Photo by Gaetano Marangelli
Zach Thomas Woods
Zach Thomas Woods as Benedict della Crosse (2025)
Fifty years ago, most Americans shared Martin Luther King Jr.’s maxim that the arc of history bends toward progress. Now that arc just seems bent. Milwaukee playwright Gaetano Marangelli wonders how we got here and has explored the shifting direction in Wisconsin settings through a series of plays, eventually forming a trilogy.
The trilogy’s part one, Iron County, debuted at Milwaukee Chamber Theatre in 2022. Set in a fictional Wisconsin backwater, Iron County observes how ‘60s counterculture slid into ‘70s disillusionment on a rural commune. Part two, The City of Benedict della Crosse, follows the election campaign by Ben, an idealistic Wisconsin political newcomer in 1988, as GOP strategist Lee Atwater unleashed a savagely manipulative campaign that helped turn American politics into a zero-sum game.
The City of Benedict della Crosse debuted as a reading at the MARN Art + Culture Hub in 2024 and was staged as a workshop performance last summer at the Wauwatosa Historical Society’s Kneeland-Walker House & Grounds. It will return to the grounds this month in a new, fully realized performance under a tent. Last year’s performance drew a large audience to one of the area’s less-known outdoor treasures. “Historical Society loved the play and wanted to do it again this summer,” Marangelli says. “The play has much to say about where we are as a society in advance of the election season.”
The cast of this year’s production includes familiar faces from Milwaukee theater such as Zach Thomas Woods, Ken Miller, Joe Picchetti, Keighley Sadler and Selena Milewski.
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The City of Benedict della Crosse is an intimate, closely observed exploration of the winner-take all, party-over-country bile that has contaminated American politics specifically and discourse generally. “Is the achievement of Ben’s goals worth the sacrifice of his ideals? Do we want our side to win at the expense of democracy? I ask my cast, ‘Is it power or ideals that Ben is after?’” Marangelli says. “The play speaks as urgently as ever to where we are as a democracy.”
Meanwhile, Marangelli is working on the trilogy’s part three, Devil’s Garden, set in the summer of 2016, a pivotal year for America (and the world). “The election is not mentioned but it’s there,” he says.
The City of Benedict della Crosse will be performed 7 p.m. July 29-30 as part of the Wauwatosa Historical Society’s Theater in the Garden series, at Kneeland-Walker House & Grounds, 7406 Hillcrest Drive, Wauwatosa. Tickets are $25. If purchased before Sunday, July 12, tickets are $20. For tickets, click wauwatosahistoricalsociety.org/event/theater-in-the-gardens-the-city-of-benedict-della-crosse-2/ or
wauwatosahistoricalsociety.org/event/theater-in-the-gardens-the-city-of-benedict-della-crosse-3/
