It’s cold. It’s rainy. There is good reason to stay in, isn’t there? But think carefully. While you are watching Wolf Blitzer talk to a hologram, or listening to Carrie and Miranda exchange more quips about the boxers/brief question, or snuggling into your favorite lounge chair to listen to WRCK’s Lynnyrd Skynnard marathon, there is stuff going on out there. Real stuff. And you are missing it. So get out the wool socks and wrap an extra scarf around your neck and get out on the town! Here are some possibilities:
The wry and talented Jeffery Hatcher has a substantial following in Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Repertory Theater has been a home away from home, and other troupes have bit into his comedies as well. Just in time for the sentiment of the Christmas season, Next Act Theatre offers Hatcher’s dark comedy, Murderers, a tale of ne’er-do-well nursing home residents who seem to require more excitement than what’s offered in the after “recreation therapy" sessions. The cast includes local favorites Linda Stephens, Norman Moses and Ruth Schudson.
The Daly News has been almost three decades in the making. But great stories are seldom hatched overnight. And Jonathan Gillard Daly’s family saga of World War II is a story worth telling. Daly’s grandfather “published” a family newsletter from 1943-46, when his children were scattered around the globe fighting the good fight. The new musical—the first full production to come out of the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s Montgomery Davis Play Development Series—chronicles the Daly family saga from The Greatest Generation to today’s. Daly appears in the play as well, though the picture here is from Shakespeare’s As You Like It.
If you want to look forward instead of back, Ayelet Rose Gottleib might just offer a taste of the future of world music. The latest discovery of David Ravel’s for Alverno Presents, Gottlieb is a singer/composer who lyrically blends American jazz with Jewish and Middle Eastern traditions. “Mayim Rabim,” her gorgeous musical take on the Old Testament’s “Song of Songs,” is hard to describe, but if you imagine Sarah Vaughn singing “L’Shana Tova,” you’re headed in the right direction. For a taste of her sound, click here.
Danceworks keeps its space busy by hosting the Madison-based company of Li Chiao-Ping this weekend. She’ll go back into recent history to present “Points of Departure,” set to Steve Reich’s evocative piece for string quartet and record
ed sound, Different Trains (which was performed by Present Music in March). And she’ll also get physical with Elizabeth Streb’s Board, in which Li dances an ersatz duet with a suspended, yes, board. Streb, a MacArthur genius recipient who is famous for her “apparatus dances,” where dancers are suspended in the air or soar around via trampolines, created the piece for Li.
For flying of a different sort, check out the groovin’ high of We Six, the resident jazz ensemble of the Wisconsin Conservatory. Most jazz folks concertize on the fly, showing up for a club gig with a fake-book and their “ax” (pretty hip, ain’t I?), and calling out the tunes on a whim. We Six, however, affiliated with an educational institution, is a little more deliberate, programming concerts around themes or legends of the music. This concert pays tribute to the great drummers of jazz, including Philly Jo Jones and Art Blakey. So the group’s talented drummer, David Bayles, should get a work out. He’ll have some help from guest artist Robert Figueroa on percussion.
