Jeff Frank
For the first time ever, First Stage will produce a full-length Broadway musical, the Tony Award-winning Matilda, this January-February. It seemed a good time to ask artistic director Jeff Frank what’s going on there.
How do you see First Stage now?
We’re an organization, I think, that has done really great and meaningful work in 32 years, and part of what’s allowed us to keep our strength is a desire to keep getting better, knowing we haven’t arrived at our final destination. We tell each young person, and each older person, that works with us that we’re a place where they can take their next steps as artists and as individuals. With that being the philosophy, you challenge yourself as an organization to be doing the exact same thing.
You’re expanding your school programs?
The teachers have input into how we choose our season and how we can enhance their existing curriculum. So now we have literacy programs, enhancing literacy through dramatic exploration, in a significant number of schools. We’re also doing more specific actor training in schools, finding ways for young people to connect with an art, to discover “oh, this is my gift that I would never have known were it not for First Stage!” Or they come to see a play and see someone like them up on stage and say, “I want to do that.” There are so many stories of those kids.
And new play development?
We’re in our third season of our play-reading series, The Foundry—that idea of forging the next generation of new plays, new artists and new audiences. So now a piece that emerges from The Foundry that really challenges audiences will be a FORGE production with a complete run in the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center where we present a more intimate experience and have talk-backs and supportive break-out workshops for schools and public audiences. For me, the FORGE has become the place where we will do the latest and greatest thought-provoking, community building work, whether it’s something we develop or something that’s just a really strong artistic piece that the community needs and that we need to do as artists. This winter, Locomotion will be our first FORGE production. It’s about the power of poetry and art.
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And in December, Girls in the Boat?
That was part of our Foundry reading series. It’s the second original work that’s been developed especially for our Young Company. We were fortunate enough to have a strong connection with the Milwaukee Rowing Club so the cast is getting practical training in rowing. It’s all about the first U.S. Women’s Rowing team as they’re preparing for their first Olympics. We decided to do it with an entirely female cast, although some of the characters are male.
Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is another world premiere?
Yes. It’s a Theatre for Young Audiences version of the Broadway show that we’ve developed with Adventure Theatre in Maryland. In this casting, Huck and Jim are much closer in age. And in April, we’ll become the second theatre to do Tinker Bell which tells the Peter Pan story from her totally unique viewpoint.
Why the full Broadway version of Matilda?
It’s the perfect show for us. It’s about a young girl who’s in really difficult circumstances who finds out that even if you’re little you can do a lot—and that sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty. You can’t be complacent. You’ve got to step outside your comfort zone. You’ve got to take risks to create change in the world. That little bit of rebellion, I think, is admirable. So, I think for an institution that believes that young people will change the world, we have to offer them guidance and nurture them toward becoming the best version of themselves. Then they can help the community become the best version of the community. And expand from there. So we’re taking a risk, stepping outside our comfort zone, doing something that’s twice as long as the things we normally do, adding rehearsals, adding training boot camps for the young actors. It’s a powerful, great piece that we should do, so we’re going to find a way to get it done and we’re doing to do it really, really well.
For more on First Stage, visit firststage.org.
