Everyone can recall a time they took part in a portrait, whether that be for a family photo, graduation or a holiday card. Photographs are a shared experience of us all. The minds of book, music and lyrics writers Patrick Thompson and David Lancelle bring us these exact moments in the form of the musical Portraits, put on by Pink Umbrella Theater Company this month.
Thompson and Lancelle’s mission with the musical is a difficult one: convey the complex, deep emotions and memories behind portraits. In the musical, there are three groups of main characters: an engaged couple, a family in desperate need of a holiday card photo and a high school senior, each trying to get time with an understaffed and overbooked photographer and his comedic assistant. Through these portraits, Thompson and Lancelle explore themes of identity and nostalgia and challenge the idea of our old selves versus our new selves.
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Thompson has been working with Pink Umbrella Theater for two years, and looped in his best friend of eight years to help him come up with Portraits. Together, the two developed and wrote the score and script together.
“A true 50/50 collaboration,” Thompson said, “because we are technically both the heads of all three departments: book, lyric and music. The nice thing that’s actually been really helpful with this type of a collaboration is that we both have 100% approval and veto power over anything.”
Thompson had the idea of a picture day theme for the musical in 2023, and began working with executive director and founder Katie Cummings in December to pitch and put together what came to be Portraits. The idea shifted from a musically-dominated, small plot show to the dynamic musical it came to be.
What makes this show so different from other theaters all comes down to Pink Umbrella’s mission of creating an inclusive theatrical space for disabled artists and actors.
Rebekah Farr, director of Portraits, said all of the musicals and shows put on by Pink Umbrella embody the mission of giving disabled artists a place to be expressive and involved in the creative process of bringing the show to life. Over 80% of involved artists and cast have a disability.
“[Portraits] itself is written through that lens [of disability] and adapted to the specific artists that we hire,” Farr said. “The playwrights try to accommodate the writing process to be really incorporated to the individuals who are being cast, which is a big part of our mission when it comes to what accessible theater looks like versus traditional theater. It’s mostly making the process match the individual, as opposed to making the individual match the process.”
Farr, Thompson and Lancelle work closely with their artists to accommodate the musical to fit the actors they cast. Thompson and Lancelle, as part of their mission for inclusive theater, left the characters in the musical gender neutral for the cast to choose their identities and pronouns.
“Prior to rehearsals, we had only written a couple songs, so we were able to write songs really tailored for their voices,” Thompson said.
Farr said the mission of Pink Umbrella is to present a plot through the lens of a disability, as opposed to just plugging disabled characters into a show and making it about their disability and not about them as individuals.
“When we center the storytellers and create a space that’s full of artists with disabilities, it’s about making sure their voices are a part of the writing process as well, and making those adjustments in those early meetings with the playwrights,” Farr said.
The musical Portraits is selling out fast. Tickets can be purchased ahead of the showtimes at Pink Umbrella’s website, along with show dates and times. The show will run the weekends of Aug. 2 and 9 at Christ Church Episcopal in Whitefish Bay.
