​The modern era finds contemporary culture moving deeper and deeper into a postmodern information society. As everything becomes information, culture rushes to try to understand the nature of reality on a fundamental level. Renaissance Theaterworks explores some of the implications of the modern age with a production of Jennifer Haley’s Nether. The sci-fi drama concerns a certain stretch of virtual reality that is being used for satiating unacceptable desires that would be completely criminal in the “real” world beyond the VR. 


Laura Gray conjures a great deal of intensity as Morris--a woman who is investigating a portion of shared VR space known as “The Nether.” There’s a particularly dark corner of that space that is ruled over by a man known to participants as “Papa.”  Morris is searching for the truth behind a world in which participants pretend to be adults and children engaging in sexual relations. 


Haley explores metaphysical topics that have been pretty extensively explored in science fiction for well over half a century or more. There may not be a whole lot that The Nether is doing thematically that hasn’t been explored pretty extensively before in other places over the years, but there IS something quite refreshingly engrossing and unsettling about seeing these topics explored in an intimate iive theatre space. Steve Koehler is deeply complex as the man known as Papa who has been hauled-in for questioning regarding his world and the people who spend time there. C. Michael Wright plays to an almost fearless degree of complexity I the heart of human desire as a nearly retired school teacher who is engaged in "Papa's" world in The Nether. .

Director Elyse Edelman has cleverly brought together all of the complexity in a cast that also includes a pair of teen actresses who take turns playing the schoolgirl avatar for Wright’s character. Josie Van Slake  was particularly impressive opening night as she played a girl with a deep intellect and deeper desires that could not be met in the fading face of a dying world. 

Scenic Designer Doug Dion has put together a rather ingeniously fluid set that still manages to lock-in the full reality of a virtual world that the script insists is vividly real. Haley gives any production of the play a great deal of challenge in moving back and forth from a cold interrogation room to a warm and sensual realm based out of an idyllic past. A vast rotating set in the background moves with grace and poise in the periphery of a stage brilliantly painted with luminous color by Lighting Designer Colin Gawronski.

Haley’s script is deliciously complex with a lot of moving parts around the edges of the main action. Edelman does a brilliant job of working with the cast to vividly bring-out all of the provocative complexity of one of the best plays to hit a local small stage all season. 

Renaissance Theaterworks’ production of The Nether runs through February 2 at Next Act’s theatre space on 255 S Water St. For more information, visit Renaissance online.

2025 opens with a provocative and intimate VR sci-fi drama, a debut of a new theater group, a new take on an old classic and a trip back to the late Cretaceous period for the kiddies. (With Adrian Feliciano no less.) Here's a look at what I'm looking forward to at the outset of the new year.

The Nether looks like a fun return to sci-fi for the local small-stage theater as Renaissance Theaterworks  presents Jennifer Haley’s detective drama. The 2015 drama is framed by conversations in an interrogation room. It’s the near future. Online reality has evolved into The Nether: a vast network of VR realms. A detective is exploring the existence of a realm called The Hideaway...a place where pedophiles can live out their fantasies involving children. Ethical questions and the nature of reality are explored in a provocative drama that’s being directed by the talented Elyse Edelman.  The show runs Jan 12 - Feb. 2 at Next Act’s space on  255 S. Water St, For more information, visit Renaissance online.

The Black Cat & Crow Reading Company debuts this month with a reading at The Brick House. Not much has been announced about the script being read, but Andrea Rondel-Schroeder made the announcement on the show. And she’s very cool. Given her cleverly witty and admirably dark intellectual aesthetic, this could be a lot of fun. And it’s at the Brick House, so it should be a lot of fun in a cozy, intimate atmosphere. Maybe it’s spooky. Maybe it’s disquieting. Whatever it is, The Black Cat & Crow has been summoned. Looking forward to it.

Black  Cat & Crow’s Premiere runs Jan. 17th and 18th at The Brick House on 504 E. Center St. The doors open at 7:30 pm for an 8 pm show. For more information, visit Black Cat & Crow’s Facebook page.

