Once home to seemingly permanent attractions like Henry Maier, Bo Black and Samson the Gorilla, Milwaukee is a town known for longevity of leadership. So it is in the arts community. Milwaukee Repertory Theater artistic director Joseph Hanreddy begins his 15th season this year, and Debra Loewen starts her 21st as artistic director of Wild Space Dance Company. The late Montgomery Davis served 30 years as artistic director of the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre before stepping down in 2005.
But for all the stability on the arts scene, there were an unusually large number of departures announced this past season. David Gordon is leaving the Milwaukee Art Museum. Bob Bucher left his position as dean of the Peck School of the Arts at
UW-Milwaukee. Christopher Libby is quitting as managing director of Skylight Opera Theatre. And Andreas Delfs announced he will give his last downbeat with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra sometime in 2009, closing out 13 years in that position.
Meanwhile, there is a different kind of ferment bubbling through the city’s arts scene. Not the impending arrival of new bigwigs whose files are even now being examined by various search committees looking for the next dean or executive director. No, the changes we’re talking about involve a younger generation of energetic performers and collaborators who are working in the trenches, creating new art on the ground floor. Some are relatively new faces, some have been around for a while, and all are poised to make their mark. Odds are they may all do something that will thrill you, delight you, or even infuriate you during the coming arts season.
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Of all the exits in the arts community this year, the change of leadership at Danceworks Performance Company didn’t generate the biggest headlines. But it shouldn’t be overlooked.
Ten-year-old Danceworks is the little company that could, an organization that in its own small, hands-on way is a big part of the performing arts scene. Its outreach program touches everyone from underserved school kids to the elderly. Its performance space on North Water Street is one of the most active in town, hosting everything from emerging local choreographers to visiting artists from New York. The Danceworks Performance Company is an active collaborator with other groups from across the Milwaukee scene, and its close relationship with the dance program at UWM gives graduates a place to continue their work in Milwaukee.
That’s exactly the path taken by Dani Kuepper,the new artistic director of Danceworks. She joined the company fresh out of UWM and has been an integral part of the organization ever since. When founder and 10-year artistic director Sarah Wilbur announced she was leaving for California, Kuepper was her logical successor. Both Wilbur and Kuepper have shaped the direction of the company (Kuepper had been listed as co-artistic director for some time). They have shared duties as the group’s principal choreographers, and the collective spirit of Danceworks has meant that Kuepper’s ideas for the organization have always been heard and welcomed.
Still, there are changes afoot. With Wilbur no longer contributing new choreography, Kuepper thinks it’s time to broaden the company’s creative base. “I’m looking for a more collective choreographic voice,” she says. “It makes the group more dynamic.” For a while, she’ll be the primary choreographer in the company, but the season will also feature work by Kelly Anderson, Kim Johnson-Rockafellow and Christal Wagner. Kuepper has also added two men to the company, which should add to the choreographic possibilities.
Of course, the company will be different without Wilbur. Her trademark brand of theatrical silliness was a big hit with audiences. Kuepper isn’t averse to a little goofiness of her own, but her work is more musical and less driven by a theatrical concept than Wilbur’s.
At the June “Army of One” concert, Wilbur staged “Kim’s House of Cards” with Johnson-Rockafellow, a satirical, mock folk-dance recital that pokes fun at the indifference of audiences to hard-working dancers. (In the end, only a puppy gets a reaction from the crowd.) By contrast, Kuepper’s piece, “As You Go,” was built on mood and music rather than an idea and a punch line. In the beginning, a bit of spoken text established the theme of unrequited searching. But the main part of the dance was filled with virtuoso athleticism that heightened the feeling of restlessness.
“You learn from your mistakes,” says Kuepper. “In the past, I’ve perhaps been too sentimental or too literal. Today, I want my work to be physical, musical and unexpected. I want it to surprise people.”
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When we meet for coffee on a hot July morning, Brian Vaughnis looking surprisingly well-rested. He has just finished a two-and-a-half-month run of The Nerdat the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, which was the cap of a back-breaking, multiyear string of performances.
