Tis the season to be….well, it’s hard for Shakespeare lovers to be
jolly these days. On October 28th, Milwaukee Shakespeare announced that it was
closing its doors. The Argosy Foundation, which has been the main supporter of
the theater since it’s beginnings in 2000, reluctantly pulled its funding due to
the recent economic downturn. For seven years, Milwaukee Shakes weathered 9/11,
the occasional personal drama, and the usual challenges facing a 21st-century
theater company. But our current financial crisis took its toll, forcing Argosy
and Chris Abele to pull the plug on a “project” that was obviously close to his
heart, and the hearts of many Milwaukee theater lovers.
And speaking of
hearts, they will be heavy this Sunday night, as the theater officially goes out
in style. The “Milwaukee Shakes Wake” will be a gathering of both artists and
audience, to mourn and to celebrate one of the city’s most inventive and
consistently excellent theaters. For information write Noel
Henebury-Farmer.
The
mood will be much lighter, methinks, at the UWM’s Peck School for the Arts
Mainstage Theater, where Your Mother
Dances will celebrate the season with the irreverent frivolity it deserves.
Last year, YMD featured excerpts from David Parker’s Nut/Cracked , a
hilarious but affectionate take on Tchaikovsky’s holiday staple. This year,
Elizabeth Johnson and company will
perform the whole evening-length piece, from tap shoes to thumb-sucking pas de
deux. With all the ups and downs of 2008, it’s nice to be ending on a definite
“up.”
Speaking
of ups and downs, the flyer for the latest show at Dean Jensen Gallery is
dominated by a blurred image of stock prices ticking by. For his show, “Big Big
Bang/Small, Small Bucks,” Jensen announced that no work would sell for more than
$750. In response, many artists marked pieces down (as they say at Wal-Mart) to
include them in the show, and Jensen found himself with his largest show ever
(over 100 pieces).
Familiar local folks are all here: photographer Kevin
Miyazaki, Sonja Thomsen, Jason Yi, Peter Barrickman, and Santiago Cucullu. If you’re in a buying mood,
you’ll find everything from Drew Malcolm boisterous acrylics to one of katie
martin’s Styrofoam constructions. Our favorite title: “Ms. Bourgeois Will See
You Now,” one of Tara Mathison’s mylar collages. The show runs through January
24, 2009.
If you’ve had enough Holly Jolly, you can find some respite
from 24-hour carols by spending some time with the Fine Arts Quartet,
which thought that Saint-Saens, Mendelssohn and Schumann might go well with a
chilly Wisconsin weekend. We tend to agree.
This is also
the season that critics give little gifts to movie producers, in the form of Top
Ten Lists and various awards and honors. For those keeping score at home, some
of the most acclaimed films of 2008 have recently blown through town—Jonathan
Demme’s Rachel Getting Married , Mike Leigh’s exuberant
Happy-Go-Lucky , Charlie Kaufmann’s Synecdoche, New York . And
this weekend, two others join the list: Gus Van Sant’s Milk, and Danny
Boyle’s dazzling Slumdog Millionaire
. I’ll write more about that on Friday.
The Bard’s in Black
Tis the season to be….well, it’s hard for Shakespeare lovers to be jolly these days. On October 28th, Milwaukee Shakespeare announced that it was closing its doors. The Argosy Foundation, which has been the main supporter of the theater since it’s beginnings in 2000, reluctantly pulled its funding due to the recent economic downturn. For seven years, Milwaukee Shakes weathered 9/11, the occasional personal drama, and the usual challenges facing a 21st-century theater company. But our current financial crisis took its toll, forcing Argosy and Chris Abele to pull the plug on a “project” that was obviously close to his…
