Barbara Leigh, late 1970s.
“There comes a time,” said the wise, intrepid Milwaukee Public Theatre (MPT) co-founder Barbara Leigh, “when you go with the flow; and if the flow has stopped, you have to divert the stream.” After 45 years of remarkable original performances and deeply dedicated service to the community, Milwaukee Public Theatre will say goodbye with a big public party titled “Passing the Torch” on Sunday afternoon, April 28, from 3-6 p.m. at the Milwaukee Youth Art Center, 325 W. Walnut St.
The celebration is genuine. It’s about looking forward. The popular Bembé Drum and Dance Youth Performance Ensemble, MPT’s most recent project, will perform. Bembé will live on as its own non-profit company now. Close friends and artistic comrades Quasimondo Physical Theatre will also perform. They’ll become the proud inheritors of MPT’s many puppets, props and costumes. The party will feature other roving performances, a music jam and an open mic.
Independently and in collaboration with Quasimondo, Leigh will continue to make, perform and teach the unique performance art that’s been her signature since 1974, when she and the late great Michael Moynihan founded MPT’s parent company, Friends Mime Theatre. Their street theatre style, employing skillful commedia dell’arte clown techniques with music, dance, puppetry, poetry, parades and wildly colorful spectacles of all sorts, was always shaped to address the most serious real-life issues facing individuals and communities—issues such as sexual abuse, mental illness, end of life care, HIV/AIDS, bullying, nuclear power, racism and healing. MPT’s stages have been the city’s streets, parks, nursing homes, hospitals, schools and neighborhood centers. They’re Milwaukee’s original professional outreach theatre. But now, as Leigh put it, “Everybody is doing it. We’ve fulfilled our mission.”
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Leigh is currently creating a new clown character named Confusadora Spufatina. Confusadora is dealing with the realities of aging. That’s just one of several shows she plans to premiere soon. She’ll also continue to perform her celebrated one-woman show, The Survival Revival Revue, which tells the autobiographical story of overcoming, on many levels, the effects of a tragic car accident suffered while touring Wisconsin with Friends Mime Theatre in 1987, and a spinal injury that should have left her permanently bedridden according to doctors. It didn’t. Luckily for Milwaukee, she’s been unstoppable these 30-some years. Although MPT ends Sunday, her extraordinary work continues.
