Photo courtesy of Milwaukee Rep
As the need for confinement swept over the nation, performing arts companies suffered disproportionately due the nature of their business. In Milwaukee, we’ve seen theaters close permanently due to lack of revenue to offset rent and expenses; so far, the city’s preeminent Repertory Theater is still holding out with rich virtual offerings.
The Rep launched “Our Home to Your Home,” a series of online events and content to enjoy from the safety of one’s domicile. It includes songs, podcasts, wellness videos, workshops and even short scenes acted out by The Rep’s lineup of actors who film themselves acting at home. To make this content even more exciting, the company commissioned some of the best playwrights out there to write short monologues about community and connectivity.
Original Plays and Shakespeare
Coming up next month is Mother’s Tongue, an original commissioned piece written by Benjamin Benne and based on his own experience as a Latino man teaching himself Spanish. “It’s a piece that takes place between a Spanish teacher and a student,” says May Adrales, The Rep’s associate artistic director. “The piece really brought me to tears because it encapsulates how we're yearning to connect, to communicate, and how isolating this time feels.
May Adrales will personally direct the following original play, How I Spent My Summer Vacation: a virtual report by Anne R., senior, written by Gina Femia, whom Adrales describes as “one of the most exciting writers who’s at the beginning of her career.” Actress Cher Alvarez, seen in Our Town on the Quadracci Powerhouse stage, will play a high school senior doing a virtual report.
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As Adrales envisions it, the video that will be shared on The Rep’s online platform will take the unique form of a Zoom call, complete with extras playing the role of a live audience. “My vision is to question how to make [a virtual performance] a live experience. The extras on the Zoom call have not experienced the play, and we’ll actually be capturing their reactions in real time; it’s how I imagined it to be the closest to theater,” Adrales explains.
Another offering from The Rep is the PlayOn series, which is a series of scenes and sonnets from William Shakespeare’s canon acted by actors at home, all of which offer their own take not only on the text but also on the presentation. “The actors at home are filming themselves, they’re serving as their own directors of photography,” Adrales says. That leads to a uniquely creative lineup of scenes from The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet and more.
Upcoming scenes in the PlayOn series include a monologue from As You Like It performed by Gregory Linington, a Hamlet monologue by Margaret Ivey, and a scene from Measure for Measure performed by Netta Walker and Ryan Imhoff. May Adrales, who will be directing the Measure for Measure scene, will take that chance to explore more storytelling possibilities of virtual theater. “We are going to be filming it partly on Zoom,” she says, “but we’ll also cut away to other things, like actors using their phones, to get different angles. I am interested in exploring the themes of surveillance, governance and individual empowerment with whatever newly found indie film skills we’re all developing.”
“This new stage that we have online is meant for people with ADD,” she jokes, referring to the shortness of content addressed to online audiences compared to regular theater—the Rep’s online content tends to be short scenes rather than full-on productions. “In our experience, it feels like 10 minutes seems to be the attention span that people have online. It's a whole new medium, and we have to really think about how to use this platform and how to make an impact. How are we going to create something that is theatrical, interesting and innovative?”
Even though it was forced upon them, the Milwaukee Repertory Theater takes advantage of the virtual platform they now rely on to explore and innovate. As May Adrales puts it, “It’s been actually kind of exciting to work with those constraints and see how theater people can be creative!”
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