Nationally renowned puppet designer James Ortiz is coming to Milwaukee to bring the operetta Candide to life at Skylight Music Theatre, running Oct. 13-29.
Based on the satirical novel by Voltaire, Candide follows a young man of the same name as he stumbles through misfortunes on an adventure around the world. Ortiz will direct the show as well as do scenic and puppet design.
“I am excited to discover where the moments of deep, heartfelt joy exist in the show,” he says.
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This is the first time Skylight Music Theatre is putting on the production on the Cabot stage, but the theater company has done the show twice in the past at its previous location on Jefferson Street.
“To do a piece like Candide, which honors the roots of Skylight from 64 years ago, as well as honors our forward thinking philosophy because we have this visionary director James Ortiz directing and designing – it is sort of a perfect show for Skylight,” says Artistic Director Michael Unger.
You might recognize Ortiz’s work from the 2022 Broadway revival of Into the Woods – he created the viral Milky White cow puppet for the musical. For Candide, he designed around 10 puppets – depending on what you count as a puppet, he says. The largest is 10 feet tall.
“There’s definitely some puppet moments that are like puppet with a capital P,” he says. “And there’s some things that are a more sort of object theater.”
The puppets will help the cast of 12 – the show usually has a much larger cast and chorus – transform into different characters to tell the story, which Ortiz describes as a surrealist adventure with a childlike quality to it.
“The puppets are there to underline some of the darker qualities of life and existence,” Ortiz says. “What’s really exciting to me is that we’re actually using the medium in a little bit of a nontraditional way.”
