Marija Temo, flamenco guitar instructor at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music will host a three-day event on the communication and interaction of flamenco guitar, vocals and dance.
Numerous plays start up this week in and around Milwaukee, including Shrek—The Musical Jr., 101 Dalmatians—Kids, King John, Hello, Dolly!, This Other Love and more.
THEATRE
Shrek Meets 101 Dalmatians
SMPAC summer Youth Theatre offers two kid-friendly shows
If you’re looking for something a little different to entertain your kids (or nephews, nieces, et al.) this summer, why not take them to one or both of the kid-friendly live musical theater productions taking place at the inviting South Milwaukee Performing Arts Center? The SMPAC’s Youth Theatre students (variously aged 6 to 18) will be performing DreamWorks’ Shrek—The Musical Jr. and Disney’s 101 Dalmatians—Kids.
As SMPAC’s Michelle Majerus-Uelmen says, “Beauty is in the eye of the ogre in Shrek—The Musical Jr., based on the Oscar-winning DreamWorks animated film and fantastic Broadway musical.” Similarly, 101 Dalmatians—Kids is “based on the classic animated film” and is “a fur-raising adventure featuring Cruella De Vil, Disney’s most outrageous villain and 101 of the most adorable heroes to set their paws onstage.” Junior students (6-11 years old) will perform in Dalmatians; Senior students (12-18) will comprise Shrek’s cast.
July 15 at 1 and 6 p.m. (Dalmatians); July 28-30 (Shrek) at South Milwaukee PAC, 901 15th Ave., South Milwaukee. For tickets, call 414-766-5049 or visit southmilwaukeepac.org.
King John
Even fans of The Bard may not have ever read, seen or even heard of King John, one of William Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays. It’s a history play in which he staged crucial events during the reign of King John (r. 1199–1216), one of England’s most execrable monarchs. The story of the loathsome and error-prone John may sound familiar in today’s American political landscape, but the creative team behind this Voices Found Repertory production has opted not to belabor such parallels. As they supportively put it, “Certainly we find ourselves in an ugly point of history, but if Shakespeare has anything to say about ugliness, it’s that it will, eventually, pass.” It is, indeed, somewhat comforting to know that, as bad as things may be, history shows us we’ve been down so many analogous roads before.
July 12-22 at The Underground Collaborative, 161 W. Wisconsin Ave. For tickets and more information (including about the “King John Art Exhibition”) visit voicesfoundrep.com.
Hello, Dolly!
It’s always interesting to trace the artistic lineage of well-known musical and theatrical pieces. Take Hello, Dolly!, for example. There’s the Oscar-winning 1969 film with Barbra Streisand in the title role. This came from the 1964 musical with lyrics and music by Jerry Herman and book by Michael Stewart (with Carol Channing in a career-making performance) that won 10 Tony Awards (a record Dolly held for 37 years). That musical was based on Thornton Wilder’s 1955 play, The Matchmaker, which itself was a revamped Wilder farce of 1938 called The Merchant of Yonkers. Clearly there’s a fascinating and entertaining story here. A live performance of the glorious Herman and Stewart musical takes to the stage this month in a Sunset Playhouse production starring Liz Norton as widowed socialite-cum-matchmaker Dolly Levi.
July 13-Aug. 6 at Furlan Auditorium, 800 Elm Grove Road. For tickets, call 262-782-4430 or visit sunsetplayhouse.com.
Always…Patsy Cline
Country music fan or not, it’s likely you’ve heard at least one of legendary songstress Patsy Cline’s recordings. Her huge crossover hits such as “Crazy,” “I Fall to Pieces,” “Sweet Dreams” and “Walking After Midnight” can be heard anywhere from radio to film soundtrack—even now, more than half a century after her tragic death at the age of 30. Always…Patsy Cline is a character portrait and tribute as told through her friend, Louise Seger (Anne Mollerskov). In this Racine Theatre Guild production, Kate Potter-Barrow portrays Cline. An instrumental quintet provides accompaniment for the songs.
July 14-23 at Racine Theatre Guild, 2519 Northwestern Ave. For tickets, call 262-633-4218 or visit racinetheatre.org.
The Wayward Women
Subtitled, An Amazon Sex Comedy in Elizabethan Verse, this new comedy by Jared McDaris (per Theater RED) “pits hapless men against powerful amazons!” To explain a bit further, the plot involves two men who arrive (by mischance) upon the shores of the island of Amosa, where traditional gender roles are totally opposite from what they’ve known heretofore. The men quickly find themselves pawns in a game of one-upwomanship. Theater RED continues: “With overt nods and subtle allusion to [Shakespeare], The Wayward Women is a comedy-pastoral about generational norms, fluid morality (and gender roles) and good old-fashioned sex.”
July 12-22 at The Alchemist Theatre, 2569 S. Kinnickinnic Ave. For tickets, visit theaterred.com.
This Other Love
“She made a great impression on me,” says Patty McCarty of the central character of her play, This Other Love. “When I was growing up, we were poor, and Dorothy Day was the first person I knew in favor of voluntary poverty—a ministerial vow of renouncing material possessions.” Day, whom McCarty met when the former lectured at Marquette University in 1955, founded The Catholic Worker newspaper and wrote The Long Loneliness, an autobiography. Day’s stance on personal poverty and society (“some people say she would favor anarchy if she could be the chief anarch,” McCarty explains) made her part of the counter-culture of her day, and certainly something of an outlier in her own faith.
July 14-23 at Concordia University’s Todd Wehr Auditorium, 12800 N. Lake Shore Drive, Mequon. For tickets, call 414-744-5995 or visit acaciatheatre.com.
DANCE:
Temo Flamenco Communication Intensive
This will be “a three-day event on the communication and interaction of flamenco guitar, vocals and dance with guest contemporary flamenco dancer Wendy Clinard,” says Marija Temo, flamenco guitar instructor at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. This is the first such event for our city and will include (as Temo explains) “coaching sessions, workshops, flamenco instructions, an improvised performance and a flamenco juerga.” “Juerga?” you say. Yes. That means it’s time to party! The event is open to everyone from the passingly curious to the most ardent aficionado of all things flamenco.
July 14-16 at The Cathedral Church of All Saints, 818 E. Juneau Ave. The July 15 Flamenco Juerga takes place at Gibraltar, 538 W. National Ave. Visit marijatemo.com for detailed information and to sign up.
