming here and there in the gracefully impassioned rush of events. Brennan Martinez and Tabetha Steege have a fun dynamic as the two women who are challenged in their faithfulness. Steege summons powerful tension with deep inner conflict. Martinez balances the more serious end of the drama with some gorgeously amplified physical emotional comedy. There’s a deft subtlety to Martinez’ sense of humor that serves her end of the production quite well. Soprano Anja Pustaver is impressively sharp as the maid Despina who is drawn into the subterfuge. Pustaver is deliciously expressive with her eyes. She’s got brilliant comic instincts that occasionally take the center of the stage. (Pustaver is irresistibly funny when the maid is given the task of masquerading as a doctor. She cleverly flops about in a plague doctor mask and an oversized robe that amplifies her naturally dynamic sense of physical wit. Very funny stuff.) It’s two hours long, but it passes by with such graceful fluidity. All too quickly the dream is over, but it lingers well int the evening as summer full assets itself on the edge of June somewhere south of Broadway in Milwaukee. Brew City Opera’s Cosi Fan Tutte has two more performances: Saturday, June 1st at 3pm and 7pm. For more information, visit Brew City Opera online.
The summer starts with Midsummer....Fairies and ghosts and fairies and comedy breezing across intimate, little spaces indoors and out in a whimsical flourish that includes a particularly talented actress doing all of Hamlet entirely on her own (with the aid of a talented director.) Shows whimsiically flit from one outdoor stage to the next as summer manifests itself across Milwaukee. Here's a look at what's ahead.
BOO--A New Play by Deanna Strasse
Death is a topic that makes its way into the center of a few different world premiers on the small stage this summer. There’s a musical comedy opening at the Next Act/Renaissance stage in July. Prior to that, local playwright Deanna Strasse debuts a comedy about a group of paranormal investigators. The supernatural comedy makes its way to The Brick House in Riverwest June 7 - 9. The cozy old Milwaukee-looking space should serve as a fun, little home for a haunted, little comedy by one of Milwaukee’s most charming playwrights. For more information, visit the show’s events site on Facebook.
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
The story of a group of middle-aged siblings originally debuted about a decade ago. This June Theatrical Tendencies continues it season with a production of the show on the Inspiration Studios space in West Allis. TT is notably good with just about any show, but the intimate, little ensembles tend to really resonate with the company. The script by Christopher Durang is inspired by Chekhov...three siblings engage each other in a country house. June 14 - 23 at Inspiration Studios on1500 S. 73rd St. In West Allis. For more information, visit TT online.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Summer Shakespeare in Milwaukee opens-up with a a Summit Players production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The scrappy, little touring company makes its way to various Wisconsin parks once again. Costuming and set elements are drawn from trunks in the course of the performance. The first regular performance makes it to Richard Bong State Recreation Area on June 14th. Directed by local theatre veteran Maureen Kilmurry, the show features Maya Banks, Jake Badovski and more. The show continues to tour through July 29, when it closes the show with a performance at Havenwoods State Forest. For more information, visit Summit Players online,
Optimist Theatre: Shakespeare in the City
This year Optimist Theatre gets a little crazy with its offerings. Typically in the past, Optimist has offered one big show that has toured around Milwaukee parks. This summer they’re doing something bigger involving a whole bunch of rotating Shakespeare shows. In this year’s Hamlet, Michael Stebbins directs a cast of one as Libby Amato is granted the dream/nightmare of performing a one-person Hamlet. Amato is riveting onstage, so this should be a lot of fun. Patrick Schmitz returns to an old spoof with his Shakesparody Players in a performance of The Comedy of Romeo and Juliet: Kinda Sorta and Pocket Park Players present a Macbeth performed entirely...with puppets. The action begins June 15th at Wisconsin Lutheran College and continues touring various locations through July 7th for more information, visit Optimist Theatre online.
