Milwaukee's Experimental Performance Co-op Investigates Non-Human Life

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The renowned Japanese theater director Tadashi Suzuki shares a history with Milwaukee. In a three-way partnership with UW-Milwaukee’s Professional Theater Training Program (PTTP) and the Milwaukee Repertory Theater in the 1980s, he brought his company here, introduced his celebrated actor training method and directed an unforgettable Japan-Milwaukee production of Euripides’ The Bacchae. His training program is as disciplined as ballet. The exercises combine Asian martial arts, drumming and meditation practices, among other things, and demand a total physical and mental commitment to the life of every moment.

Five years ago, the young Milwaukee actress Kelly Coffey enrolled in a Suzuki class at the Rep taught by Neal Easterling, an actor in the Rep’s Education Department. In Coffey’s words, “It brought everything I’ve learned about acting and movement together. I wanted to do more of it and I thought other people would want that. So I said to Neal, we should continue these classes somewhere in the community and maybe even perform. He was, like, yeah, and talked about starting a company. I hadn’t dreamed of that. So I said, ‘Sounds great, how does that work?’”

Easterling suggested creating a co-op for performing artists who want to originate work because “That hasn’t been done before,” Coffey said. Thus, Cooperative Performance Milwaukee was conceived as an experiment. Four and a half years later, the company has shortened its name to Cooperative Performance and constructed an exciting mission statement that emphasizes “the creation of original works and innovative performances unattainable through traditional means of production; to inspire deeper thought and discussion about the issues concerning our communities—both local and global. We achieve this by creating collaborative and cooperative networks, providing platforms for artist education and feedback, and utilizing unconventional forms that integrate diverse perspectives and artistic disciplines.”

Don Russell, a founding member and the current board chair, explained how it works. “We’re a non-profit and a cooperative which is a strange hybrid. What we’ve developed is a company with member owners and a very active board of directors, elected by the members, to guide it. Our season is chosen through a process where any artist member can pitch a project. We do this in January. Anybody in town can come and watch and vote for their favorites. Members get five votes, non-members get two votes. The shows with the most votes go to the board, which functions like an artistic director in a traditional theater. They look at which projects align with our mission, are financially viable and, most important, have the most votes. That’s how we operate as a co-op. Profit from ticket sales are divided among the makers of that performance. We don’t limit casting to members; most of our performers are non-members. People become members because they believe in the mission.”

In order to give patrons an active voice, there are patron members as well as artist members. All members pay small annual dues for four years, after which no dues are required. “We want Milwaukee to be flooded with experimental avant-garde performance work,” Russell continued. “Anybody who donates to us is donating to that ideal. We’re a very poor company but that actually supports our ideal because we’re not beholden to anybody.”

Jeff Grygny is an artist member and a playwright, theater critic and educator deeply versed in Buddhist meditation practices. He conceived the upcoming fall show, The Performance Ecology Project. Brian Rott, co-founder of the experimental Quasimondo Milwaukee Physical Theatre, directs a cast of three actors, a dancer, a musician and two poets.

On five recent Saturdays, Grygny and Rott took their cast into the wilds of the Milwaukee Rotary Centennial Arboretum between the Milwaukee River and the Riverside Branch of the Urban Ecology Center. There, professional teachers led “field sessions” in yoga, tai chi, meditation, contemporary dance and clowning. The cast then stayed on in the woods watching insects, birds and mammals and noting their observations and reflections in journals. These became the stuff of Grygny’s script, edited by Rott as he and his cast fashioned a music, theater and dance performance that will take place indoors and outdoors at the Urban Ecology Center. The subject: our relationship to non-human life, and perhaps, by extension, the future of the planet.

Suzuki classes, open to all, continue Mondays from 7-10 p.m. through Nov. 27 at the Underground Collaborative, 161 Wisconsin Ave. Actor Mark Corkins, who continued to work with Suzuki after graduating UWM’s PTTP program, teaches the class now, together with Russell whose practice combines that training with other contemporary techniques. Classes begin again in February. The season continues in February with Coffey and Russell’s Ellis, developed with writer Alejandra Gonzales, about Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Milwaukee immigrants. The stories will be gathered at a public workshop at Alverno College on Saturday, Oct. 21 from 9-11:30 a.m. You’re invited. Story submissions can also be emailed directly to Coffee through Oct. 31: kcoffey@cooperformke.com. Visit facebook.com/coopperformance/ for submission-writing instructions.

The Performance Ecology Project runs Oct. 15, 20, 22, 25, 28 and 29 at the Urban Ecology Center-Riverside, 1500 E. Park Place. Call 414-533-7308 or visit cooperativeperformance.org.