Photo Credit: Jean-Gabriel Fernandez
Nestled between a Chinese restaurant and a spy-themed eatery right across the street from the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, you can find one of the city’s most unconventional theaters. The aptly named Off the Wall Theatre first distinguishes itself with hundreds upon hundreds of posters, covering the storefront and walls from floor to ceiling—one poster for each play produced there in the two decades it has been operating. Soon, they will be joined by a poster of Zombies On Broadway, the company’s next show.
Starting Thursday, June 20, hordes of the undead will take the black-box theater by storm. Dottie, a world-famous Broadway star, dies before the opening of her new musical, but she won’t let a little inconvenience like death stop her from shining on stage. With a little help from the man who brought King Kong to Manhattan—played by director and founder of Off the Wall, Dale Gutzman, himself—the diva comes back to life as a flesh-eating zombie wreaking havoc in the whole production.
Zombies On Broadway promises “thrills, chills and laughs” in an entirely original musical, written and directed by Gutzman. The story is character-driven and focuses on Susie, a shy girl from Wisconsin; Dick, a handsome dance captain who everyone seemingly wants a piece of; and a motley cast showcasing the worst that Broadway has to offer. The large cast brings 11 local actors—including Mark Neufang, Teddi Gardener, Michele Waide, Jenny Kosek and more—to the stage.
“It is not like the Rocky Horror Picture Show or Evil Dead,” Gutzman warns. “It is much more of a take on 1930s musical films, like Fred Astaire’s and Ruby Keeler’s films. There are 1930s complications, mix-ups and relationships. The zombies are just the frosting on the cake!”
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Off the Wall Theatre's lobby.
A Trade-Off for Creative Freedom
Zombies On Broadway is a personal project six years in the making, “ever since the zombie craze started,” which replaces the planned production of the French musical Irma La Douce, cancelled due to funding issues. “Irma La Douce would have cost more than $4,000 before I even started. If you look at the small size of our theater, which seats only 40 people, we never even would break even,” Gutzman explains.
Off the Wall is unique in many ways, but its economic model truly stands out. After a lifetime spent traveling and directing shows on the other side of the world, including for the royal family of Thailand, Gutzman started this little theater as a passion project during his retirement years. The actors are volunteers—a significant portion of them professional actors who take time off paid projects to act in Off the Wall’s productions—and the director and owner doesn’t receive any kind of payment, either. All the money goes back into the future seasons. “It’s really a work of art and love,” Gutzman says. “We only charge $25-$30. To break even, we have to open a show almost every six weeks.”
As a trade-off for a precarious financial situation, the theater’s team enjoys unlimited creative freedom. “Making shows on relatively little money allows me to do plays that no other theater can do,” Gutzman continues. “We can just pick whatever we want and try different things; if it doesn’t work, that’s fine; six weeks later, we start something else. We’re not bound to anything except art.” This makes for an abundant productive output and unusual choices of plays—many of them written by Gutzman.
“We’re opening Uncle Vanya next season, and we’ve picked four different scripts and four different translations to create a new version,” he said. Other plays planned for the upcoming season (after the season finale of Zombies) include the Hitchcockian thriller The Stranger in the Attic; a new adaptation of the classic A Christmas Carol with The Great Scrooge Disaster; the original play The Glance about the role of erotic art in the face of religion; Gutzman Goes Gershwin, a musical revue of George Gershwin’s work; and The Merchant of Venice. This eclectic season, mixing original works with adaptations, music with prose, light-hearted fun with classical works, is bound together by “the contrast between the public artificiality and the private truth of things,” as Gutzman puts it.
Not at all put off by his theater’s relatively small size, which survives thanks to a tiny but loyal community of art lovers, Gutzman is bursting at the seams with enthusiasm about the upcoming productions. “You have to say ‘let’s get together and create art, not worry about professional or well-known. Let’s just do it because we love it!’ This is what Off the Wall is about.”
Zombies On Broadway runs June 20-30 at Off the Wall Theatre, 127 E. Wells St. For more information and tickets, visit offthewallmke.com or call 262-509-0945.