Hey here’s an idea: let’s send kids back to the late Cretaceous period. They don’t have to worry about it getting too dangerous. They’ll only be there for like...one hour without intermission. They can try to help a little dinosaur out of its shell, make friends with a triceratops and help protect it from a Tyrannosaurus Rex.  It’ll be cozy. Kids can learn bit about the way things might have been over 65 million years ago. Sounds like it could be fun. And given the fact that it’s going to be a First Stage show, it really should be a great deal of fun with some very impressive production design. The talented Adrian Feliciano stars as The Guide in a show directed by  Jeff Frank & Samantha Montgomery. The show runs Jan. 18 - Feb. 16 at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center on  325 W Walnut St. For more information, visit First Stage online.

Jennifer Vosters stars as housewife Nora Helmer who asserts her independence in Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s production of A Doll’s House. The Amy Herzog adaptation tightens-up the drama considerably into a much more engaging 100+ minutes. The show is being directed by Leda Hoffmann. The show runs Jan. 24 - Feb. 9 at the Broadway Theatre Center’a Studio Theatre on 158 N. Broadway.

Lumpy the Golem Boy hosts another program of light comic shorts as The Full Frontal Püppets present Re-Gift--a best-of program featuring a number of sketches that have been presented over the course of the past year. Lots of weirdness. Puppets dance. Puppets sing. There's quadrupedal puppet yoga. The whole program ends with a puppet spoof of A Christmas Carol that manages some really fun bits of satire around the edges of an enjoyable program.

The show is a generous mix of different comedy bits. Once again, one of the more charming elements ends up being the adorable goat who can be seen hanging out and mingling with the audience during the beginning of the show and intermission. Her “Goat Yoga” sketch is one of the more clever bits in the program. The cuteness of the goat provides a level of engagement that contrasts against many of the rest of the puppets including that of the crotchety-old zombie who plays the lead as Scrooge in the first Christmas Carol spoof. 

The fuzzily erudite presence of the scientist puppet Blondie continues to hold a great deal of appeal as well. There are more than a few cheesy jokes over the course of the program and Blondie IS responsible for uttering at least a few of them, but she manages an appealing spin on them that makes for a few fun moments in the course of the show.

The show takes place in the back room at Amorphic Beer. The informal setting makes for a suitably surreal experience as people both real and fictitious mill about the space in and out of felt. Lumpy is as charming as ever in the center of it all with various comedic element a popping in and out of the edges of everything as it all progresses. 

A group of zombie puppets doing a dance number inspired by the scene in Mean Girls ends up being way more funny than it really has any right to be. There’s a great deal here that draws a lot of its humor from the fact that it really is just a bunch of puppets doing light humor that wouldn’t be nearly as charming if it was flesh instead of fuzziness delivering the punchlines.

Amorphic beer has some staggeringly good microbrews. At intermission, the puppets vacate and there’s an opportunity to go back to the bar. One might engage in small talk with a few little puppets in the course of a beer. There’s something delightfully strange about that…particularly in the process of hanging out with a little goat who seems perfectly happy to discuss current events and her diet. Honestly it’s got to be one of the single most surreal experiences to be had on a small stage in Milwaukee, but it’s all so approachably casual that it’s easy to forget how truly strange an experience it really is. Just relax and hang out with a few floating torso puppets and a cute, little goat. It’s fun. Really. You’re going to a puppet show for adults and having a beer or two. It’s just another weekday night in the event horizon of the heart of the holiday season.

The Full Frontal Püppets' Re-Gift has one more performance 7:30 pm tonight at Amorphic Beer on 3700 N. Fratney St. For more information, visit the show’s Facebook Events Page.

​Prolific Writer/producer Susan Harris hit on the perfect formula when she created The Golden Girls for television back in the mid-“980s. The tightly-woven sitcom featured a very distinctive ensemble of older women sharing a house in Miami. Purse String Productions pays tribute to the long-running sitcom with The Golden Girls Holiday Special--a staged comedy/drag show fusion that features all of the feel of the original show with clever, little bits of social satire and observational humor thrown-in around the edges of the script. At two hours in length, the show plays like a lovingly-rendered expansion of a standard half-hour episode of the show complete with lip-synched  drag queen performances drawn from pop music.


