Winter Arts Guide
53212 Presents
Alfons Gallery
Closed until further noticeAll In Productions
American Players Theatre (APT)
Aperi Animam
Arts @ Large
Bach Chamber Choir
- A Light Shines featuring Vivaldi's “Gloria,” with chamber orchestra, Jan. 8
Bel Canto Chorus
Black Arts MKE
Black Holocaust Museum
Boerner Botanical Gardens
Bombshell Theatre Co.
- The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Jan. 6-15, Sunset Playhouse
Robbyn Wilks plays brothel proprietor Mona Stangley in Bombshell’s production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. The late 1970s country musical makes its way to Sunset Playhouse’s Marla Eichmann Studio Theater in Elm Grove. The warm, small town Texas atmosphere of the beloved musical should have no trouble filling the intimate, little studio theater space in a production that features classy vintage ’70s costuming. (Russ Bickerstaff)
Boulevard Theatre
Bronzeville Arts Ensemble
Cabaret Milwaukee
Carroll College Theatre
Carthage College Theatre
- FML: How Carson McCullers Saved My Life, Feb.24-26, March 2-4
Catey Ott Dance Collective
Cedarburg Art Museum
- “The American Scene through the Eyes of Gerrit V. Sinclair,” through Jan. 8, 2023
Gerrit V. Sinclair (1880-1950) was a Milwaukee painter and art instructor associated with American Regionalism, a movement that applied the simplified lines of modernism to representations of everyday life—a truck rolling past red barns on a country road as twilight descends. Sinclair’s paintings were unusual among the Regionalists for being softly lit, endowing his scenes with atmosphere. (David Luhrssen)
- “Judith Friebert: Pastel Pastures,” through Jan. 8, 2023
- “Art of Charles Porteus,” Jan. 26-April 16
Cedarburg Cultural Center
- Finally Friday: Off Brand, Jan. 6
- Finally Friday: The Wanna Be’s, Feb. 3
- “The Little Show: CCC’s Annual Juried Exhibit,” through February
Charles Allis Art Museum
- “Connecting Galleries: Contemporary + Experimental,” through Jan. 29
The Constructivists
Concord Chamber Orchestra
- “The Spice of Life,” Jan. 29, North Shore Congregational Church
Concordia University
Covered Bridge Art Studio Tour
DanceCircus
Dead Man’s Carnival
Early Music Now
- Sequentia: “Charms, Riddles and Elegies of the Medieval Northlands”, Feb. 4
Ex Fabula
First Stage
- Carmella Full of Wishes, Jan. 20-Feb. 12
- The Hobbit, Feb. 3-March 5, Milwaukee Youth Arts Center
The engaging drama of Tolkien’s classic fantasy comes to life in a brisk 90-minute program as director Jeff Frank presents First Stage’s production of The Hobbit. The magic of Middle Earth fuses with the wonder of live theater. Frank has a talent for conjuring big adventure to small stage environments in one of the best children’s theatre programs in the country. (Russ Bickerstaff)
Frank Juarez Gallery
Frankly Music
Gallery 218
GHS Dramatic Impact
- Steel Magnolias, Feb. 3-5, Germantown Performing Arts Center
Playwright Robert Harling’s 1989 story of close friendship gets an intriguing staging this winter with Steel Magnolias. An ensemble entirely consisting of very young actors play women dealing with a great many stresses set in a beauty parlor in Louisiana. The powerful immediacy of the drama is amplified with audiences seated directly onstage at the Germantown Performing Arts Center. (Russ Bickerstaff)
Greendale Community Theatre
- Greendale Community Theatre’s 20 Year Reunion, Jan. 7
Grohmann Museum
- “A Time of Toil and Triumph: Selections from the Shogren-Meyer Collection of American Art,” through Feb. 26
Grove Gallery
Haggerty Museum of Art
- “Tomas Saraceno: Entangled Air,” Jan. 20-May 21
Harley-Davidson Museum
- “Off-Road Harley-Davidson,” continuing
- Building a Milwaukee Icon: HD’s Juneau Ave. Factory, continuing
- Tsunami Motorcycle Display, continuing
H. F. Johnson Gallery of Art
Hover Craft
Hyperlocal MKE
Inspiration Studios Art Gallery
- The Rogues Artists, “Zodiac,” February Voices Found Repertory, The Tempest, February 10-19
Irish Cultural and Heritage Center
Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts
Jewish Museum Milwaukee
- “Jews in Space: Members of the Tribe in Orbit,” through Feb. 5, 2023
From the lunar calendar that determines the dates of the holy days through … Spaceballs? The exhibition on Jews and the art, faith, science and entertainment of space will circle through the centuries for material in this traveling exhibit assembled by the Center for Jewish History & the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. (David Luhrssen)
John Michael Kohler Arts Center
- “Angela U. Drakeford: In bloom at the end of the world,” through April 16
KACM Theatrical Productions
Kettle Moraine Symphony
Lake Arts Project
Latino Arts, Inc.
