PSA: First Stage Urges You To Travel Back In Time With “The Dinosaur Play”!

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.

First Stage: The Young Company Brings Us, Shakespeare’s The Tempest

I came to love Shakespeare while in high school. First via a PBS rendition of Hamlet and then their broadcast of the BBC’s An Age of Kings, a serial based on the history plays. Or maybe it was the other way around. But my faith in William Shakespeare abides. Of course my favorite play has changed over the years from Hamlet to Macbeth to more recently The Tempest…which brings us to this happy event…the Young Company’s presentation of The Tempest in their black box theater in the round at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center!

And just a moment, let me remind you about the Young Company. They are the older group of actors at First Stage. Generally high school age they present challenging adult oriented plays with minimal sets and costuming. There are seldom any adult actors on stage and the plays are driven by the action and the text: very very effectively. Last spring’s, An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen for example.

(left to right) Elena Marking, Josie Van Slyke, Sophia Bernhardt, and cast in
THE TEMPEST. First Stage Young Company, 2024. Photo by Paul Ruffolo.

So, let’s take a look at this minimalist perspective. If you look at the photos you’ll see that our stage is a central collection of steps. These steps acted as a dais, bed, rock, threshold and all manner of things under heaven. And Costume Coordinator Michelle Verbos primarily outfitted the cast in simple and elegant items in white. All the better for Director Marcella Kearns to tell the story of the The Tempest through words and movement.

And what a lot of expressive movement and motion, something that First Stage does exceptionally well on all of their stages. Director Kearns and Fight and Movement Director James Cheatham bring out the drama and pathos that Shakespeare has provided with a very active cast. At points the motion is more dance than drama and it keeps the focus on the cast and action…if you turn away for a moment you will surely miss something grand! There can be more life to Shakespeare than you would imagine when done right…and the Young Company cast here was certainly into it.

At the center of any good The Tempest is a regal and determined Prospero. And as Prospero, Silver Anderson has a stage presence that brings out the mage and the vengeful and the loving and forgiving character traits of the character. From stirring the sea like a pot of soup into The Tempest, to playing matchmaker to Miranda and Ferdinand, to bringing reconciliation to the conflict between Prospero, his brother, Antonio, and the King of Naples, Anderson strikes the proper balance in each scene and moves easily from one pose to the next. They may be too overconfident in knowing the text however, because they sometimes spoke so fast that we had a hard time hearing what was being said.

Silver Anderson in THE TEMPEST. First Stage Young Company, 2024. Photo
by Paul Ruffolo.

Abram Nelson and Alice Rivera bring the included love story to the stage as Ferdinand and Miranda…as Prospero’s magic brings them together…they instantly are lost in the moment and never wonder how this all came to pass. And Maya Thomure captures the resistant and loutish Caliban and just can’t wait to betray her enslaver, Prospero, to the drunken sailors. Even in the face of red flags that seem to suggest that they aren’t quite the ‘gentlemen’ that they appear to be.

Silver Anderson (top center), Alice Rivera (bottom left), Abram Nelson (bottom
right), and cast in THE TEMPEST. First Stage Young Company, 2024. Photo by Paul Ruffolo.

The most enchanting portrayal on this stage is Josephine Van Slyke as Ariel. Whenever she is in a scene, she tends to steal it, even when she doesn’t have any speaking lines. When off to one side or another and just observing the action in front of her, Van Slyke employs any number of slight physical tics or corvid like head twists to let us know that she is a sprite and not a human presence. And throughout any of the action, she is nimble and graceful and just sweeps across the stage in some of the most dance like moves among the cast. And her confidence in the opening stage of the actual tempest, as she destroys the ship and hinders the crew in their efforts to save the day, is the most fluid fight scene that you will ever see. And then there is her voice…at once eerie, haunting, and compelling…it is no wonder that sight unseen, she is able to lure the stranded sailors to whatever purposes that Prospero has for them.

