The nonprofit Express Yourself Milwaukee (ExYoMKE) provides low-income Milwaukee youth ages 7-21 a yearlong multidisciplinary arts experience that helps them learn what a powerful tool art can be for healthy, positive self-expression. Each year the organization puts on a themed culmination performance created by the young people and professional artists working in collaboration. This year’s show features about 120 kids out of the 1,200 that ExYoMKE has worked with throughout this year at its studio and 14 different sites, as well as numerous professional artists.
Titled Illuminate, the show explores “the light that we have within, the light that guides us and the light that we share in the world,” says Lori Vance, ExYoMKE founder and co-executive director. Those ideas are represented through dance, music, spoken word and visual arts. The show travels underwater to land to the night sky and includes a firefly piece, a luminary tree and a magical underwater sea creature that navigates viewers through the storyline.
“What I really love is that the depth of the work actually gets a place to be witnessed by our community. We get to celebrate the joy and the light of kids, the lightness of youth, but it also really opens up in a powerful way what kids are facing in terms of the chaos in our communities and issues of racial inequity and access. Those issues come through in a way that helps us positively address them instead of talking about how horrible things are,” Vance says. “And the audience coming—that’s as important as the kids on stage. I feel like this audience presence is the place where we tell these kids they’re amazing, and they feel it.”
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Illuminate takes place at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 12 at the Milwaukee Theatre, 500 W. Kilbourn Ave. The event is open to the public and is free of charge. For more information and tickets, call 414-272-3498 or visit expressyourselfmilwaukee.org.
Theatre Happenings:
First Stage finishes out its 29th season with the 20th-anniversary commemoration of Wisconsin author Kevin Henkes’ book Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse. Follow Lilly as she learns about sharing and cooperation May 13-June 12 at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts’ Todd Wehr Theater (929 N. Water St.). For tickets, call 414-273-7206 or visit firststage.org.
The Tony Award-winning musical Fiddler on the Roof, which centers on a poor dairyman and his family, where a “universal theme of tradition cuts across barriers of race, class, nationality and religion,” comes to Racine Theatre Guild (2519 Northwestern Ave., Racine) May 13-29. For tickets, call 262-633-4218 or visit racinetheatre.org.
Lights! Camera! Soul! presents Daniel Beaty’s Emergency, “a stirring commentary on what it is to be human and the longing to be free” told by slaves seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time. Show runs May 13-14 at 7:30 p.m. and May 15 at 2:30 p.m. at the Body & Soul Healing Arts Center, 3617 N. 48th St. For more information and tickets, call 800-838-3006 or visit emergency.brownpapertickets.com.
Sunset Playhouse’s upcoming Children’s Theater Series performance is The Little Red Hen Remix, “a time-tested tale about hard work and its rewards.” Show runs May 11-14 at the Furlan Auditorium, 800 Elm Grove Road. For tickets, call 262-782-4430 or visit sunsetplayhouse.com.
Cream City Theater’s Same Time Next Year, by Bernard Slade, is a story of a love affair between Doris and George who, married to other people, have rendezvoused once a year for 25 years. See this hilarious show about manners and morals, May 13-22 at Inspiration Studios, 1500 S. 73rd St. For tickets, visit creamcitytheater.com.
Fast-talking Tupperware pioneer Dixie Longate hosts her Off Broadway show Dixie’s Tupperware Party at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts’ Vogel Hall May 12-15. At this real Tupperware party, Dixie discusses how she became a woman entrepreneur and remains one of the top sales women in the country. For tickets call 414-273-7206 or visit marcuscenter.org. For more information on Dixie, visit dixielongate.com.
