Peggy Sue Dunigan - Page 7

Hat Queens--the women in Skylight Music Theatre's Crowns: A Gospel Musical call themselves Hat Queens--,and honor women who proudly wear a magnificent hat on Sunday to display their unique being and personality. Award-winning actress and playwright Regina Taylor adapted the book 'Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats' by Michael Cunningham and Craig Mayberry for the stage to produce a non-linear, almost poetic string of joyful songs and stories to bring these African American women and traditions to life that fills the Cabot Theatre with joyful music.

The night before a friend's wedding sets the stage for Theater RED's Milwaukee premiere of Bachelorette at Bay View's Alchemist Theatre. Raw, risque and x-rated, Leslye Headland's script first arrived at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival starring Kirsten Dunst, Lizzie Caplan and Rebel Wilson. Later the director and writer translated this into a stage play, and the playwright followed by producing another movie 'Sleeping With Other People,' supposedly a down and dirtier version of the iconic 'When Harry Met Sally.'  While being featured in Rolling Stone, LA Times, and The New Yorker, Headland's play attempts to deal with several mean girls suffering from hangovers and a younger generation's views on a version of the 'Romantic Comedy,' or rom-com.

In the First Stage fictional village of Kishka, 'the wall of snow did not melt, the knitted scarves grew to long to use, and the fires eventually burned out,' described the town's never ending winter....This sets the story for the company's World Premiere production The Snow. Commissioned in collaboration with Oregon Children's Theatre and Magik Theatre, internationally acclaimed author and playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer conjures a modern folk tale adventure where the villagers in Kishka rely on a tiny child named Theodore when he seeks a solution to their never ending prison of frozen snow.

Dream of visiting Costa Rica's lush jungles and warm climate this winter? Milwaukee Chamber Theatre (MCT) imports Costa Rica to the Studio Theatre at the Broadway Theatre Center in their intergenerational production Slowgirl. Directed by C. Michael Wright, and dedicated to his own niece, playwright Greg Pierce's 2012 character study places two societal runaways, an older uncle and his rarely seen teenage niece, in the dry rainforests of Central America.

An economic term defines and unravels the life of an American investment banker held captive by Pakistanis in Milwaukee Rep's current production The Invisible Hand. At the intimate Stiemke Studio, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Ayad Akhtar, educated and raised in a Milwaukee suburb, travels to near future Pakistan in his play where financial markets crash and burn in the first of four Akhtar productions to be staged at The Rep over the nest several years.

Prime bridal season in 2016 begins in April, with the June summer and September fall weddings following afterwards, two of the most popular months to marry, which supports a $72 billion dollar bridal industry. Theatre RED offers an antidote to the sentimentality and excess of festive weddings currently advertised by contemporary bridal culture in their biting, chilling dark comedy coming this March: Bachelorette.

This winter at Tenth Street Theatre more than 20 lamps brighten the In Tandem Theatre Stage and recall the three generation history of an Irish American family named Duddy. Milwaukee bred playwright and Marquette University graduate Michael Neville reprises his semi-autobiographical play Lamps for My Family, where each lamp on stage remembers a light that a person in his family read by in the Duddy homestead, and metaphorically symbolizes the light they gave to Jack's life growing up. A play originally developed because of Neville's commitment to new works through his Playwrights Studio Theater, Neville lives and works in Milwaukee, and at In Tandem a beloved hometown actor Mark Corkins embodies Jack Duddy, a psychiatrist returning from New York after his divorce to care for his elderly relatives.

During February, snow falls lightly in Wisconsin this year, the powdery flakes covering the frosty earth--cold and icy white. With winter weather at the heart of the First Stage world premiere, the company introduces their 6th Wisconsin Cycle production in a play simply titled: The Snow. Internationally acclaimed playwright Finegan Kruckmeyer- who has garnered more than 30 awards from around the world during his continuing illustrious career-worked with Artistic Director Jeff Frank, Oregon Children's Theatre, and Magik Theatre when collaborating on a fantasy adventure conjuring winter white magic while honoring Wisconsin's Germanic heritage akin to the Brothers Grimm legendary fairytales.

If as Oscar Wilde wrote, 'Beauty is a form of genius, indeed a higher form of genius, and needs no explanation,' the Milwaukee Ballet and Michael PInk affirm this statement with a resounding performance of their World Premiere ballet Dorian Gray. Based on Wilde's late 19th century novella, Pink and his 'dream team,'--Lighting Designer David Grill, Composer Philip Fenney and Costume/Scenic Designer Todd Edward Ivins--sparked magical genius in the first full length ballet staged in the Historic Pabst Theater. Ivins spoke the essence of the moment when he stated, 'A historic occasion in a historic theater.'

