Category: Milwaukee Youth Arts Center

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First Stage: The Young Company Brings Us, Shakespeare’s The Tempest

I came to love Shakespeare while in high school. First via a PBS rendition of Hamlet and then their broadcast of the BBC’s An Age of Kings, a serial based on the history plays. Or maybe it was the other way around. But my faith in William Shakespeare abides. Of course my favorite play has changed over the years from Hamlet to Macbeth to more recently The Tempest…which brings us to this happy event…the Young Company’s presentation of The Tempest in their black box theater in the round at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center!

And just a moment, let me remind you about the Young Company. They are the older group of actors at First Stage. Generally high school age they present challenging adult oriented plays with minimal sets and costuming. There are seldom any adult actors on stage and the plays are driven by the action and the text: very very effectively. Last spring’s, An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen for example.

(left to right) Elena Marking, Josie Van Slyke, Sophia Bernhardt, and cast in
THE TEMPEST. First Stage Young Company, 2024. Photo by Paul Ruffolo.

So, let’s take a look at this minimalist perspective. If you look at the photos you’ll see that our stage is a central collection of steps. These steps acted as a dais, bed, rock, threshold and all manner of things under heaven. And Costume Coordinator Michelle Verbos primarily outfitted the cast in simple and elegant items in white. All the better for Director Marcella Kearns to tell the story of the The Tempest through words and movement.

And what a lot of expressive movement and motion, something that First Stage does exceptionally well on all of their stages. Director Kearns and Fight and Movement Director James Cheatham bring out the drama and pathos that Shakespeare has provided with a very active cast. At points the motion is more dance than drama and it keeps the focus on the cast and action…if you turn away for a moment you will surely miss something grand! There can be more life to Shakespeare than you would imagine when done right…and the Young Company cast here was certainly into it.

At the center of any good The Tempest is a regal and determined Prospero. And as Prospero, Silver Anderson has a stage presence that brings out the mage and the vengeful and the loving and forgiving character traits of the character. From stirring the sea like a pot of soup into The Tempest, to playing matchmaker to Miranda and Ferdinand, to bringing reconciliation to the conflict between Prospero, his brother, Antonio, and the King of Naples, Anderson strikes the proper balance in each scene and moves easily from one pose to the next. They may be too overconfident in knowing the text however, because they sometimes spoke so fast that we had a hard time hearing what was being said.

Silver Anderson in THE TEMPEST. First Stage Young Company, 2024. Photo
by Paul Ruffolo.

Abram Nelson and Alice Rivera bring the included love story to the stage as Ferdinand and Miranda…as Prospero’s magic brings them together…they instantly are lost in the moment and never wonder how this all came to pass. And Maya Thomure captures the resistant and loutish Caliban and just can’t wait to betray her enslaver, Prospero, to the drunken sailors. Even in the face of red flags that seem to suggest that they aren’t quite the ‘gentlemen’ that they appear to be.

Silver Anderson (top center), Alice Rivera (bottom left), Abram Nelson (bottom
right), and cast in THE TEMPEST. First Stage Young Company, 2024. Photo by Paul Ruffolo.

The most enchanting portrayal on this stage is Josephine Van Slyke as Ariel. Whenever she is in a scene, she tends to steal it, even when she doesn’t have any speaking lines. When off to one side or another and just observing the action in front of her, Van Slyke employs any number of slight physical tics or corvid like head twists to let us know that she is a sprite and not a human presence. And throughout any of the action, she is nimble and graceful and just sweeps across the stage in some of the most dance like moves among the cast. And her confidence in the opening stage of the actual tempest, as she destroys the ship and hinders the crew in their efforts to save the day, is the most fluid fight scene that you will ever see. And then there is her voice…at once eerie, haunting, and compelling…it is no wonder that sight unseen, she is able to lure the stranded sailors to whatever purposes that Prospero has for them.

Amélie Davis-Quiroz (center) and cast in THE TEMPEST. First Stage Young
Company, 2024. Photo by Paul Ruffolo.