- Tenth Annual Guitar Festival Concert, Feb. 4
- “Between Yesterday and Where, The Magic of Macondo,” through Feb. 17
Lily Pad Gallery West
Lynden Sculpture Garden
Marcus Performing Arts Center
- My Fair Lady, Jan 3-8
Most of us think of Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle, the lower-class Londoner molded into a lady by Prof. Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison). But the genesis of the screenplay circulated well before the 1964 film, starting with George Bernard Shaw’s stage play Pygmalion, the inspiration for the 1956 Lerner and Loewe musical My Fair Lady. Milwaukeeans will have a chance to catch the popular Broadway revival. (David Luhrssen)
- Champions Of Magic, Jan 13-14
- 39th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Celebration, Jan 16
- Step Afrika!, Jan 19
- Carmela Full Of Wishes, Jan 20-Feb 12
MARN Art + Culture Hub
- “The Further We Reach, The Closer We See,” through Jan. 22
Exhibit features work by 30 visual artists in many media from Southeast Wisconsin responding to the challenge of visualizing “a greater understanding of our lived reality, memory, human history and environment by indexing the past, present and future.” (Frank Grey)
Marquette University Theatre
Master Singers of Milwaukee
- “Take My Hand,” Feb. 26, Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church
Material Studios + Gallery
Memories Dinner Theatre
Menomonee Falls Symphony
Milwaukee Art Museum
- “James Benning and Sharon Lockhart: Over Time, Chapter II,” through Jan. 1
- “On Repeat: Serial Photography,” through Jan. 1
- “David Claerbout: The Close,” through Jan. 8
- “After Ashcan: The 14th Street School,” through March 26, 2023
- “Playing Favorites: Spotlight on the Petullo Collection,” through April 2, 2023
- “A Very Strong Likeness of Her: Portraiture and Identity in the British Colonial World,” through April 9, 2023
- “The Ashcan School and the Eight: Creating a National Art,” through Feb. 19, 2023
The Milwaukee Art Museum’s “The Ashcan School and The Eight: Creating a National Art” allows us to see America in the early 20th century, a time of great cultural upheaval, a nation shapeshifting in its peculiar genius—troubled, compulsively creative, proud, and quotidian. It was also struggling through World War I. Yet immigrants poured in, adding diversity, labor energy, and societal tension. Perhaps more than anything, modernism’s post-industrial revolution had shackled and inspired America. (Kevin Lynch)
Milwaukee Ballet
- “Originals,” Feb. 9-12, Pabst Theatre
Each choreographer for this season’s contemporary ballet showcase won first place in “Genesis,” the international choreographic competition created in 2005 by Michael Pink, who’s celebrating his 29th year as the Ballet’s artistic director. First place includes the opportunity to create a second world premiere with dancers the winner now knows; thus, the young socially conscious 2022 winner Price Suddarth can delve even deeper. Timothy O’Donnell, the 2009 winner and now decade-long, ever-surprising resident artist will stage his sixth company premiere; and 2007 winner Nelly van Bommel will restage her 2008 hit Gelem, Gelem, an emotional journey named for the Romani people’s “national anthem.” (John Schneider)
Milwaukee Chamber Theater
- Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Jan. 20-Feb.12
Milwaukee Children's Choir
- All Choir Concert featuring Milwaukee Youth Chorale, Lyric Chorale, Preparatory Choir & Introductory Choir, Feb. 25
Milwaukee Comedy
Milwaukee Festival Brass
Winter Concert, Feb. 25Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design
- “Art Against the Odds: Wisconsin Prison Art Exhibition,” opens Jan. 19
Milwaukee Makers Market
Milwaukee Opera Theatre