The busy stretch began in early 2005 with The Rep’s A Month in the Country. After that, in immediate succession, he appeared in Renaissance Theaterworks’ Burn This and played the title role in Utah Shakespeare Festival’s Hamlet. An expected breather vanished when The Rep was forced to recast the roles of its King Lear, and Vaughn was called in to play Albany, even though he had to leave the production early to appear in Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s Joe Egg. He then went immediately into The Rep’s A Christmas Carol, then to The Rep’s production of The Voysey Inheritance, and finally to The Nerd.
Oh, and somewhere in those two years, he got married, moved to Milwaukee and bought a house.
Vaughn is no newcomer to the Milwaukee Rep. His first appearance there was in 1997, and he’s played a number of leading roles since then. (I worked with him for seven of those years when I was The Rep’s literary director.) But the last few years have seen a different Brian Vaughn emerge. Once a boyish leading man with loads of charm and crack comic timing, Vaughn is digging into deeper and more complex roles. And there should be plenty of them now that he’s once again a member of The Rep’s Resident Acting Company.
Vaughn took a hiatus from the company in 2003, primarily to be in the same city with his then-fiancée, Melinda Pfundstein, but also to “do the New York thing.” Vaughn’s work in Milwaukee and Utah had been steady, but in New York, he spent most of his time pounding the pavement, with fewer acting opportunities. Ultimately, he and his wife decided to move back to Milwaukee.
And The Rep is thrilled to have him. J.R. Sullivan, who directed him in Hamlet and regularly directs for The Rep, says Vaughn’s strengths are his instincts and sense of vulnerability. “He listens to an audience better than just about any actor I know,” says Sullivan, “and he’s truly vulnerable up there. You know he’s capable of being changed by what happens in the story before you.” Not bad qualities to have in a Hamlet.
Here, that quality was also apparent in Voysey and A Month in the Country. In both plays, his characters had a surface charm that covered deep conflicts. For Voysey in particular, the emotional journey of his character was the story of the play. For an actor like Vaughn, it was the kind of part he craves. “I like to stretch myself as much as I can, but essentially, I’m just hoping for well-written roles that have great emotional journeys.”
Vaughn has a full slate again next season, including understudying the title role in The Rep’s Cyrano de Bergerac.But the role of the priest in Doubt, which garnered a Tony Award nomination for Brian F. O’Byrne, should provide his greatest challenge.
“[Vaughn] is ideal for that part,” says Sullivan. “There’s nothing soft about that character, and you have to come through with some splinter to play him. I’ve seen it in Brian. I know he can fulfill that.”
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Ghost, a production of the UWM theater and dance departments last April, contained some surprising things for a Milwaukee theater: a young, multiracial cast playing characters who talked honestly about life on the street; a hip-hop DJ in the sound booth; and an environment filled with street graffiti. It was a play about the pressures faced by people on the cusp of adulthood, and the ideas were fresh and contemporary. It was also brand new. A world premiere.
Ghost happened primarily due to Rebecca Holderness,a director and professor of theater at UWM since 2005. The department commissioned the play from New York playwright Zakiyyah Alexander, who informed her portrait of a midsized American city through research and conversations with the actors about the racial dynamics of Milwaukee.
Directing the piece, Holderness says, involved lots of conversations. “We discussed violence in the city, the segregated nature of the city,” she recalls. “As well as artists’ responsibilities for putting different points of view on stage.”
As professional theaters here struggle with funding problems that keep their programming generally conservative and familiar, Holderness and her colleagues at the newly revamped UWM theater program could emerge as the main source for new, cutting-edge work in town.
Holderness came to the theater world through dance. She grew up in New York City, studied dance with Alvin Ailey’s company and worked in off-Broadway theater while still in high school. For college, she chose Vassar because it didn’t make her choose between dance and theater. After graduating, she moved to Nashville to be with family, but soon found herself back in New York. Admiring the physical theater work practiced by artists like Andrei Serban and Anne Bogart, she decided to focus on theater when she entered grad school at Columbia.