Harris’ basic set-up for the sitcom rings through the production with striking clarity. I decided against re-watching old episodes of the show in preparation for Purse Strings’ tribute. I remember regularly watching he first season of the show back in 1985 when it originally aired. Purse Strings brings back everything from the original theme song to the establishing music cues that open each scene and, of course, the overall look and layout of the central set of a spacious Miami home in 1985. The fact that this is as vivid for me now as it was when I actually saw episodes from the first season when they originally aired says A LOT for what Harris was able to create. I haven’t seen or thought about this show in nearly 40 years and it’s still remarkably memorable for me.


The Purse Strings cast is great. Dear Ruthie  asserts herself with strength and poise in the role of Bea Arthur’s droll Dorothy. Ruthie’s Bea Arthur is great. It would be fun to see Ruthie as Arthur playing Maude from her big 1970s TV sitcom hit. Marcy Doherty-Elst is positively uncanny in the role of Estelle Getty  as Dorothy’s mother Sophia. Doherty-Elst has the accent, intonation and delivery of Getty down to the last micron in every way. Very cool. Dita Von does such a strikingly good job playing southern belle Blanche that her height feels a bit disorienting.  Rue McClanahan, (who famously played the role for TV) was only 5’3”. She was only a little taller than the diminutive Getty. Dita positively towers over everyone else in the cast, which makes the impressive fidelity to McClanahan’s portrayal that much more disorienting. It’s a fun contrast, though. Brandon Herr rounds-out the central cast as the Rose--the Betty White character. Herr’s sweetness brings life to the charm White was able to bring to the role of a Norwegian-American woman from rural Minnesota.


Writer Anthony Torti nails the precise rhythm of a 1980s  sitcom script with tributes to the many characters in the original show with great fidelity. The beautiful thing about a most sitcoms from the 20th century is their  utterly predictable uniformity. Torti cleverly uses the cookie-cutter script format of half hour 1980s commercial television to make a statement about the repetition of life and how truly difficult it can be to break free from the rut of daily routines even well after retirement has set-in. Very clever stuff that clearly respects and reflects Susan Harris’ cleverness in having created such an enduring piece of episodic comedy.


Purse String Productions’ The Golden Girls Holiday Special runs through Dec. 15 at LaCage on 801 S. 2nd St. and then Waukesha Civic Theatre from Dec. 18-19 before going to UW-Parkside December 21 - 22nd. For more information, visit Purse Strings’ Facebook Page.

The holidays have a tendency to push local small-stage theater openings into even smaller spaces for even briefer periods of time. And so there are rather a lot of little things being brought to small spaces for one weekend only. At least...that’s what’s happening THIS December...a few tiny shows scatter to the stage for a quick, little set of appearances before they all vanish for 2025.

A Very Deadly Constructivists Holiday
The Seven Deadly Sins return for another irreverent look at the holiday season in a series of sketches presented by The Constructivists. Last year’s show was a great deal of fun with a surprisingly simple set of personality archetypes suffering through the trials and tribulations of another vicious holiday season. Jamielynn Grey’s clever adaptation comes to the stage of  the Broadway Theatre Center Studio Theatre. Director Andrew Hobgood works with a phenomenal group for the show including Andrea Ewald, Andrew Hobgood, Anya Palmer, Emily Mertens, Haley Ebinal, Jaimelyn Gray, Joe Lino, Kristina Hinako, Ky Peters, Nate Press, and William Molitor.

The show runs Thursday, December 5th through December 14th. For more information, visit The Constructivists online.

A Christmas Carol: RAW
Boozy Bard Productions presents another holiday spoof this year as it revisits A Christmas Carol. Actors arrive at the venue with no idea what roles they’ll be playing. They choose roles out of a hat and proceed to ramble through one of the best-known stories in all of contemporary literature...vastly unprepared. Classic theater meets improv Dec. 14 - 16 at The Best Place Tavern on 917 W Juneau Ave. The Boozy Bard also has a one-night performance at the Wilson Park Senior Center on 2601 W Howard Ave on Dec. 8. For more information, visit Boozy Bard’s Facebook page.
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Re-Gift
Angry Young Men’s Full Frontal Puppetry returns to the stage with old material in a special “Best Of” show just in time for the holidays with Re-Gift. The strangely appealing cast of puppets return to the inherently cool space of Amorphic Brewing Company on Tuesday the 10th and Wednesday the 11th. Cool puppets in a cool space with some very, very cool microbrews on tap somewhere near the beginning of the week. Sounds like fuh. For more information, visit the show’s Facebook page.