Another Midsummer Night’s Dream
Local playwright/director Liz Shipe has taken a few characters from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and set them off on their own in a new show that’s being performed as a part of Optimist Theatre’s Shakespeaere In the City. Cara Johnston is Peasblossom...who is trying to convince the Fairy Queen that Puck (Noah Silverstein) is a positive influence on love in the mortal world. Another Midsummer Night’s Dream will be performed twice: June 15 at 4:30 pm at Wisconsin Lutheran College And June 23 at 5:00 pm at Lincoln Park Angry Young Men Ltd.’s Full Frontal Puppetry returned this past Friday with a one-night show that brought back the distinct flavor of weirdness that had come to define the adult puppet group. The delightfully weird, little puppets have been featured on quite a few stages over the years. This time around the group made its way to the back room of Amorphic Beer on North Fratney. I had wings from a nearby food truck before the show in a very cozy post-industrial atmosphere...enjoying a couple of Paradigm Paradox IPAs in and amidst a show dominated by fellow Xers both in and out of the audience. A Full Frontal Puppetry is a fun satirical evening of comedy for a generation that might still harbor hazy memories of The Muppet Show over the VHF band on a low-res cathode ray tube in the prime time of early childhood. Fuzzy, little personalities cascade through skits in a variety show atmosphere. Modeled as it is after the overall feel of a Muppet Show, there IS a guest star. The guest for this particular show was local opera performer Julianne Perkins, who worked her way through a performance of a very romantic piece (by Gilbert and Sullivan if I recall correctly.) It was a duet with partner Josh in the role of a zombie puppet. It was actually an oddly touching duet for singer, puppeteer and zombie voice. Later-on Julianne sung a beautiful piece while a fuzzy, little puppet named Razzle killed mice puppets in the background. Beautiful notes flowed through the space as tiny, little bodies were crushed and decapitated amidst streamers of blood. It was...actually really, really cute. The show is sharp and self-referential. At show’s opening. Lumpy the Golem Boy and Murry Gauntman (the old zombie guy who was the first ever AYM puppet) discuss the evening ahead and find out that very little of what they’re going to be performing on the evening is actually new material. The simply third-party presidential debate between third-party puppets, a houseplant and Julianne was fun. Once again, Sid the Fetus comes across as an eerily appealing, little guy. The houseplant representing the Green Party held everyone’s attention with some really interesting points. Not all of the old material is funny, but it never fails to be fun. It’s cool, though. FFP is inhabited by cool, little fuzzy guys to hang out with...not all of which I remember from my last visit with the FF puppets. Of particular note in and amongst the action was an adorable, little goat with a big heart. My wife and I had a chance to talk with her a bit at intermission. She considers herself the GOAT-goat even though...y’know...she hadn’t shown-up in the entire first half of the show. After intermission, Lumpy is giving her a driving test and things...predictably...go wrong. It’s a fun sketch. Amorphic is a fun space for a show like this. It’s off on the edges of the Riverwest’s spiritual hub. Walk far enough in any direction in that neighborhood and you just might find the end credits to Milwaukee or something. It’s such an enchanting, existentially permeable space that makes for a really great atmosphere for a really great microbrewery. The latest Full Frontal Puppetry was one night only. For more information on what the Full Frontal Puppets are up to, visit them on Facebook. For a look at what’s on offer at Amorphic, visit them online too. The Baumgartner Center for Dance is a spacious temple of performance. The vast space feels like a tribute to the potential of human movement. I wasn’t there Saturday afternoon for the dance, though. Renaissance Theaterworks was hosting a program of shorts in the afternoon as a part of its Br!nk New Play Festival. Maeve Elliot’s Dry Humor is a light comedy sketch in which Abraham Lincoln waits for his dry cleaning in heaven. Kind of a fun premise that serves as a weird opener for the show. The second short has considerably more weight to it. Playwright Maria Pretzl builds a endearing and refreshing script around a pair of lovers and a friend at a wedding. Bouquet Toss constructs a strong and idiosyncratic relationship between three individuals who manage quite a bit more complexity than most characters manage over the course of a full-length play. Quite an accomplishment. The third short dives into a strikingly original piece about a woman who finds herself searching for the heart of dance in and within parties all over the planet. Maria Burnham's "The Air B&B of Broken Dreams" has thematic weight AND a tremendous amount of personality. Well worth attending the program for this one alone. Feels rather pleasantly like a clever updated mutation of “Wong’s Lost and Found Emporium” by William F. Wu Colleen O’Doherty’s Sister of Experience is a rather weighty drama that suffers a bit from being on a program with largely lighter fare. A nun is brought before a priest who is asking her to lie for the benefit of a young woman. It’s pretty heavy stuff and there really are no easy answers in one single totally serious short on the entire program. The show closes-out with a comedic shirt by Deanne Strasse.Roberta’s Skin is a fun, little examination into the psychology of body image. Nate Press is charming as an inhabitant of a nude beach who is accosted by a woman who is endeavoring to feel comfortable in her own skin. Ashley Rodriguez is delihghtfully vulnerable as a woman just trying to fearlessly be herself. It’s a really fun ending to the program. Renaissance Theaterworks’ Br!nk Br!efs! has one more performance on May 19th at 2pm at the Baumgartner Center for Dance on 128 N. Jackson St. Admission to the show is free. (Really.) For more information about the program and everything else on the Br!nk New Plays Festival, visit Renaissance online. It's something called Here There Where It’s just three people on a stage. Everything is black. As the show open, chalk is marked on the ground outlining some basic boundaries that will more or less be used in the course of the rest of the show. Three characters receive and invitation for a party. Where is the party? Well...it’s not exactly clear, but the three people onstage have to work out exactly where it is that htey’re going to leave from if they’re going to be able to make any headway at all.