Today, she’s still interested in what she sees as an artificial division between dance and theater, which makes her approach to even traditional plays quite interesting. The Holderness Theater Company, which she formed after graduating from Columbia, has been praised for its physical takes on classic plays. Her 2004 rendition of The Life of Spiders,an adaptation of a Balzac story, used silk trapeze work to allow actors to suspend themselves above the stage. A New York Times review said that Holderness’ “theatrical design works beautifully.”
Her project this season, Of Mice and Men, isn’t likely to have anyone floating above the stage. But Holderness doesn’t plan on approaching it in a traditional way. “We tend to sentimentalize that period in our history,” she explains, while a copy of James Agee’s Depression-era classic Let Us Now Praise Famous Men sits on the table next to her iced coffee. “But it was so much more vigorous and interesting.”
“I think there’s a question inside the play about necessity – poverty and necessity and the choices we make,” she continues. “I’m going to try to crack it open so we can consider that question.”
Part of that probing involves learning more about rural Wisconsin, which is why Holderness spent part of this summer driving across the state with her 7-year-old son. “I don’t know anything about the Midwest. I know more than I knew six months ago. It’s my job to make sure the questions I’m asking in my work are valid and interesting.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she adds. “I think theater is entertainment. Not everything has to be socially relevant. But I do think it needs to have a passionate core in order to have a passionate response.”
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Lisa Hostetlerused to watch her dad develop photographs in the bathroom when she was growing up. “It was really amazing to me,” she says. “There’s just a blank piece of paper in clear liquid and then something appears. It was like magic.”
Today, Hostetler has gone far beyond the improvised darkroom of her childhood. In her tidy office adjoining the Milwaukee Art Museum’s photography archives, she could be a midlevel executive at an insurance company. But when she starts talking about her work, you hear the smooth erudition of someone who truly knows the world of photography.
Since arriving at the museum in 2005, Hostetler has been responsible for some of the most interesting and innovative shows in the city, if not the Midwest. In one of her first projects, she tapped into the collection of photographs at the American Geographical Society Library at UWM. “The American West, 1871-74,” was a compelling exploration of the American landscape and the American imagination. And last season, her retrospective of Saul Leiter’s nearly abstract color work was the talk of photographers and others around the Midwest.
Leiter’s subject matter – the streets of New York City – is familiar territory for Hostetler. She grew up there, went to New York University, then studied with the legendary Peter Bunnell while getting her doctorate at Princeton. She worked in New York galleries while she was finishing her dissertation and eventually moved to the curatorial staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There, she curated shows by August Sander and Charles Sheeler.
For Hostetler, the great challenge of curating photography today is the ubiquity of reproduced photographic images. “In the museum, the [original] object is important. It’s a different experience to see a reproduction in a book or on a computer. The actual object has a definite scale and choice of materials and the quality of ‘presence.’ Part of my job is to remind people of that.”
This year, she’ll again draw on the American Geographic collection for a show called “Photographs from the Ends of the Earth,” a collection of images from polar explorers and artists from 1860 to the present day. Unlike the American West show, Hostetler will include contemporary work – photographs by Stuart Klipper, who has traveled often to Antarctica. “That landscape has drawn creative energy for over a century,” Hostetler explains. “Artists are still finding something incredibly surreal about it.”
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It’s just after 8 a.m., and Michael Davidson has played the generous host, laying out pastries, strawberries and a pot of coffee at a round table in the middle of his light-soaked Riverwest studio. A half-dozen of his paintings hang around us, but it’s a good hour or so before we actually get up and look at them.
What happened during that hour will not surprise anyone who knows the Milwaukee painter. We talked about painting, sure – the challenges and questions inherent in facing a blank canvas. But we also talked about a myriad of ideas and images in classic and contemporary culture. Davidson has a lot to say, it turns out, about everyone from Philip Glass to Philip Guston to Giotto. And that’s just the G’s.