Golden Girls Holiday Special
Purse String Productions presents a sitcom-as-drag show this month with a tribute to the long-running 1980s sitcom Golden Girls. Purse Strings did a fun spoof on The Nanny that I had the pleasure of making it to some time ago. The TV sitcom format feels so delightfully weird grafted onto the overall format of a drag show.  Written by Anthony Torti, the original show features Dear Ruthie as Dorothy, Dita Von as Blanche, Brandon Herr as Rose, and Marcee Doherty as Sophia.

​The Purse Strings holiday show makes it to Waukesha Civic Theatre  Dec. 18 and 19. For more information, visit Waukesha Civic online.

​There’s a beautifully wistful poetry in the way that scenic designer Lisa Schlenker’s set frames the show. A few poetic lines form stylish suggestions of a rural American forest. The set stands-in for a very small, unincorporated town in Next Act Theatre’s Almost, Maine. Directed by Karen Estrada, the show is a series of poetic amplifications rendering the deeply emotional nature of true romantic love. Playwright John Cariani’s script is touchingly whimsical in its exploration of human connection amidst the powerful human emptiness of open nature. Estrada engages a cast of four in a series of narratives that explore the most intimate details of emotional life.


Rachael Zientek is a treasure onstage. There’s a beautiful earnestness about her that serves half the population of the town quite well. She’s a bartender at The Moose Patty. She’s a woman from out of town looking to see her husband off on a big journey. She’s someone who has been away for years who is only now returning. Zientek has such an open embrace of emotion that lends the stage such endearing warmth without compromising the intricacy and nuance needed for an in-depth exploration of something as totally overwhelming as romantic love. It’s always nice to see Zientek onstage again. It’s particularly satisfying seeing her play half the women in a small town in rural Maine.


Rudy Galvan wields a steady emotional gravity onstage that gives firm foundation to some of the more erratic energies brought by other characters. Even when he’s being wildly romantic, there’s a steadiness to it that feels remarkably reassuring. He’s offering aid to a woman who has taken-up residence on his property. And he loves her even though he’s never met her before. Elsewhere he’s a guy who finds himself overwhelmed by the amount of love that he’d given a woman as she returns it to him. It’s a profoundly tense moment, but he holds steady through it all without feeling at all emotionally distant. That’s one hell of a dichotomy to manage.


Bree Beelow is given the challenge of working with some of the more complicated drama in the show. It’s not easy for anyone to manage the intricacies of romance without being able to tap-into the comedy. ZIentek plays a lot of quirky characters that allow her to gracefully play with whimsy in her performances. Below has to remain pretty solidly ensconced in the dramatic end of things for much of the show. She does a remarkably good job of playing a variety of people who are all fractured in different ways, but it’s really nice to see her move into physical comedy near the end of the show in the role of a woman with ridicuolusly intense personal boundaries that finally falter after another trip around the wilderness on a snowmobile.


Jake Horstmeier rounds out the cast in a few roles that require him to really embrace the essence of vulnerability. He’s a broken man at a bar with a strange tattoo and he’s someone who is in a marriage that may be falling apart and he’s flawed in many ways...but there ARE other moments for Horstmeier. He’s answering the door for someone who has become a stranger and he carries himself with a serene sense of emotional connection...even in silence. Perhaps one of the more challenging scenes in the whole play involves Horstmeier and Galvan playing a couple of guys who fall into absurdist physical comedy. Two guys fall for each other...it’s deeply symbolic, but it would be hell for any pair of actors to carry across onstage without compromising the serious nature of human emotion that’s at the center of it all. Horstmeier and Galvan do an exceptional job of keeping it all quite deflty-rendred.


