Heidi Armbruster is onstage as an actress. It’s a comfy, little set with a feeling of the infinite Wisconsin farmland stretching-out beyond a tiny, little living room in a farmhouse. Jason Fassl’s Lighting design, gives a warmth to a farmland infinity that feels every big as spacious and open as any cozily distant as the abstract idealization of farmland in American Midwest. Armbruster’s playing a big-city actress who has come to her father’s farm to try to figure things out. He’s suffering from terminal cancer and she’s coming to terms with her own life. She’s looking for meaning in memories at the end of one life while looking for some deeper connection in her own.


Directed by Laura Gordon, actress/playwright Heidi Armbruster’s Scarecrow is a deeply engaging hour and a half at the theater. Armbruster moves from personal life to professional life two more abstract concerns. Armbruster is wit has a and endlessly endearing quirkiness about it, but isn't afraid to be slightly less than relatable. She is one of those actresses you see in pharmaceutical commercials playing the mom. And she's got out wit and wisdom about it that really resonates through some very clever and sharply-comic ambient sound design by Joe Cerqua. Armbruster keeps having fantasies about living our life in a Lifetime-Style movie and Cerqua brilliantly nails the made-for-TV scoring cues as Fassl’s lighting transitions into something that feels like it’s glowing through a video screen.


All too often when once writing something autobiographical that's meant to engage a large number of people, of a tend to go in the direction of being very generic. Armbruster leans into the things that make her unique and it presents them in a way that feels very distinctive. For an hour and a half audiences get to hang out with a really enjoyable person. We’re not hanging out with somebody just talking about family life or love life or even the loss of a parent. Scarecrow renders something profoundly more distinctive and engaging. It's remarkable. And it feels remarkably fresh. Like a single actress telling her story on stage has happened countless times over the decades. But Armbruster makes her own impact as an individual through a very striking way, distinctive evening of stories told her on the edge of the life of her own father.


There are similarities between Armbruster's Scarecrow and Julia Sweeney’s one-woman show And God Said Ha! Sweeney’s mid-1990s tale of her life as a working actress while dealing with her brothers cancer echo is a bit into Armbruster's more contemporary story of her life as a working actress dealing with her father’s cancer. Overall, there's a very similar feel between the two shows. However, in leading into more of who she is as a person, and who she is as a character, Armbruster has found a very unique performance that finds its own life through some endlessly enduring humor. Armbruster asserts herself onstage wonderfully. She’s that actress working along the margins of a large ensemble in some big, local production. And she’s a mother juggling everything and dealing with migraines on a pharmaceutical commercial. But more than that, she’s a warm, welcome and welcoming presence onstage that shines all the more radiantly all by herself.


Next Act’s production of Scarecrow runs through March 27th at Next Act’s home on 255 S. Water St. For ticket reservations and more, visit Next Act online.

​A strict 19th century European school serves as a potent backdrop to one of the more intense and provocative contemporary rock musicals to come out of the past few years. There’s a raw intensity to the music. The show comes across like a rock concert that just happens to be telling a very powerful story. The music fuses with the story on a very deep emotional level. Skylight Music Theatre presents its production in the final days of winter March 1st - 17th at the Broadway Theatre Center on 158 N. Broadway. Michael Unger and Alexandria Wailes direct. For more information, visit Skylight online.

Sophocles' tragic tale of Antigone finds its way to the stage for two performances one night only this month as Vanguard Productions presents a new adaptation of the drama. Chantae Miller and Matt Daniels star in a reading that also features Leo Madson, Jake Badovski, Josie Trettin, Shanti Lleone, Maya Danks, and Elliott Brotherhood. The show. runs Monday, March 4th at 5pm and 8pm at Calvary Presbyterian Church on 628 N 10th St, For more information, visit the show's Eventbrite page.

​Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop is an intimate look at one of the most influential peacemakers of the last 100 years. Bryant Bemtley stars as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Hotel the night before his assassination. N’Jameh Russel-Camara plays a woman working the hotel who has a conversation with King. Dimonte Henning directs a close-up portrait of one of  the legendary figure on one of the smallest stages in Milwaukee.  The two-person drama makes the small stage at Broadway Theatre Center on 158 N Broadway. March 8th - 24th. For more information, visit Milwaukee Chamber Theatre Online.

He’s not as well-known for his earliest work...partially because it’s silent film-era stuff that has been lost to history. This month Theatre Gigante presents one of the acclaimed director’s few surviving silent films as it screens The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog. The 1928 film is the story of a serial killer who only kills young, blonde women on Tuesday evenings. The film is presented live with original scoring by the tiny, little orchestral powerhouse that is Frank Pahl’s Little Bang Theory. The show runs for one performance only: Sunday, March 10th at 3 pm at the Jan Serr Studio Theatre on 1925 E. Kenilworth Place. For more information, visit Theatre Gigante online.

Full Frontal Puppetry returns this month for World Puppetry Day. (It's a real thing. Look it up.) The 8-Bit Show is a one-performance-only variety show featuring the Full Frontal Puppets and its newest member: a fuzzy, brown guitarist named Deep Fried. Sounds like a fun show. Thursday, March 21st at the Brick House on 504 E. Center St, 

The Constructivists open a promising new 60-minute satire this month. Director Jaimelyn Gray welcomes audiences to an hour at the end of the world with the musical group Oconomowocapella.  A Cappocalypse! sounds like a deliciously absurd concept for an intimate, little burst of comedy early this Spring. Conceived by Andrew Hobgood and Joe Lino, the comedy features Andrea Ewald, Ekene Ikegwuani, Joe Lino, Logan Milway, Clayton Mortl, Anya Palmer, Matthew Scales, Kellie Wambold, and Ben Yela. The show opens just a couple of nights after the Spring Equinox at Zao Mke Church on 2319 E Kenwood Blvd. The show runs March 23rd - April 6th. For more information, visit  The Constructivists online.