To tell the history of Milwaukee’s oldest civic organization, 18 actors will operate a horde of 4-foot-tall puppets resembling figures like Milwaukee mayor Daniel Hoan, pictured here with actor Steven Hunter.
It might seem like an unusual approach, but Cabaret Milwaukee’s Joshua Bryan – writer and director of Frisch, Frei, Stark, Treu: A Puppet History of the Milwaukee Turners – says puppetry can help explain social commentary in a more digestible way.
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Founded in 1853 by progressive Germans, the Turners promoted a “sound mind in a sound body” through fitness programs and social reform. They were abolitionists, pro-labor, supported the suffragette movement, condemned fascism and backed socialist candidates. Out of Milwaukee, chapters of the Turners formed across the country. The group still exists today and continues to be based out of Turner Hall.
To write the script for the play, Bryan spent long hours digging through Turner Hall’s archives to learn the group’s history. He eventually narrowed the play’s timeline down to the early years of the Turners up until 1910 – the year Milwaukee elected Emil Seidel to become the first socialist mayor of a major American city. That same year, future socialist mayor Hoan was also elected as city attorney.
Both mayors were associated with the Turners, but they are just part of the story. “There isn’t a main character. If there is one, it’s the ideals of the Turners,” Bryan says.
The story is told through a narrator and multiple characters played using 30 repurposed puppets created by local designer Max Samson. They’re operated in a modernized Bunraku style, in which performers dress in black body suits and use their hands and feet to maneuver the puppets.
“Being able to put this show on with heavy themes of progressivism and civic participation right before this particular election,” Bryan says, “is a really good time to tell this story.”
Frisch, Frei, Stark, Treu: A Puppet History of the Milwaukee Turners runs Fridays and Sundays, Oct. 11-27 in the Palm Garden at Turner Hall.