Next Act’s production of Almost, Maine runs through Dec. 15 at Next Act’s space on 255 S. Water Street. For ticket reservations and more, visit Next Act Online.

Playwright Bryna Turner explores four decades in the life of a New England woman’s college in her 2018 comedy Bull in a China Shop. Kith and Kin Collective presents a staging of the comedy to open November just in time for an historic US presidential election that could change things quite a bit for the nation. Turner’s comedy explores the concept of revolution and what it means to be at odds with the world. 5 women cover a tremendous amount of territory in 90-minute show that runs November 2 - 10 at Inspiration Studios on 1500 S. 73rd St. in  West Allis. Playwright Bryna Turner explores four decades in the life of a New England woman’s college in her 2018 comedy Bull in a China Shop. Kith and Kin Collective presents a staging of the comedy to open November just in time for an historic US presidential election that could change things quite a bit for the nation. Turner’s comedy explores the concept of revolution and what it means to be at odds with the world. 5 women cover a tremendous amount of territory in 90-minute show that runs November 2 - 10 at Inspiration Studios on 1500 S. 73rd St. in  West Allis. For more information, visit Kith and Kin online.

It’s set in a kitchen. It’s all about a sandwich. Four former inmates hang out in a kitchen of a diner trying to create the perfect sandwich. This is SUCH a clever idea for a stage comedy. It’s a cozy, little kitchen that could potentially explore quite a few different abstracts as Milwaukee Chamber Theatre presents the Milwaukee premiere of Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s. Director Dimonte Henning presents a cleverly-framed comedy featuring an impressive cast including Bryant Bentley and Nate Press. The comedy runs November 8 - 24 at the Broadway Theater Center Studio Theatre. For more information, visit Milwaukee Chamber Theatre online.

So...it’s an opera. But it’s a Milwaukee Opera Theatre opera, so you know it’s going to be cool and intimate and all kinds of hip. MOT teams-up with Early Music Now to present Alcina--a story about a sorceress who has a reputation of transforming her ex-lovers into lions and tigers and boulders and things. Sounds cool. And then...it’s being staged at a vintage clothing and home goods store named Dandy. Cool chamber orchestra. Cool, old opera. Cool venue. This should be great fun. The show runs November 12 - 17 at Dandy on 5020 W. Vliet St. For more information, visit Milwaukee Opera Theatre online.

​Tomas Edison and Henry Ford were...at best...a couple of jerks. At worst they were...well...just totally reprehensible human beings who did awful things to other people in favor of their own advancement. They shared a winter estate not far from Fort Meyers Florida which is probably one of the stranger bits of Floridian history. Edison’s Last Breath evidently takes place far from Florida in a bar in New York where the two men met. Sound like a fascinating topic for a drama. Playwright Tim Duax debuts his Edison/Ford show in the intimate space of Inspiration Studios on 1500 S 73rd St. The show runs November 15 - 24. For more information, visit Inspiration Studios Online.

Next Act Theatre opens a quaint, little romance on the edge of Autumn as it presents the comedy Almost, Maine. Karen Estrada directs a quartet of actors including Rachel Zientek, Bree Bell, Rudy Galvan and Jake Horstmeier. The play examines romantic connections in a small town in Maine that’s so far north that it might as well be in the Canadian wilderness. The show runs Nov. 20th - Dec. 15th at the Next Act Theatre on  255 S Water St. For ticket reservations and more, visit Next Act online.

​Robert Anderson’s I Never Sang for My Father tells the tale of a widowed college professor’s relationship with his aging father. The play debuted back in 1968 and was later turned into a film starring Gene Hackman. Boulevard Theatre presents a staged reading of the play featuring some outstanding actors including David Ferrie, Matt Specht, Joan End and Caitlin Compton. The show runs Nov. 25 - Dec. 1 at The Sugar Maple on 441 E. Lincoln Ave. For more information, visit Boulevard Theatre online. The back room of the bar is a fantastic, little place with one of the best selections of exotic, little beers anywhere in town. Always a fun show at the Sugar Maple.

