It’s said that everybody has a novel “in them.” But how to get it out?! With rent to pay, kids to raise, kites to fly, and 30 Rock episodes to Hulu, who can find the time? Well forget about a 538-page saga. How about a sonnet? Now I’m not saying that poetry is easy, but you can jump in and try in the space of an afternoon.
If you’re game, but short on inspiration, here’s a chance to immerse yourself in Milwaukee’s poetic minds, and support a place that keeps poetry alive in our city. Woodland Patterns’ 14th Poetry Marathon will start when the big hand is on the twelve and the little hand is on the ten (10 a.m., Saturday morning), and won’t stop until the very next day, at 1 a.m. At ten poets every hour, that’s around 150 poets!…give or take a couplet or two. Among them, you will here the published, the famous (John Koethe, Susan Firer, CJ Hribal, Marilyn Taylor (Wisconsin’s Poet Laureate) and the soon to be famous.
For poetry of the visual sort, this is the weekend to see two of the most acclaimed documentaries of 2008. The UWM Union Cinema opens its Spring season with Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World, and Errol Morris’s Standard Operating Procedure. Herzog brought his camera to Antarctica to chronicle the lives of the people who live in extreme conditions for the sake of science. And Morris’s film is a fascinating examination of the stories behind the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs. Both films play throughout the weekend, and both of them are free.
Theater fans have a bunch of new offerings to choose from this weekend, and a few other that have been up for a while.
At Next Act, there’s some serious conversation from the man who brought you the Russian and American diplomats who decided to go for A Walk in the Woods. Lee Blessing’s Going to St. Ives is a variation on that theme—this time two women sit down to tea, and grapple with different ethical and political issues. The Rep’s Laura Gordon and Chicago-veteran Ora Jones star.
Another duo grapples with the more mundane challenges of this life—call it matrimonial détente. Norman Moses and Leslie Fitzwater star in the Skylight’s I Do! I Do!, a musical tale of 50 years of marriage. To the same person, even!
The Rep goes back to 18th-century Italy for its story of man vs. woman, or in this case, men vs. women. Carlo Goldoni’s Mirandolina tells the story of a businesswoman who attracts a lot of interest from her hotel guests. And has to figure out a way to deflect their advances without making them check out. Literally. Laszlo Marton’s production of this play is known around the world, and Deborah Staples stars. My, it’s been a busy season for her.
And fans of that Greek string-plucker Orpheus can get another version of his story as the UWM Opera offers Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld. This season, we’ve already seen a modern take on the story in the Rep’s Eurydice, and the Ballet has given us Offenbach in the Underworld, a romp inside a Paris café. Here, Offenbach spoofs the story and Baroque opera conventions in one fell swoop. Kurt Ollman directs.
