Image via All-In Productions
'Red Days' cast (2026) - All-In Productions
The cast of All-In Productions' 'Red Day's from left to right: Nessiah Grace, Brittany Haut, Graham Olen and Patrice Hood (2026).
Nonprofit theater company All-In Productions continues with its tenth season. Red Days opens on Friday, September 11 at Pink Umbrella’s Accessible Theater House (1104 W. Historic Mitchell St.) and runs through Sunday, September 19. Directed by Erica Case and written by Rachel Bublitz, the coming-of-age drama tells the story of high school senior and star athlete Dianna Abel who, in a world impacted by worsening air quality and climate change, navigates both her final days of high school and her complicated relationship with her mother. Red Days is a seven show-run including an understudy performance on September 17; tickets may be purchased here.
“As a daughter and as a mom, and as somebody who’s tried to find my place in life multiple times, I felt connected to this story,” Case says. “Many of us have complicated relationships with our parents, and you can watch it not just for the coming-of-age and relationships, but also for the environmental underlay of it.” Though the company had already decided by summer to do Red Days, the historically bad air quality in Wisconsin caused by wildfire smoke this past July makes the play’s undercurrent hit home extra hard.
Case continues about the environmental component, “One of the messages is that we didn’t do anything early on and let it get worse and worse, so this is the moment for us to acknowledge it and decide. You’ve got the mom character in a different place in life, thinking this is just how it is and there’s nothing she can do, and then you’ve got a younger character thinking we have to do something because she’s still got to live on this earth for the next 70 or 80 years.”
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Generational Trauma
Red Days also touches on athletics and competitiveness as the perceived only way out of generational trauma. “The script really talks about a lot of these kids in high schools doing long-term damage to their body to achieve,” Case mentions. She watched during auditions how actors played against one another and where added depth could amplify the characters’ relationships. “We got an amazing amount of talent interested.”
The cast features Nessiah Grace as Dianna Abel, Brittany Haut as Connie Abel, Graham Olen as Andrew Lee and Patrice Hood as Leona Day, with an understudy cast of Madison Penzkover, Taylor Miñan, Ailie Snyder and Sarah Mankowski-Lahtrum.
Since its founding in 2014, All-In Productions has promoted equity and diversity within Milwaukee’s theater ecosystem, emphasizing accessible ticket pricing and incorporating elements of social consciousness into its work. Alex Scheurell, executive director, is one of three original co-founders alongside Robby and Mara McGhee. “We were looking to provide more paid opportunities for more actors and artists in the Milwaukee area,” Schuerell explains.
During its 2019-20 season, All-In began pushing for more diversity within Milwaukee theater from a more analytical, data-driven lens, picking up the work from Uprooted Theater by bringing back Wisconsin Diversity Generals (WDG), an initiative that assesses the racial demographic makeup of each local theater company’s production run. WDG is now co-facilitated by All-In and several like-minded companies.
“We recognized that there were a lot of homogenous, white-centered casts on our stages, so wanted to do better as a company and community and be more conscious of how we were selecting shows and roles,” Schuerell shares. “We want to bring good art but also art that sparks conversations and drives any degree of change within our city and state.” For more information, visit the All-In Productions website.