​Playwright Jen Silverman’s The Moors is many things. It’s a dark comedy about human connection. It’s a spoof of the work of the the Brontë sisters. It’s a meditation on the nature of truth in a fundamentally warped world of human emotion. More than anything it’s a deeply engrossing and provocative piece of theatre. Renaissance Theaterworks stages a production of the play this autumn.


Suzan Fete directs a deeply engaging, little ensemble of actors. Kaylene Howard shows considerable strength in the role of Emilie--a woman who has come to an estate in the middle of nowhere to serve as governess to a small child. As she is introduced to the two sisters who live their and their servant, it gradually becomes clear that both the child she was meant to look after AND the man who had hired her are the products of some deranged imagination.


Sarah Sokolovic is deliciously harsh as Agatha--the sister who has taken on the basic responsibilities of running the estate. Sokolovic wields Agatha’s cold and cunningly comic precision like a scalpel that gets right into the heart of Silverman’s script. Allie Babich dreamily cascades across the stage in the role of the lonely sister Hudley. She is quite excited to have a new member of the household. With any luck the new governess might like diving into the strange fantasies that she seems totally obsessed with. Emily Vitrano rounds-out the central cast in the role of Marjory--a woman who plays many roles with many identities throughout the estate. The role could have read as abstract craziness, but Silverman definitely has a structure beneath the madness which Vitrano is wise to bring to the stage.


Silverman pairs humans with a couple of animals that serve as a subplot with a sympathetic theme to the rest of the action. Reese Madigan plays earthbound animalistic passion in the role of a talking mastiff who befriends a moor-Hen played by Marti Gobel. Gobel has a kind of stunning perfection about her stage presence that seems a bit at odds with the fragility of a wounded moor-hen who is being nursed back to health by a massive canine. Gobel brings a powerful vulnerability to the role that serves as an endearing connection to Madigan’s mastiff.


Jeffrey D. Kmiec’s scenic design is cleverly minimalist. The main set feels elegant and spacious. The moors which rest beyond the estate seem to go on forever even though they’re really only a tiny swath of stage beyond the heart of the action. There’s quite a bit of music that feeds in and around the edges of the production that could have felt really jarring in places, (Hudley's power ballad near the end of the play could have been particularly discordant.) Jill Anna Ponasik has done a clever job of blending the musical interludes into the rest of the production.


This is the second time that I’ve seen The Moors in less than a year. (UWM’s Peck School did a staging of the comedy at the beginning of last November.) The one thing that really stands out to me about a production of The Moors is its exploration of the deeply conflicted relativity of truth. Nearly every aspect of what’s being presented is up to interpretation. What’s real? Is the estate truly immense, or do all of the rooms REALLY look alike? How much of what ANYONE is saying can be relied on when everyone has a different reason for lying about...anything? It’s such a weird existential playground populated by such deeply enjoyable madness. I could see a production of this every year. It’s great fun.


Renaissance Theaterworks’ production of The Moors runs through November 10th at the Next Act Theatre space on 255 S. Water Street. For ticket reservations and more, visit Renaissance online. ​

A guy shows-up at a house wearing cat ears and a tail. The family there to greet him was expecting a cat, but this is just…a guy. So naturally, they show him the door. He is persistent, though. He insists that he is, in fact, a cat. They are still unconvinced. He utters a meow. That’s all the more convincing they need. Clearly he’s a cat. His name is Pete. They’d been expecting him.

OK, so it’s a little weird. First Stage does a pretty good job of completing the illusion in its production of Pete the Cat. Actor Ethan Smith may not employ a whole lot of cat-like affectations. He may not resemble the classic James Dean illustrations of the title character, Smith does a good job of bringing across the overall idea of an unshakably cool cat in the season opener for the reliably stylish children’s theater company.

Written by Sarah Hammond for TheaterWorksUSA, the plot of the one-hour musical moves the title character to the side as the plot focusses on a second grader named Jimmy who is struggling to create an original painting for art class. Pete and a magic VW bus show Jimmy some motivation as they make their way to Paris so they Jimmy can don the magic sunglasses that will allow him to find the inspiration he needed.

