Stiemke Studio – an intuitive perspective

February 15, 2025

The Woman In Black at MKERep

It was a dark and stormy night. No, really, it was, as I made my way downtown during the biggest snow storm of the Milwaukee winter season (so far). And that probably threw me off my game a bit so I wasn’t really prepared for the intense story telling I was about to experience at the Milwaukee Rep’s Stiemke Studio Theater. And for the record, I Don’t Believe In Ghosts! You will get that reference as you are experiencing The Woman In Black.

What we do have here is a compelling story rich in language, a strong story line that twists and turns and keeps us guessing…and a handful of surprises…a couple you can anticipate in a ghost story and a handful that will come…as a surprise!

After a family holiday gathering that ended with a session of shared ghost stories, which solicitor Arthur Kipps feigns to participate in, he is compelled to tell a story of his own that has haunted him, if I am doing the math right, for some 30 years. He has documented his story in a tome of significant proportions and enlists the aid of an actor to help him present it to an audience of friends and family.

Kipps begins by quietly reading his story from his journal and has us leaning in to hear as for a solicitor, he is particularly quiet in his speech and manner. This brings protests from The Actor and after several sessions and attempts at livening up the presentation, The Actor proposes a new course.

Instead of reading the story, the two principals will act out the key scenes with this added twist, the actor will play the young Kipps and Kipps will play all of the other characters in the story. This works amazingly well and now ‘we’ are wholly enmeshed in a play within a play.

This is an incredible bit of story telling on both the part of playwright Stephen Mallatratt and director Robin Herford. They both carefully nurture the precise language in the text and smoothly draw out the fright required of a good ghost story. Herford keeps us on the edge of our seats throughout as the story is told…and then wrenches us out of our seats on occasion.

There are two actors on stage…but three actors playing the roles in rep. David Acton plays Arthur Kipps, Mark Hawkins plays The Actor, and Ben Porter has turns as both. I am confident that I saw Acton and Hawkins the evening I attended. But the action and story telling was incredible and the actor interactions felt true to the story and made the suspension of disbelief automatic and unavoidable.

The set is the stage of a small and somewhat moth eaten theater and despite only two actors there is a fair amount of choreography necessary as they purpose and repurpose a few stage props and set pieces to their needs and change their outer costuming to suit each character change from a spare little coat rack at stage right. And there is a bit of theater humor here as The Actor employs a ‘new’ technical innovation to provide background sound effects to their play…which then reaches into our theater and experience just moments later. I won’t say more because it is part of the ‘surprises’.

This is a play that I would like to experience again, if I can fit it into my schedule, before it ends its run. It continues at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s Stiemke Studio through March 23, 2025.

Additional information and tickets can be found here.

Extra credit reading: the online program can be found here!

October 26, 2024

Marie And Rosetta: Two Voices Ready To Bring You Joy!

Sister Rosetta Tharpe was a force of nature in the music business throughout the middle of the 20th Century. She is often called the Godmother of Rock And Roll and her influence on jazz and blues and rock musicians in the United States and the United Kingdom is well documented. And you will recognize the source of many rock sounds and tones during Marie And Rosetta, but that is not the focus of the play.

Instead, we will experience the developing relationship between Sister Rosetta Tharpe at the pinnacle of her career as she plucks a young singer/pianist from under the nose of Mahalia Jackson and makes Marie Knight her understudy and accompanist. They will both grow as musicians and will begin a life long friendship.

Milwaukee Repertory Theater presents Marie and Rosetta in the Stiemke Studio, October 22 – December 15, 2024. Pictured: Bethany Thomas, Alexis J Roston. Photo by Michael Brosilow.

And there is an intriguing subtext here as well. Both women are devout Christians who are coming from a background of singing in church choirs and being soloists as well. So there is a struggle between being true to their spirituals and choral singing and the world of secular music. Sister Rosetta being older and more in tune with herself and her world has made it work but Marie isn’t yet comfortable where she now finds herself and presents a bit of push back. The resulting discussions provides opportunities for both women to reconsider their ideas and moral guidelines and find new ways to express themselves musically!

Milwaukee Repertory Theater presents Marie and Rosetta in the Stiemke Studio, October 22 – December 15, 2024. Pictured: Alexis J Roston, Bethany Thomas. Photo by Michael Brosilow

So what does that get us? Besides the conversations and exchanges of life being lived, we get an amazing panorama of songs and music from the Sister Rosetta Tharpe songbook. This isn’t quite a musical and not quite a cabaret piece either, but somewhere in between. But Director E. Faye Butler has made sure the music and the personalities are all front and center, every moment.

Milwaukee Repertory Theater presents Marie and Rosetta in the Stiemke Studio, October 22 – December 15, 2024. Pictured: Bethany Thomas. Photo by Michael Brosilow

And as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, we have Bethany Thomas! This is a marvelous bit of casting because Thomas certainly has a voice that dominates just the way Tharpe’s did and an incredible stage presence that certainly illustrates that Tharpe diva persona as well. And it’s a joyous homecoming as Thomas also appeared in the Rep’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch and for me, most notably, Songs For Nobodies. I can’t think of any recent Rep performer who is more suited to play Sister Rosetta Tharpe than Bethany Thomas!