The Tempest runs through December 15. 2024 at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center. It runs for about two hours and includes a short intermission. Recommended for families with young people ages 13-17 and theater lovers of all ages. Additional information and ticket ordering can be found here!

And as always, Extra Credit Reading: the digital playbill. The playbill includes cast listings, etc.

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Post #501, Four Years, and I Find Out I Am A Theater Critic!

WOW! Jane Eyre, The Musical, At The Lake Country Playhouse was my 500th Post here on An Intuitive Perspective. WOW! Yeah, I know not all of them are scintillating and insightful commentary on the arts but the Monday Music feature instead…but I hope you are enjoying all of it! And I apparently lost count and missed our 4th Anniversary on March 20, 2024…you do lose track of time when you are having fun. And now, I am a theater critic as well!

So, how did I get here? I retired from my career as a computer programmer in 2018. And back in 2010 I was invited to contribute to someone else’s blog and I enjoyed the writing and comments and such. It was on another topic, not the arts.

And then I had an opportunity to work with the Milwaukee Repertory Theater as part of their Social Media Club. A little social group who were invited by the Rep to attend their performances and then comment on our experiences across social media. And to share and re-share the Rep’s various social media posts. I really took that to heart and wrote some pretty extensive and detailed reports on Facebook that I referred to as a ‘response’. That was a lot of fun and I started doing similar posts around other events.

And then I started to tire of my participation in that other blog but knew that I didn’t necessarily want to stop writing so I started An Intuitive Perspective. And the first thing I did was republish all of my older items from Facebook and then proceed with my new content. And once published, I share the link around a variety of social media including of course Facebook. That’s the bare facts…but how did I become a theater critic?

Well I was writing ‘responses’ to the shows that I was seeing at the Rep and as a long time subscriber at the American Player’s Theatre in Spring Green. And then a dear friend from the Social Media Club, Kimberly Laberge, Artistic Director at Kith & Kin Theatre Collective, invited me out to Hartland to experience the presentation of Cabaret that she was directing at the Lake Country Playhouse. It was an amazing play and an amazing cast and a cozy jewel box theater and I have been invited back again and again and I am in awe of the quality of the plays that they take on and the high level quality of each and every presentations.

And then somehow, I wish I remembered the history here, I also became involved with First Stage, which is a children’s theater in Milwaukee, that presents full blown musicals in the Todd Wehr Theater in the Marcus Performing Arts Center and smaller more serious fare in the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center. The PAC shows blend a cast of adults and young people in shows that will appeal to all ages…and I love them…and I love to watch the reactions of the youngsters in the audience as they experience real theater featuring their peers and their stories. And the other venue generally features the First Stage’s Young Company, high school age actors presenting more complex stories in an in the round black box theater…things like an adaptation of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People or Shakespeare’s Henry IV (part 1). I hope that we see many of these young actors playing at our local adult theaters eventually.

And I have been invited to see any number of other small theater groups put on amazing theater in small theater settings that I didn’t even know existed before now. And I am so grateful for the experience.

Now one thing that I regret. I had started an idea to present posts about smaller art museums around the state and mid-west under the title A Place For A Muse. I have only written two so far. I need to do better.

And what is this bit about being a theater critic? Well, as I said I have always labeled my articles and posts about theater as responses because I hadn’t studied theater or criticism directly. So I didn’t feel confident using the term review. But after attending the Lake Country Player’s presentation of A Rock Sails By, and talking with director James Baker Jr and lead actor in Rock (and Artistic Director of LCP ) Sandra Baker-Renick, I was convinced that what I write is in fact a review…and that is what they will be from now on! So I am a theater critic now, I guess!

So thank you to all who visit here and read my scribblings. And thank you to all of the theater people who have adopted me and allowed me to see your marvelous shows and write about them with abandon. It has been a very rewarding four years…and I hope we can continue!!!

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Escape From Peligro Island, A Create Your Own Adventure Play @ First Stage!

