'Dutchman' by Sunstone Studios
The intimate space, hidden behind a storefront across from the Pabst Theater, has been home to theater companies for at least 40 years, including Circle Stage and Off the Wall Theater. The newest occupants, Sunstone Studios MKE, coalesced during the time of COVID.
Sunstone Executive Director Amber Regan acted in Off the Wall’s final season and was familiar with the room, a black box theater seating 55-75 people. “We started a conversation around the only storefront theater in the Theater District,” she says. “Our initial thought was to rent the space to small companies as a communal space. We’re still working toward that goal.”
Meanwhile, Regan and her small team of mostly volunteers have produced plays in the black box theater under the Sunstone banner.
Their first show of the 2022-2023 season, The Lisbon Traviata, was the Milwaukee premiere of the Terrence McNally play about gay lovers in an operatic milieu. It was followed by the regional premiere of Steven Carl McCasland’s What Was Lost, a backstage drama about an actor in the twilight of her career. Next up is Amiri Baraka’s classic, Dutchman, running Nov. 4-19. Baraka was still called LeRoi Jones when he wrote the play in 1964; already the author of the seminal book on African American music, Blues People, he was on the cusp of fully embracing Black cultural nationalism and activism. Dutchman captured the roiling racial anxiety of American life through physical flirtation and emotional manipulation on a subway ride between a young Black man and a middle-age white woman.
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“His poetry comes through even in the stage directions,” Regan says. “The play tells a horribly uncomfortable story in a beautiful way. The story is timeless—because it could happen today.” Sunstone’s production will be costumed as in the ‘60s but the subway setting will suggest a slave ship on the Middle Passage between Africa and America.
Regan explains that Sunstone refers to the semi-precious stone found in North America symbolizing light into darkness. “I say to our directors, our designers, our actors—you can’t hide in a place this small,” she says of the black box theater. “It’s about working toward developing our craft. And it’s about audiences. We always ask for feedback. We don’t know what people are missing until they tell us!”
The black box may be intimate, but backstage, Sunstone has ample accommodations for mounting theater as well as studio-size rooms to rent for staged readings, film screenings, meetings and other activities.
Ten years ago, Milwaukee was home to several smaller theater spaces, including Alchemist and Boulevard theaters, the Underground Collaborative and Tenth Street Theater. Sunstone is trying to fill the gap. They also encourage submissions from local playwrights and afford space for workshopping and developing. Kenosha native Rick Bingen’s Whirligig of Time will run Dec.15-30.
Regan describes Sunstone as a “primarily female-led team working toward diversity in a thoughtful way. We are telling, doing work that is new and exciting but responsive to the stories of historically excluded communities.”