Amélie Davis-Quiroz (center) and cast in THE TEMPEST. First Stage Young
Company, 2024. Photo by Paul Ruffolo.

The Tempest runs through December 15. 2024 at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center. It runs for about two hours and includes a short intermission. Recommended for families with young people ages 13-17 and theater lovers of all ages. Additional information and ticket ordering can be found here!

And as always, Extra Credit Reading: the digital playbill. The playbill includes cast listings, etc.

Post #501, Four Years, and I Find Out I Am A Theater Critic!

WOW! Jane Eyre, The Musical, At The Lake Country Playhouse was my 500th Post here on An Intuitive Perspective. WOW! Yeah, I know not all of them are scintillating and insightful commentary on the arts but the Monday Music feature instead…but I hope you are enjoying all of it! And I apparently lost count and missed our 4th Anniversary on March 20, 2024…you do lose track of time when you are having fun. And now, I am a theater critic as well!

So, how did I get here? I retired from my career as a computer programmer in 2018. And back in 2010 I was invited to contribute to someone else’s blog and I enjoyed the writing and comments and such. It was on another topic, not the arts.

And then I had an opportunity to work with the Milwaukee Repertory Theater as part of their Social Media Club. A little social group who were invited by the Rep to attend their performances and then comment on our experiences across social media. And to share and re-share the Rep’s various social media posts. I really took that to heart and wrote some pretty extensive and detailed reports on Facebook that I referred to as a ‘response’. That was a lot of fun and I started doing similar posts around other events.

And then I started to tire of my participation in that other blog but knew that I didn’t necessarily want to stop writing so I started An Intuitive Perspective. And the first thing I did was republish all of my older items from Facebook and then proceed with my new content. And once published, I share the link around a variety of social media including of course Facebook. That’s the bare facts…but how did I become a theater critic?

Well I was writing ‘responses’ to the shows that I was seeing at the Rep and as a long time subscriber at the American Player’s Theatre in Spring Green. And then a dear friend from the Social Media Club, Kimberly Laberge, Artistic Director at Kith & Kin Theatre Collective, invited me out to Hartland to experience the presentation of Cabaret that she was directing at the Lake Country Playhouse. It was an amazing play and an amazing cast and a cozy jewel box theater and I have been invited back again and again and I am in awe of the quality of the plays that they take on and the high level quality of each and every presentations.

And then somehow, I wish I remembered the history here, I also became involved with First Stage, which is a children’s theater in Milwaukee, that presents full blown musicals in the Todd Wehr Theater in the Marcus Performing Arts Center and smaller more serious fare in the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center. The PAC shows blend a cast of adults and young people in shows that will appeal to all ages…and I love them…and I love to watch the reactions of the youngsters in the audience as they experience real theater featuring their peers and their stories. And the other venue generally features the First Stage’s Young Company, high school age actors presenting more complex stories in an in the round black box theater…things like an adaptation of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People or Shakespeare’s Henry IV (part 1). I hope that we see many of these young actors playing at our local adult theaters eventually.

And I have been invited to see any number of other small theater groups put on amazing theater in small theater settings that I didn’t even know existed before now. And I am so grateful for the experience.

Now one thing that I regret. I had started an idea to present posts about smaller art museums around the state and mid-west under the title A Place For A Muse. I have only written two so far. I need to do better.

And what is this bit about being a theater critic? Well, as I said I have always labeled my articles and posts about theater as responses because I hadn’t studied theater or criticism directly. So I didn’t feel confident using the term review. But after attending the Lake Country Player’s presentation of A Rock Sails By, and talking with director James Baker Jr and lead actor in Rock (and Artistic Director of LCP ) Sandra Baker-Renick, I was convinced that what I write is in fact a review…and that is what they will be from now on! So I am a theater critic now, I guess!

So thank you to all who visit here and read my scribblings. And thank you to all of the theater people who have adopted me and allowed me to see your marvelous shows and write about them with abandon. It has been a very rewarding four years…and I hope we can continue!!!