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.
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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.
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