The child cast at First Stage bring energy to the stage as talented local theatre veteran Todd Denning and First Stage theatre alum Tori Watson capably round-out th adult cast. The music by Will Aronson harnesses sort of a classic light pop rock feel for Pete to groove to. As commissioned by TheaterWorksUSA, the overall aesthetic of Pete’s cool in the show seems firmly grounded in the boomer aesthetic that would likely be brought-in by many of the grandparents who will be taking kids to the show.

The visual feel of the show lives-up to First Stage’s high standards. There’s a sharp visual reality to the Martin McClendon’s scenic design that feels more or less inspired by Pete creator James Dean’s art style. The color palette that McClendon is working with feels very true to the cool colors that Dean casts the page in. Talented lighting designer Jason Fassl has done a remarkable job of lending luminescent color to the stage as well in a huge cat head that rests above the stage. With eyes that light-up. It’s too bad that the cat head above everything couldn’t look a bit more like Dean’s classic design for Pete. That distinctive Pete the Cat face is a genius piece of design that is instantly recognizable to anyone who might have been a kid or read to a kid in the past 15 years. That basic bit of iconography would have gone a long way towards making the show feel a bit more rooted in the title character.

First Stage’s production of Pete the Cat continues through November 3rd at the Todd Wehr Theater in the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts on 929 N. Water Street. For ticket reservations and more, visit First Stage online.

October appears to be play host to dark comedy as local small stages present a promising scattering of different narratives including history, the future, fortunes gained, illusive and illusory. Here's a look at some of what's coming to the stage in the first full month of Autumn 2024.

​New York-based playwright Frank Winters had work appear onstage locally before Marquette University Theatre had staged a production of his drama Student Body back in 2018. It was a tense one-hour conversation that touched on some pretty deep questions in a very tight format that locked-in inescapable realities. This week, Marquette stages the world premiere of Winters’ In the Cities of Refuge--a drama set in a small-town homeless shelter which looks to be every bit as deep and intense as Winters’ Student Body. The show runs Oct. 4th- 13th. For ticket reservations and more, visit Marquette Theatre Online.
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​The Milwaukee Turners had been a staunchly progressive group in Milwaukee back in the late 19th and early 20th century. This month, Cabaret Milwaukee stages a historical production that celebrates the Turners within the beautiful historic structure that is Turner Hall. It should prove to be an interesting journey as the group will be staging the drama with larger-than-life bunraku style puppets. Should be a fascinating evening at the Palm Garden Tavern at Turner Hall. For more information, visit the show’s Facebook events page. Frisch, Frei, Stark, Treu: A Puppet History of the Milwaukee Turners runs Oct. 11 - 27.

​January 20th. Kind of a nondescript date overall. It’s the date on which everything happens in In the Canyon by playwright Calamity West. It’s five scenes long. Each scene takes place on a different January 20th...from 2007 to 2067. A lot of thematic ground is covered from a woman’s right to choose...to climate change. It’s a drama that The Constructivists will be staging at The Broadway Theatre Center. The ever-changing landscape of America is presented in a progression of scenes that are directed by Jaimelyn Gray. The show runs Oct. 12 - 26. For more information, visit The Constructivists online.

​Playwright Jen Silverman’s The Moors is a fun pseudo-deconstruction of the Bronte sisters’ work that made a local appearance in a UWM production not too long ago. This month, the deliciously clever dark comedy makes its way to the stage with a Renaissance Theaterworks production that features the return of talented local actress Sarah Sokolovic. Directed by Suzan Fete, the show has a remarkable cast including Marti Gobel, Allie Babich, Emily Vitrano and Reese Madigan. The show runs Oct. 20 - Nov. 10 at the Next Act Theatre on 255 S Water St. For ticket reservations and more, visit Renaissance online.

Hungarian playwright György Spiró sculpted an interesting narrative with Dust. A husband and wife win the lottery and they must work out precisely what it is that they’ve won. It’s a small fortune, but what is it that they’ve really won? The delightfully expressive drama was staged with Theatre Gigante just over a decade ago. The drama returns in another Gigante production that opens at month’s end. The show runs Oct. 28 - Nov. 3 at Kenilworth 508 Theatre. For more information, visit Gigante online.