- Requiem, Jan. 29, Plymouth Church
- Rusalka, Feb. 9-12, Danceworks Studio Theatre
The hour-long adaptation of the Dvorak opera features English dialogue and narration by Jason Powell with sung passages in Czech. “This is our seventh collaboration with Danceworks in which dance and opera will be woven together throughout,” says MOT’s artistic director Jill Anna Ponasik. “Our ‘orchestra’ will be piano and harp, and the piece will be performed in the intimate Danceworks studio, with the audience inches from the performers.” (David Luhrssen)
Milwaukee Repertory Theater
- Beehive: the 60s Musical, through Jan. 15, Stackner Cabaret
Beehive is a trip of a trip down memory lane for those old enough to remember The Mashed Potato (dance move) and “I Sold My Heart to the Junkman” (not literally, just a song title). Call it familiar, nostalgic, even “comfort food for the ears.” But how sweet it is to be reminded of moments in time hearing these classic tunes. (Harry Cherkinian)
- Much Ado About Nothing, Jan. 10-Feb. 12, Quadracci Powerhouse
Shakespeare’s best plays have often been transposed to settings unimaginable in his lifetime. The Rep’s Associate Artistic Director Laura Braza sets Shakespeare’s romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing in the 1990s—an era many of us have begun to look back on with wistful nostalgia. Beatrice and Benedick, Hero and Claudio are bound to entertain in whatever period costumes they may wear. (David Luhrssen)
- “Dino! An Evening with Dean Martin,” Jan. 20-March 19; Stackner Cabaret
- The Heart Sellers, Feb. 7-March 19, Stiemke Studio
Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra
- Ghostbusters, film with orchestra, Jan. 1
- “Water Festival,” Jan. 20-Feb. 4, Bradley Symphony Center
Milwaukee is a city built on water, so why not a Water Festival from the city’s symphony orchestra? The three-week program begins with the percussive Water Concerto by contemporary composer Tan Dunn along with Smetana’s The Moldau, Adolphus Hailstork’s American Port of Call and Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Interludes (Jan. 20-21). The music is varied but the common theme is apparent. The following weeks bring “Neptune & Water” (Jan. 27-29) featuring Rameau, Vivaldi and (you guessed it) Handel’s Water Music; and the time-traveling, globe-spinning “Toward the Sea” (Feb. 3-4) with Mendelssohn, Takemitsu, David Ludwig, Helene Grime and—of course—Debussy’s Le mer. (David Luhrssen)
- Salon Series With Matthew Ernst And MSO Brass, Feb. 2
Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra
Milwaukee Youth Theatre
- Rhythmic Revolution, Jan. 2
- Prelude Wind Ensemble Winter Concert, Feb. 2
Museum of Wisconsin Art
MOWA | DTN (Saint Kate-The Arts Hotel)
- “Strange Lands: The Works of Sky Hopinka, Chris Cornelius, and Tom Antell,” through Jan. 8, 2023
The exhibition showcases work by three Indigenous Americans. “I was drawn to the ambiguity of these artists’ work—these artworks offer a tangential experience, grounded as much in a realm of dream as the history of the known world,” said the exhibit’s guest curator Rafael Francisco Salas. (Frank Grey)
MOWA on the Lake (St. John’s on the Lake)
Next Act Theatre
- There Is a Happiness That Morning Is, Feb. 23-March 18
Mickle Maher’s There Is a Happiness That Morning Is resides in romance and balance. Talented director Mary MacDonald Kerr brings a comedy in rhyming verse to Next Act Theatre. The magnetic Cassandra Bissell is Ellen: a college lecturer delivering a presentation that is preceded by a similar lecture by Neil Brookshire in the role of Bernard. Ellen and Bernard have had relations beyond the classroom which they explain in rhyme. (Russ Bickerstaff)
Nō Studios
North Shore Academy of the Arts