Those of you who have followed my comments on the offerings from Milwaukee’s First Stage Youth Theater know that many of their presentations feature alternating casts. So your experience may differ from mine in significant ways.

But with Escape From Peligro Island, First Stage and Playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer have designed a unique experience into the script for each and every audience. You are guaranteed a different experience to mine. And how do they accomplish that? Well at significant plot points, the audience is offered alternative choices and they get to vote on which path to travel…so each audience member receives a Card Of Destiny as you enter the theater and you can vote for your preferred alternative by holding up your card, showing the Pink side or the Green side. And the cast heads off in the selected direction! So from one performance to the next, you will never get the same show. Escape From Peligro Island is a thing of wonder and adventure! Awesome.

And yes, Escape From Peligro Island, does feature two casts, The Destiny Cast and The Chance cast. The two casts share two adult actors, Matt Daniels and Shammen McCune who play multiple roles and I am guessing those roles differ depending on the election of the audience.

Charlie Cornell as Callaway Brown foreground and Matt Daniels, Photo Courtesy of First Stage, Paul Ruffolo photographer.

The initial story will be basically the same…the one named character is Callaway Brown…and Callaway remains a constant throughout but it is his adventures that we are determining. Almost immediately, while traveling from his mother’s home to visit his father many miles away, Callaway experiences a weirdo in the airport’s waiting area who proves to be an eerie enigma who quickly runs off leaving Callaway with a mysterious box and the wrong airplane ticket…and we make our first decision and launch poor Callaway off on his big adventure.

Now, I can’t actually give the story away because it will travel hither and yon depending on you…but Kruckemeyer must be the eternal youth of legend as Escape From Peligro Island finds all of the cute sayings of youth, pulls great puns out of midair, and presents a myriad of adventures out of our childhood dreams. It sounds so easy and childlike but it is an amazingly complex construction.

One constant feature of First Stage presentations are short talk backs (question and answer periods) after the play where the cast takes turns fielding questions from the youngsters in the audience. Now, one very astute audience member asked the cast how they managed to learn all of the different parts and keep them straight. Yes, indeed, that too was at the forefront of my thoughts as the play came to an end. The cast said it was from four weeks of rehearsal and lots of practice.

Now I don’t know the precise answer exactly, but I am certain it was through some sort of sorcery employed by director Jeff Frank. Besides the variant story lines and two adult actors plus Callaway Brown, there are five other youth actors who work as narrators and vote tabulators and any number of characters dependent on the path being taken. I would have a hard time keeping track of that in my head much less imparting it to twelve different actors. And then to support the action, Scenic Designer Kristin Ellert did a marvelous job providing modular set pieces that too played multiple roles and then there were a few that remained unused…apparently waiting their turn in a parallel universe.

Photo Courtesy of First Stage, Paul Ruffolo photographer.

But oh, wait. There are a number of small puppets or dolls that help us tell the story…I can’t explain exactly what they do or how they are employed because that might spoil some of the story…but the are cute as the dickens…and a clever clever means of advancing the story and supporting the action! Thank you Adriana Hollenbeck!! And First Stage has always set a very high bar when it comes to bright and engaging costuming that contributes to the story telling…and Jazmin Aurora Medina has done an outstanding job here…particularly with the various costumes for Matt Daniels various roles. And Lighting Designer Tim Thistleton also brings his A game with bringing the adventures on Peligro Island to life with the limited palette available at the Goodman.

And there’s a THEME SONG!

I was lucky to get to see this on opening weekend…and it was a very well attended show. And I think a lot of theatergoers will revisit so they can experience another pass into adventure. So don’t put off planning your visit. Escape From Peligro Island runs through June 2, 2024. It is being presented at First Stage’s black box theater in the round, the Goodman Mainstage Hall, at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center! Suggested ages: 5 to adult!t oh

Click HERE for tickets and more information!

And Extra Credit Reading: Playbill with a listing of both casts! and Enrichment Guide