Italian writer/performer/filmmaker Alessandro Renda joins Gigante’s Isabelle Kralj and Mark Anderson in a jarringly funny, little exploration into the nature of reality. The three performers engage in a brief performance that seems to conjure a sort of existentialist Marx Brothers sort of an energy that playfully and whimsically tumbles across the stage. The nature of time, space emotion and intention whimsically pop through a narrative that has some breathtakingly simple bits of breathtaking metaphysical depth. One notable moment has Kralj having a conversation with a prerecorded version of herself that is being projected larger than life at the back of the stage. She’s asking herself about who she is and who she was and she’s answering herself...but she already knows the answers. Elsewhere, Renda is performing a live monologue as video footage of him plays in the background...driving around in search of direction in video as he stands perfectly still onstage. Anderson also has a solo moment in which he considers some of the first principles if superheroing. It’s a surprisingly novel monologue that manages to stake out some strikingly new ground relating to power and responsiibility in a superhero genre that’s been around for over 80 years. For the most part, the three are all onstage or screen together at various moments over the course of a brief, intermission-less performance that casually touches reality from many different angles. The narrative ends where most stories begin. The whole thing feels like a tripe, little anti-show that plays on all of the empty spaces, silences and darknesses that exist along the edges of perception. On at least one level, it’s as though the show is as much about what it ISN’T as it is about what it is. Theatre like. This doesn’t come around often. It’s breathtakingly deep in a way that feels deliciously organic. It’s all very simple...but the simplest things leave an audience with the most room to consider so much more room for thought on the way out of the theatre. Theatre Gigante’s Here There Where continues through May 19th at Kenilworth 508 Theatre on 1925 E. Kenilworth Boulevard. For more information, visit Theatre Gigante Online. There’s a pleasant variety of different shows making it to the small stage this month including a variable plot adventure with First Stage, a promising tenth anniversary for Reanaissance’s new play festival, the emergence of a new opera company and a charismatic one-man show. Here’s a look at what’s coming in May in Milwaukee. First Stage presents an interactive adventure with a variable plot as it presents Escape from Peligro Island--A Create Your Own Adventure Play. Playwright Finegan Kruckmeyer pastes together a surrealistic fantasy adventure which tells the story of Callaway Brown. He starts the story stranded on a desert island, but things can go in many disparate directions depending on the decisions of the audience in a fun experimental theatre experience. Director Jeff Frank leads the cast in a show that runs May 10 - June 2 at the Milwaukee. Youth Arts Center on 325 W Walnut St. For ticket reservations and more, visit First Stage online. Theatre Gigante welcomes Spring with a brand new program--Here There Where...described as "An enigmatic theatrical piece that fluctuates between keen absurdity and poetic musings, interweaving dialogue, monologues, music, video, movement, and a lot of playful wisdom." Gigante is really, really good with this sort of thing. They've been doing it for quite a long time now. They know what they're doing....it can be breathtakingly fascinating stuff when they frame it well. The show runs for one weekend only: May 17 - 19 at Kenilworth 508 Theatre - 1925 East Kenilworth Place, 5th floor. For more information, visit Theatre Gigante online. ![]() Renaissance Theaterworks’ Br!NK New Play Festival turns TEN this year with some drama, some comedy and lots and lots and lots of shorts. Featured on the festival is the story of a woman who returns to an island looking for answers about the death of her brother. There’s also a number of shorts written by some pretty impressive names including Deanna Strasse and Maria Pretzl. (They’re both really, really cool. Trust me.) The festival runs May 18 and 19 at The Baumgartner Center for Dance on 128 N Jackson St. in the Third Ward. For more information, visit Br!NK online. Next Act’s performance space serves as the launching point for Brew City Opera--a new company which emerges at the end of the month...with a production of Così fan tutte. A man disguises himself in order to hit on his best friend’s fiancé in a light and enjoyable comedy. It’s a warm romantic comic hug from Mozart that comes to inhabit the space at 255 S Water St. BCO should have little difficulty filling the intimate studio theatre space with a light and spacious three hours of Mozart at the dawn of the summer of 2024. The show runs May 30 - June 1st. For more information, visit BCO online. Actor/performer Thom Cauley presents a story of life with Autism in his one-man show The Spectrum Revisited (or a Typical Neuro-Atypical.) Cauley talks the history of the science, his personal life in a spoken word show infused with song parodies. Cauley has shown a charming and charismatic stage presence in and around the edges of larger ensembles. It should be fun to see him move into something right in the center of the stage. Should be fun evening. The show runs May 31 - June 9th at Hi-Five Studios on 3276 N Weil St. For more information, visit the show’s Facebook page.
|
Russ BickerstaffArchives
July 2024
Categories |