Milwaukee Repertory Theater presents Marie and Rosetta in the Stiemke Studio, October 22 – December 15, 2024. Pictured: Alexis J Roston,. Photo by Michael Brosilow

And Alexis J Roston is Marie Knight. Roston plays the younger Knight as a prodigious talent who is self-deprecating in the face of the famous and intimidating Tharpe. But she eventually starts to feel comfortable and slowly accepts her role in secular as well as Gospel music as Tharpe eases her along. There is a sort of big sister little sister relationship developed and at one point Tharpe starts calling her Little Sister. And Roston has every vocal chop needed to play Knight. She fills the stage with song and humor, although not always intentionally, and grows Knight’s stage presence and self confidence neatly and organically as the play progresses.

There are only the two actors and a single dramatic set of a funeral parlor that allows for the drama and the music to seamlessly be performed. Kudos to scenic designer John Culbert for that. And you may not be aware of the stage lighting…it is bright and dramatic for most of the spoken dialogue but will subtlety shift color and intensity to help express the moods for each of the songs performed. Lighting director Jared Gooding knows when to dim the lights. And although Rosetta and Marie are working with a piano and Rosetta a number of guitars, we are actually hearing Morgan E. Stevenson on piano and Benjamin Oglesby-Davis on guitar.

Marie and Rosetta is being performed in the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s Stiemke Theater. Opening night was October 22, 2024 and it runs through December 15, 2024. Additional information and tickets are available here.

October 4, 2024

MKE Rep’s The Coast Starlight Presents A Microcosm Of Modern America ~ On A Train!

And by modern, I certainly mean 21st Century America. Playwright Keith Bunin has fleshed out very distinctive and unique, yet very American, characters here and gives them text and subtext galore, but he doesn’t give us a lot of action…so Director Mark Clements and choreographer Jenn Rose give us transitions from one idea to the next, one scene to another, through the elegant choreography of moving train seats from one position to another. You will understand this if you experience it.

Jack Ball and Emily S. Chang. Photos courtesy of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Michael Brosilow photographer.

It seems a bit ironic to me that Keith Bunin has set this modern drama on a train…once an ubiquitous mode of American transportation…but now a luxury and something of an outlier. But he needs time to tell his story (stories). And we have six characters and six stories to tell. Yet few of the stories are actually told via conversation between the passengers. Most of them are thoughts spoken out loud so that the audience may hear but go unheard by the other passengers. And these aren’t necessarily inner dialogues nor asides…they are suppositions that the playwright is making about the ideas and thought processes of his characters…and the effects and repercussions that they have on each person’s life. And how those decisions could effect the others or their society, if they were actually shared with the others. With this form, Bunin is easily able to discuss a number of problems in modern society, modern politics, and the damage we may do to ourselves and others by not openly engaging with each other. That alone is a major focus on a very modern and I guess, recent failing in American society.

Justin Huen, Jack Ball, and Emily S. Chang . Photos courtesy of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Michael Brosilow photographer.

Jack Ball is T.J., who is running away from something (we know what it is in the play but I don’t want to provide TMI) and is clearly going through a lot of inner turmoil as a result. The other characters can see the physical effects. Yet he comes to the fore and helps others where he can. Ball does a marvelous job of the presenting the stressed out T.J. whenever he is allowed to disengage and be alone. He cleanly moves to caregiver mode when his thoughts can be put aside. The shift is so subtle at first but so significant, I can’t imagine how Ball moves from one to the other on stage.

Emily S. Change, Jonathan Wainwright, Justin Huen, Jack Ball, and Yadira Correa. Photos courtesy of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Michael Brosilow photographer.

All of the passengers have secrets, all are here with personal stressors, and all of them have stories to tell…and in most cases they come out in those out loud thought processes than Bunin so readily employs. Emily S. Chang gives us a very cool and seemingly collected Jane, an artist who works in animation and seems to have the world at her feet…not quite. Yadira Correa is a very angrily animated Anna who doesn’t quite care anymore about who knows what about her personal tragedy…some of her speaker phone rants provide some of the bigger laughs of the night! Noah is an Army veteran who has seen the ravages of war and is trying to keep his life together. Justin Huen channels the perfect level of anger, wisdom, and self-acceptance here…Heun seems to understand PTSD and how to portray it on stage. He also provides some of the most sincere although not always practical advice to T.J.. Liz is heading home after making funeral arrangements for her late brother and is at her own wit’s end…yet Kelley Faulkner, outwardly, keeps her in a cool, calm, collected zone. And she quickly adopts her mother mode when confronted with the very troubled T.J.. A bit of comic relief and a bit of generational conflict is introduced by the arrival of Ed, a drunken traveling salesman who too is at a nadir in his life, and Jonathan Wainwright gives us, at first, a out of f***’s to give character to a more mellow observer of modern life.

Jack Ball, Emily S. Chang, and Yadira Correa. Photos courtesy of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Michael Brosilow photographer.

A big theme here is how we miss opportunities…and how we don’t recognize that others are often suffering too…because they seemingly aren’t looking the part. And things aren’t always what they seem and that a lot of comfort can be provided to others just by recognizing them.

BUT: there is a great deal of humor here as well…some of it a bit dark…but a great deal of fun nonetheless.

The set is simple, modern, and elegant as well. Six simple train seats on wheels, lighting in the floor to highlight the actors at the center of the action, and simple overhead lighting as well to emphasize mood and feeling! Props? Knapsacks and luggage…just like on the train.

Because of some interruptions in my own personal life, I attended The Coast Starlight late in the run and it ends on Sunday October 2024. It runs 1 hour and 30 minutes without intermission. Ticket and other information here:

Extra Credit Reading: The program.