Category: Goodman Mainstage Hall

From our friends at First Stage (this one looks like a lot of fun):

TRAVEL BACK IN TIME FOR A PREHISTORIC ADVENTURE WITH FIRST STAGE! 

Hatch a dinosaur egg, befriend a Triceratops and face thrilling challenges in this interactive theatrical experience for young explorers and their families. 

MILWAUKEE — First Stage — one of the nation’s leading theaters for young people and families — invites all explorers to embark on a thrilling journey back to when dinosaurs roamed the Earth in THE DINOSAUR PLAY! As an audience member, you’ll be called upon to help a dinosaur egg tapping out a call for help, befriend a surly Triceratops, protect a newly formed dinosaur family, take on a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and so much more!

THE DINOSAUR PLAY runs Jan. 18 through Feb. 16, 2025, at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center’s Goodman Mainstage Hall. Tickets are available now on FirstStage.org.

“We invite our youngest audiences and their families to travel back in time for The Dinosaur Play,” said Jeff Frank, Artistic Director at First Stage. “In this participatory play, audiences in the intimate Goodman Mainstage Hall will be asked to help two hapless humans trying to come to the aid of a giant egg. Humor, danger, heart and adventure – this play has something for everyone.”

Widely celebrated for its ability to engage and inspire audiences, THE DINOSAUR PLAY ignites a love of science and natural history. In addition to its educational value, the play fosters social-emotional learning with themes of cooperation, empathy, and teamwork – making it an unforgettable experience for all.

Audiences are invited to arrive early for engaging pre-show educational activities designed to immerse them in the experience and prepare them for their journey into the past!

The show runs approximately 45-50 minutes, with no intermission. Recommended for families with young people ages 3-9 and theater lovers of all ages. 

This production’s Pay What You Choose Performance is on Saturday, Jan. 25 at 3:30 p.m. the Sensory Friendly Performance is on Saturday, Feb. 1 at 3:30 p.m., and the Sign Language Interpreted Performance is on Sunday, February 9 at 1:00 p.m.

Those of you who have followed my comments on the offerings from Milwaukee’s First Stage Youth Theater know that many of their presentations feature alternating casts. So your experience may differ from mine in significant ways.

But with Escape From Peligro Island, First Stage and Playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer have designed a unique experience into the script for each and every audience. You are guaranteed a different experience to mine. And how do they accomplish that? Well at significant plot points, the audience is offered alternative choices and they get to vote on which path to travel…so each audience member receives a Card Of Destiny as you enter the theater and you can vote for your preferred alternative by holding up your card, showing the Pink side or the Green side. And the cast heads off in the selected direction! So from one performance to the next, you will never get the same show. Escape From Peligro Island is a thing of wonder and adventure! Awesome.

And yes, Escape From Peligro Island, does feature two casts, The Destiny Cast and The Chance cast. The two casts share two adult actors, Matt Daniels and Shammen McCune who play multiple roles and I am guessing those roles differ depending on the election of the audience.

The initial story will be basically the same…the one named character is Callaway Brown…and Callaway remains a constant throughout but it is his adventures that we are determining. Almost immediately, while traveling from his mother’s home to visit his father many miles away, Callaway experiences a weirdo in the airport’s waiting area who proves to be an eerie enigma who quickly runs off leaving Callaway with a mysterious box and the wrong airplane ticket…and we make our first decision and launch poor Callaway off on his big adventure.

Now, I can’t actually give the story away because it will travel hither and yon depending on you…but Kruckemeyer must be the eternal youth of legend as Escape From Peligro Island finds all of the cute sayings of youth, pulls great puns out of midair, and presents a myriad of adventures out of our childhood dreams. It sounds so easy and childlike but it is an amazingly complex construction.

One constant feature of First Stage presentations are short talk backs (question and answer periods) after the play where the cast takes turns fielding questions from the youngsters in the audience. Now, one very astute audience member asked the cast how they managed to learn all of the different parts and keep them straight. Yes, indeed, that too was at the forefront of my thoughts as the play came to an end. The cast said it was from four weeks of rehearsal and lots of practice.

Now I don’t know the precise answer exactly, but I am certain it was through some sort of sorcery employed by director Jeff Frank. Besides the variant story lines and two adult actors plus Callaway Brown, there are five other youth actors who work as narrators and vote tabulators and any number of characters dependent on the path being taken. I would have a hard time keeping track of that in my head much less imparting it to twelve different actors. And then to support the action, Scenic Designer Kristin Ellert did a marvelous job providing modular set pieces that too played multiple roles and then there were a few that remained unused…apparently waiting their turn in a parallel universe.

But oh, wait. There are a number of small puppets or dolls that help us tell the story…I can’t explain exactly what they do or how they are employed because that might spoil some of the story…but the are cute as the dickens…and a clever clever means of advancing the story and supporting the action! Thank you Adriana Hollenbeck!! And First Stage has always set a very high bar when it comes to bright and engaging costuming that contributes to the story telling…and Jazmin Aurora Medina has done an outstanding job here…particularly with the various costumes for Matt Daniels various roles. And Lighting Designer Tim Thistleton also brings his A game with bringing the adventures on Peligro Island to life with the limited palette available at the Goodman.

And there’s a THEME SONG!

I was lucky to get to see this on opening weekend…and it was a very well attended show. And I think a lot of theatergoers will revisit so they can experience another pass into adventure. So don’t put off planning your visit. Escape From Peligro Island runs through June 2, 2024. It is being presented at First Stage’s black box theater in the round, the Goodman Mainstage Hall, at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center! Suggested ages: 5 to adult!t oh

Click HERE for tickets and more information!

And Extra Credit Reading: Playbill with a listing of both casts! and Enrichment Guide