Photo credit: Christal Wagner Photography
The Constructivists
There are surely more young theater companies in Milwaukee today than the dozen or so I am aware of. Here are three that have impressed Shepherd Express writers with their professionalism and careful artistry. Each offers something different to the city. Proudly on the fringe, each is steadily gaining support.
Outskirts Theatre Company
The oldest company, at five years, has the youngest founder. While still a sophomore at Waukesha’s Carroll University, Ryan Albrechtson took a theater management class. “I really thought I was going to be a high school drama teacher, but I got into writing my own stuff and doing edgier pieces than I ever thought I’d be able to do,” he says. He switched to arts management and, with his professor’s help, founded his own theater. He staged performances in Waukesha for two years, beginning with the LGBTQ-supportive Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead. After graduation, he was joined by Allyson Imig who “does the day to day administration and keeps me organized.”
Albrechtson named the company both for its Waukesha location in relation to the big city of Milwaukee and for its mission to “create thought-provoking experimental theater that also serves as a call to action against social and moral injustices.” The company also aims to serve as a springboard to professional work for emerging theater artists and “to bridge the gap between Waukesha and Milwaukee Counties,” he says. “I feel like so few people go back and forth. We hope to make the Waukesha art scene a little more interesting to people from Downtown and other areas.”
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The new six-show season includes performances in both towns. It opens July 5-7 with The Amish Project at Waukesha Civic Theatre. This play, about a school shooting in an Amish community, is performed by a single actress (Abbi Hess) who plays victims, the gunman and community members. Outskirts will also restage its production of the feminist musical comedy Disenchanted! for the Milwaukee Fringe Festival.
Voices Found Repertory
Founders Alec Lachman, Andy Montano and Jake Russell Thompson, all in their 20s, met at a Shakespeare and Company summer training program in Massachusetts. Lachman and Montano are from the area; Thompson relocated from Oregon. The company has done mostly Shakespeare but also the ancient Greek classics Oedipus Rex and Medea, the world premiere of Theatre Games by area playwright Pharyne Stephney and the offbeat Tony-nominated Hand to God. Season Four opens in December with William Shakespeare’s Henry V then takes new turns with The Elephant Man in March and Spirits to Enforce by Chicagoan Mickle Maher next spring.
The group is a collective composed of actors, directors and designers, all under 30. Outreach director, actor and board member Claire Tidwell uses a line from Shakespeare to summarize the company’s mission: “Never say I was false of heart.” She emphasizes the collaborative rehearsal process as a defining feature. “There’s a lot of group exploration and opportunity for experimentation. It’s not just a director standing there saying do this, turn here. As an actor, I’ve never been challenged to think as much.”
Auditions are open to the community. Casting can be outside type; for example, Richard III was a woman. Anyone in town can pitch a script idea. “People started to panic when In Tandem decided to close, and The Alchemist shut their doors,” Tidwell says. “Well, there are other theaters here, and we’re not going to give up on you.” The company will perform scenes and demonstrate fight choreography at the Milwaukee Fringe.
The Constructivists
After 25 years in theater, 10 of them in Chicago with companies producing American premieres of European plays, Russian to English translations and vice versa, founder Jaimelyn Gray knew what she wanted. First, she wanted to live near her family in Milwaukee; second, to present plays that “punch you in the gut, make your blood pump,” as she says. She points to popular television programs like “Games of Thrones” and “The Walking Dead.” “There’s a need for that type of catharsis, that type of connectedness. It’s part of what the brain wants: to feel pain without feeling pain. And in theater, it’s having human experiences together with live humans onstage and live emotions in real time.”
With her husband’s support, she founded The Constuctivists last year. Her first season’s choices were outstanding: Gruesome Playground Injuries, The Pillowman and a new work called To Fall in Love. Playwright Sam Shepard’s angry post-9/11 comedy The God of Hell will open season two in September. “If more people liked theater, the world would be a better place,” she says. “I’m trying to do my part. I am really not happy with the state of the world. I can only do what I can do, hire actors, hire technicians and provide art to facilitate conversation, push buttons, shake gates. We all got a little too quiet, I think.”
Visit facebook.com/outskirtstheatre, voicesfoundrep.com and theconstructivists.org for more information.
