March 5-9, 2025 – Fine Arts Theatre Building – Mainstage Theatre
Book & Lyrics by George Haimsohn and Robin Miller Music by Jim Wise Directed by Sheri Williams Pannell Musical Direction by Donna Kummer Choreography by Abigail McBee and Sophia Roth
The show that launched Bernadette Peters as a Broadway star, this delightful, funny, tongue-in-cheek love letter to Hollywood musicals of the 1930s tells the story of sweet Ruby’s journey from her small hometown to New York City to become a Broadway star. There, she meets Dick, a sailor with ambitions as a songwriter. In grand Hollywood fashion, they tap dance their way from the chorus to stardom on the deck of a passing battleship. Dames at Sea is a non-stop ride of romance, laughs, dance and musical delights.
Editorial comment: This is one of my favorite events at UWM during the spring semester!
Jan 30-Feb 2, 2025 – Mainstage Theatre + Livestream*
Artistic Direction by Daniel Burkholder & Dan Schuchart
Winterdances: Perfectly Wild presents dance that blurs the line between the magical and mundane, traces the rivers of Milwaukee, reflects on the haunting legacy of Japanese internment, and empowers the fierce bonds of womanhood. These dances dive into our shared humanity, the challenges we all face, and offer a vision of how we might gather strength by coming together in community.
Choreography by Los Angeles-based Hip Hop choreographer Jackie Lopez and Dance faculty members Daniel Burkholder, Tiffany Kadani, and Dan Schuchart.
William Shakespeare’s Pericles is a saga of adventure, love, loss, travails, despair, and reunion. It is more Homeric epic than Romeo and Juliet. And Director Bill Watson allows his large ensemble cast of enthusiastic and skilled student actors to tell the story through Shakespeare’s actual poetry. The time and place hasn’t been altered to make the play
And yes, Shakespeare’s elegant but antique English can seem a bit thick to our modern ears, particularly in a play like Pericles that has a large cast of principals and a number of exotic locations, to our mind at least. So instead of using affected British accents, Watson brings us into the text with the comfortable and familiar mid-western accent.
Photos courtesy of UWM PSOA, photographer by Mark Frohna.
This presentation is a delight. As I said, the cast is very into telling the story and bringing the characters to life. Pericles of course is the focus and the role is filled by two actors…Gabe Rodriguez in the first three acts and then Duleon Schneider in acts four and five. And they do justice to our hero…bringing him from the swaggering and bold adventurer of the early acts, through the harried but resilient wanderer of the middle action to the tragic vanquished soul of the final acts before the finale of resurrection and restoration.
Photos courtesy of UWM PSOA, photographer by Mark Frohna.
And Marina’s determination and self-awareness is forcefully demonstrated by Natalie Gustafson. ‘Knowing’ that she’s lost her mother and being saved from an assassination by being kidnapped by pirates and sold into the sex trade, Gustafson provides a demonstration of all of the mettle needed to survive and way beyond our expectations of a 14 year old. And she is amazing in the final scenes when awaking the bereft Pericles…and she and Schneider very effectively draw out the first round of reunions agonizingly to this viewer, but just as Shakespeare intended.
Photos courtesy of UWM PSOA, photographer by Mark Frohna.
And Watson’s careful and clearly planned movement of the stage furnishings is almost a ballet in itself and lets the audience digest what they have just seen and prepare for a new scene, place, and time. So kudos as well to the set team and lighting team!
Milwaukee has a robust and active theater culture and we are obviously seeing some of our future here at UWM. But the Peck School of the Arts Theater Dept is often overlooked and doesn’t get its due…so attend this weekend if you can, particularly if you are a Shakespeare fan. These student actors will assure you that Shakespeare is still alive in Milwaukee!