“When I lived in New York,” he says, “I was a voracious, completely addicted looker. On average, I saw just shy of 400 to 450 shows every year. It was a big part of me being an artist, but it wasn’t just about informing my own work. That in-person intimate experience with work that was being talked about was priceless.”
Davidson grew up in Elm Grove and always knew he wanted to be an artist. His father is an industrial designer at Harley-Davidson and used to paint watercolors with friends on weekends. “I’d watch them start on a Friday night, and then would have to go to bed,” Davidson recalls. “They’d stay up until the wee hours finishing the painting, and I’d get up early to see how it turned out.”
He attended UWM (which gave him “a superb foundation”) and then went east to State University of New York at Purchase, a small campus that was very active in the creative arts. Among his teachers there were Robert Storr and Irving Sandler, legendary figures in contemporary art history and criticism. He moved and rented a studio in Brooklyn in 1989, immersing himself in the New York scene, working as an art handler and helping to hang shows in the Guggenheim and other museums. And he painted.
He moved back to Milwaukee in 2000. Stepping away from New York has allowed him to eliminate the “distraction” of the art scene and focus more deeply on his own work. “This is the time and the place for me to drill down and really face all the issues of my work. I’m painting probably better than I’ve been painting in my life.”
To explain why, he cites a story he once heard. “When you start painting, everybody is there: da Vinci, Raphael, Mark Rothko. As you make decisions that they wouldn’t make, they leave, and you get closer to what you’rereally about. You’re the last one to leave, and when you finally do, you’re making the best work you’re capable of.”
The work around us testifies to his winning streak. Unlike the monumental abstract artists of the 20th century, Davidson creates canvases usually no more than five feet high or wide. These are human-scaled paintings, some monochrome, others brilliantly hued, with a lightness and transparency to the brushstrokes, yet a feeling of great depth and substance. In late 2005, Davidson had a solo show at Hotcakes Gallery and he’s looking in Chicago for a gallery with the “right fit” to represent him.
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In an age that wears its eclecticism on its sleeve, Jason Seedwears a coat of many colors. The annotations on his Web sites and album covers have a hilarious slacker syntax, but the free associations here are not about Star Trek and burritos, but about Bach, Frank Zappa, Stevie Wonder, Zoltan Kodaly (“the fact that his first name is mindbuggin’ ZOLTAN yo!”) and Anton Webern. His music, a mix of classical and jazz and other genres, reflects the diversity of his influences.
In person, Seed even looks the slacker prototype. Goateed and friendly, he has the jazz musician’s sense of easy unflappability, yet with the conviction to speak his mind.
On jazz, for instance: “It’s really formulaic and boring. Play the melody, then do your solo, then play the melody again. The only thing keeping it that way is laziness. People just don’t want to work on arrangements. I mean, geez, put an interlude in somewhere or something!”
Seed’s easy going style belies his musical ambition. These days, he’s at the helm of three distinct musical ensembles all named after him and devoted to his work: Jason Seed Elixir Ensemble, Jason Seed Elixir String Quartet and Jason Seed Elixir (Petite). Oddly named or not, his ensembles feature some of the area’s finest musicians, including top string players from both the Milwaukee and Chicago symphony orchestras, all attracted by the quality of his compositions.
How did Seed get into music? “I started playing guitar because a friend of mine wanted to start an Iron Maiden cover band,” he told me over iced tea, shortly after a rehearsal with his string quartet. “And I thought, ‘Yes, we need to do this.’”
The band never materialized, but the promise of heavy metal suddenly activated a half-hearted interest in classical guitar. Soon he was mastering the hard rock licks and thrashy chord changes and longing for something a little more… complex. This led him to jazz and, eventually, music school at Indiana University, where he studied with David Baker, himself a prime practitioner of jazz/classical cross-fertilization.