Coming this February, Milwaukee Ballet and Artistic Director Michael Pink introduce their World Premiere ballet Dorian Gray. Based on the British 1980 novel by Oscar Wilde, Pink originally debuted another version of this story in Augsburg, Germany two years ago. This year in Milwaukee, PInk commissioned a new score by Philip Feeney, scenic and costume designs by Todd Edward Ivins, and returns Emmy award-winning Lighting Designer David Grill to envision the ominous story.. Grill will be at Super Bowl 50 on Sunday, February 7, and then 'after lighting Coldplay will light the Milwaukee Ballet.' This tour-de-force creative collaboration underscores fresh choreography by Pink to produce another full-length ballet performed for the first time in the Historic Pabst Theater over two full winter weekends.

'I have only one purpose in life-- to be loved,' believes Margaret, the Duchess of Argyll in the Skylight Music Theatre's new production of the chamber opera Powder Her Face. Staged in the Cabot Theatre defined by bravado, brilliance and bravery, Milwaukee hosts the 1995 opera by British composer Thomas Adès an artist awarded the prestigious Grawemeyer Prize for Composition. With the libretto written by Phillip Hensher based on the sensational divorce proceedings of the Duchess of Argyll, the story toys with society's fascination of any royal's private life similar to how the Duchess toyed with the numerous men in her life.

Milwaukee's Next Act theater needs to be filled to overflowing and sold out each performance this winter for their new production: Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. Artistic Director David Cecsarini co-directs the play with Jonathan Smoots in a compelling evening where 37 characters, individuals, appear on stage courtesy of a spectacular theatrical company  The six actors represent the diverse human milieu affected by the Rodney King beating, and then the subsequent looting and riots devastating Los Angeles in 1992. 

The heavens appear to open above the Minneapolis audience when a cloud filled sky hovers over the stage in the' Guthrie Theater's Wurtele Thrust Stage this winter. Artistic debuts abound in the company's glorious new production of William Shakespeare's Pericles, named one of the Washington Post's 2015 top ten productions in American theater. The production arrives in association with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and The Folger Theatre where incoming Artistic Director Joseph Haj transports the city to this ancient tale placed on and around the Mediterranean Sea where redemption washes like water over Shakespeare's heroes and heroines at the story's end.

Milwaukee Rep's Stackner Cabaret hosts a sultry, sensational evening featuring a brief biographical musical revue of blues star Bessie Smith. Their masterful production, The Devil's Music: The Life and Times of Bessie Smith, a Drama Desk nominated musical by Angela Parro, embraces the essence of the Empress of the Blues through the magnificent voice of Zonya Love, and Bessie's piano man, Pickle, who flashes his fingers on those ivories as DeMone, an actor making his Milwaukee Rep debut.

What designates a miracle in today's world---or in the realm of theological dogma? Artists might claim every time a concert, a dance, a live performance or visual picture appears constitutes a small creative miracle. Renaissance Theaterworks (RTW) presents numerous theatrical miracles in their transcendent production Agnes of God on stage this winter in the Studio Theater.

In a beautiful, breathtaking evening at Milwaukee Rep, Artistic Director Mark Clements reprises his critically acclaimed production Of Mice and Men. On stage, Todd Edward Ivins' elegant, grand set design creates a wooden bunkhouse where shadows flow onto the stage and complements Jesse Klug's sensual lighting. These technical elements elevate John Steinbeck's bindlestiffs and ranch hands set in 1935 California that represent humanity's great struggles to connect to another human being and achieve lofty if sometimes, unattainable dreams.

Dig, dig, dig--Digging five foot deep holes, five feet wide, in a barren desert is what the teenage boys at Camp Green Lake, Texas, do every day from sunrise to sunset. Louis Sachar's award-winning, beloved novel of two boys who learn to be friends in a detention camp comes to life at First Stage's entertaining production Holes in the Todd Wehr Theater through February 14. Directed by Jeff Frank on Rick Rasmussen's desolate stage territory, a place where rain has not touched the ground for over 100 years, Lyndsey Kuhlmann's orange detention suits provide the only color while Mary MacDonald Kerr's slick Warden suits often shine with rhinestones, a spark of the dark side at what will be a historic site for several camp members. 

To begin the new year, First Stage reprises Holes, a 1998 National Book Award Winner (for Young People's Literature) and 1999 Newbery Medal Award novel. Author Louis Sachar eventually transformed his novel into a Theater for Young Audience script, which retains much of the impressive language of the original text. Company Artistic Director Jeff Frank delights in returning the fantasy/mystery story to the Todd Wehr stage while also directing this new production. Originally produced by the company in 2004, HOLES captures themes resonating 11 years later as Frank believes, 'This compelling mystery story, a myth, reverberates over generations.'

No stranger to acclaimed success, the Sixth Season of Milwaukee Rep Lab produced a fabulous evening of eight short plays in the Stiemke Studio. Fifteen to twenty gifted Emerging Professional Residents (EPR) enraptured the audience with their primarily comic offerings interspersed with several poignant themed stories--and the audience responded with a standing ovation.

What a privilege to watch Young Company produce an all feminine All's Well That Ends Well. On Sunday night at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center, Shakespeare's  coming of age romance unfolded under the direction of Marcella Kearns, who produced an amazing performance. Young Company's Director John Maclay acknowledged the beauty of the play, asking the audience to 'lean in and listen to the Bard's beautiful and evocative language.'