You can see Baker’s stamp on Seed’s embrace of many genres. He loves Bach (and counterpoint), and also thrives on the challenges of writing music in off-meters – composing phrases or hooks that fit into measures of seven, 11 or 13 beats, rather than the traditional three or four. Some of his compositions for string quartet have a contemporary classical, theme-and-development feel, but he’s also working on quartet arrangements of classic rock tunes like Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein.” On his CD Where the Corners Meet,some cuts have the feel of ’70s-era, white-boy funk, while others are frenetic and precisely arranged: the gypsy-Klezmer inspired “The Debate” features long, sinuous melody lines he plays in unison with violinist Glenn Asch.
Seed still teaches and works as a jazz guitarist while he continues writing, rehearsing and recording his composition projects. He recently performed shows at the Miramar Theatre and at a summer concert at Humboldt Park. He’s working on a commission from Present Music and Danceworks that will premiere in April. And he’s continuing to look for venues that will give his unique, musical elixir a shot.
Season Highlights
Music
Global Union: An idea whose time has come, this mini world-music festival premiered last year to moderate but enthusiastic crowds. Word-of-mouth should be strong for its return. Alverno Presents has assembled eight bands from four different continents spread over two days. And it’s all free. Don’t miss the opener, Germany’s 17 Hippies, or Puerto Rico’s Latin rock band Zemog El Gallo Bueno. Sept. 15-16. Humboldt Park, 3000 S. Howell Ave., 414-382-6044. alvernopresents.alverno.edu.
Trois Liturgies: That’s Trois Petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine to you, Buster! But any way you say it, this Thanksgiving collaboration between two of the city’s best small music ensembles, Present Music and Milwaukee Choral Artists, should offer plenty of reasons to be thankful. Olivier Messiaen’s idiosyncratic music is rarely heard these days, but it’s full of shimmery textures and melodies, which are perfect for the concert’s cathedral environment. Nov. 18, Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, 812 N. Jackson St., 414-271-0711. presentmusic.org.
Salome: One of the great challenges for operatic sopranos, Richard Strauss’ 1905 piece is a swift and intense journey into obsession and bloodlust. In Chicago last year, Deborah Voigt made international headlines with her performances (and her weight loss to prepare for the performance) at the Lyric Opera. This year, the Florentine Opera hopes to create its own splash with guest soprano Erika Sunnegardh, who recently went from Swedish unknown to headliner at the Metropolitan Opera in 18 months. Feb. 15-17. Uihlein Hall at the Marcus Center, 414-273-7206, florentineopera.org.
MSO Chorus: There’s a lot of excitement over the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s Beethoven cycle this season, but we think the big story is Andreas Delfs’ continued survey of the major symphonic choral works. In the past few years, he’s tackled Brahms’ German Requiem, Mozart’s Requiem and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. This year, Delfs and MSO choral director Lee Erickson will tackle Verdi’s Requiemand Bach’s B-minor Mass, one of the pinnacles of the repertoire. Verdi: March 7-9; Bach: May 23-24. Uihlein Hall at the Marcus Center, 414-291-7605, milwaukeesymphony.org.
Theater
Souvenir: A recent surprise hit in New York, Stephen Temperley’s charming comic musical is about Florence Foster Jenkins, a socialite who insisted on giving charity voice recitals despite her uncertain sense of pitch and key. Linda Stephens, a Broadway veteran herself, plays “Madame Flo.” Richard Carsey plays her long-suffering accompanist, who eventually understands that music is about more than hitting the right notes. March 14-30. Skylight Opera Theatre, Broadway Theatre Center, 158 N. Broadway, 414-291-7800. skylightopera.com.
Talking Heads: Alan Bennett, revered in Britain and a winner of last year’s Tony Award for The History Boys, wrote 13 monologues for British television in the late ’80s and ’90s. The Milwaukee Chamber Theatre has selected six of them and shaped them into a
two-evening “Alan Bennett Festival” of sorts. They’re charming, sometimes melancholy character pieces, and Michael Wright has assembled a group of A-list Milwaukee actors to give them life, including Norman Moses, Angela Innone and Ruth Schudson. Oct. 18-Nov. 4. Cabot Theatre in the Broadway Theater Center, 158 N. Broadway, 414-291-7800, chamber-theatre.com.
Antigone: A play for our time, to be sure. A woman defies a corrupt and misguided government. Milwaukee Dance Theater – the inventive duo of Mark Anderson and Isabel Kralj – pairs up with Present Music in this contemporary adaptation of Sophocles’ great tragedy. Present Music’s Eric Segnitz will compose the original music. March 6-9. Off-Broadway Theater, 342 N. Water St., 414-271-0711, presentmusic.org.
Fat Pig: As brazen as its title suggests, Neil LaBute’s searing play sets its cross hairs on society’s standards of beauty and the cruel assumptions that lurk beneath Extreme Makeover. LaBute is known for bringing human ugliness to full flower. The play – about a man who falls in love with a large woman – is a perfect and brave choice for Renaissance Theaterworks. April 25-May 18. Studio Theatre, Broadway Theatre Center, 158 N. Broadway. 414-273-0800, r-t-w.com.
The Norman Conquests: In its search for holiday fare that isn’t written by Charles Dickens, the Milwaukee Rep has left no stone unturned: classic comedies, contemporary comedies… well, those are about the only two stones around. This year, The Rep’s betting on Alan Ayckbourn’s funny, biting and ultimately warm-hearted trilogy about a man’s attempt to set up a weekend tryst with his wife’s sister. Here’s the hook: Each play takes place over the same two hours, but each time we see the action in three different rooms of a country retreat. It’s obviously one of Joe Hanreddy’s favorites. This will be the third time he’s staged it and the second time in Milwaukee. Talented comedian Gerard Neugent gets the part of Norman. Dec. 2-Jan. 20. Quadracci Powerhouse Theater, 414-224-9490, milwaukeerep.com.
Art
Martin Ramirez: One of the most talked-about shows last season in New York City, this retrospective of a self-taught master features almost 300 drawings by Ramirez, most done in Northern California’s DeWitt State Hospital, where he lived the last 15 years of his life. The New York Timescalled the show “transporting” and said it should “render null and void the insider-outsider distinction.” Oct. 6-Jan. 13. Milwaukee Art Museum, 700 N. Art Museum Dr., 414-224-3200, mam.org.
Dance
Hamlet: Michael Pink continues to look for story ballets for his Milwaukee Ballet that complement the standard 19th century repertoire (or he creates them himself). With Stephen Mills’ Hamlet,he’s found a winner. Originally staged by Mills’ Ballet Austin in 2000, the production is a sleek and stylish modern-dress Hamlet, with throbbing music by Philip Glass and viscerally abstract sets. No frou frou here. Nov. 1-4. Uihlein Hall at the Marcus Center, 414-902-2103, milwaukeeballet.org.
Armitage Gone! Dance: Gone, indeed, are the days when four or five dance companies would come through town in a season. But thank goodness for David Ravel, whose Alverno Presents continues to make a commitment to contemporary dance, not only hosting companies but commissioning works as well. This season, Alverno brings back David Neumann’s inventive troupe (Feb. 9), and then scores big with the company led by Karole Armitage, one of the most important choreographers alive. They’ll perform her brand new “Ligeti Essays” and 2004’s “Time Is the Echo of an Axe Within a Wood.” April 12. Pitman Theatre at Alverno College. 414-382-6044. alvernopresents.alverno.edu.
Museums
Body Worlds: The controversy has died down since this German museum exhibit first hit America, but the man behind the show, Gunther von Hagens, is still fighting a few battles. Von Hagens invented the “Plastination” procedure that preserves muscles and organs so they can be displayed to show the workings of the human body. He now assures critics that all the people in the exhibits gave consent for their bodies to be displayed. He also eliminated the “creative” poses of some of the displays, such as a man on horseback carrying his brain in his hand. Opens January 2008. Milwaukee Public Museum, 414-278-2728, mpm.edu.
Paul Kosidowski is a frequent contributor to Milwaukee Magazine.He may be reached at letters@milwaukeemagazine.com.