facebook.com/northshoreacademyofthearts
- “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” Jan. 3-27
Northern Sky Theater
Oconomowoc Arts Center
- “The Hunker-up with Michael Perry,” Jan. 6-7
- Jason Gillette and The Showtime Big Band, Jan. 14
- Girls’ Weekend, Jan. 26-28
- Disney’s Newsies Jr., Feb. 9-11
- Disney’s The New Little Mermaid Jr., Feb. 23-25
Oil Gallery Milwaukee
Optimist Theatre
Outskirts Theatre
- Heathers The Musical, Jan. 6-8, Jan. 13-14, Waukesha Civic Theatre
Over Our Head Players
- “Snowdance: 10 Minute Comedy Competition,” Jan.27-Feb.26
Peninsula Players
PianoArts
Portrait Society Gallery
- “Butterfly Queens: Rosemary Ollison and Della Wells,” through Jan. 12
Present Music
- “Future Folk Machine” Feb. 17-18, Jan Serr Studio
“This is a direct reference to the inscription on Pete Seeger's banjo,” says Present Music’s Co-Artistic Director Eric Segnitz. Because of cancellations, PM’s originally scheduled February concert was replaced by a different program featuring diverse composers including Gyorgy Ligeti, Morris Kliphuis & Lucky Fonz III. Segnitz describes Unsuk Chin’s “Gougalon” as “a childhood recollection of scenes from a street theatre in her native South Korea. An ‘imaginary folk music’ of grinning fortune-tellers, fake magicians and snake-oil salesmen, it blends the grotesque with an Asiatic sound world.” (David Luhrssen)
Racine Art Museum
- “Collection Focus: Randall Darwall,” through Jan. 7
- “Quiet Elegance: The Jewelry of Eleanor Moty,” through Jan. 28
- “Ram Showcase: Russel T. Gordon and James Tanner,” through Feb. 11
- “David R. Harper: Zodiac,” through Feb. 11
- “Dynamic Duos: Collaborative Glass Artists,” through Feb. 11
- “RAM Showcase: Focus on Glass,” through May 27
- “On Fire: Surveying Women in Glass,” through July
Racine Symphony Orchestra
Musical Flights, Feb. 10Sacra Nova Chorale
Saint Kate - The Arts Hotel
Seat of Our Pants Reader Theatre
Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts
- Katie Dahl, Jan. 20
- Ana Vidovic, Feb. 11
- Elmbrook 3-Minute Film Festival, Feb. 12
- Michael Shynes, Feb. 17
- Anthony Nunziata, Feb. 22
Skylight Music Theatre
- Evita, Feb. 3-19 Some critics snickered when Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice released Evita as a rock opera in 1976. But after it migrated to London’s West End by 1978, Evita began its ascent into the popular musical pantheon, complete with seven Tony awards and a film version starring Madonna and Antonio Banderas. The Milwaukee show will be directed and choreographed by Gustavo Zajac with Rána Roman as Eva Perón and Andrew Varela as Juan Perón. (David Luhrssen)
Sunset Playhouse
- The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Jan. 6-15. Bombshell Theatre Love, Sex, And the I.R.S., Jan. 19-Feb. 5 “Broadway’s Best: Schwartz & Sondheim,” Jan. 23-24 “Best of Bacharach,” Feb. 9-12 Mostly Monsterly, Feb. 22-25
Theatre Gigante
Theatrical Tendencies
Third Avenue Playhouse, Sturgeon Bay
Thrasher Opera House, Green Lake
- Charlie Parr, Jan. 6
- Missoula Children’s Theatre, The Frog Prince, Jan. 21
Tory Folliard Gallery
UW-Parkside Theatre
UW-Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts
- “Winterdances,” Feb. 2-5, Mainstage Theatre
- “Fiber//Form 2023,” Feb. 3-17, Kenilworth Square East
- Jazz Ensemble, Feb. 9, Jan Serr Studio
- Miscast, Feb. 11, Music Recital Hall
- Elena Abend and Melinda Lee Masur, Music Recital Hall, Feb. 16, Music Recital Hall
- Wind Ensemble and Symphony Band, Feb. 17, Helene Zelazo Center for the Performing Arts
UWM Union Art Gallery
UW-Whitewater Crossman Gallery
UW-Whitewater Theatre
Village Playhouse
Walker's Point Center for the Arts
Warehouse Art Museum
- “Rediscover Ruth Grothenrath: All Things Belong to this Earth,” opens Jan. 13
Waukesha Civic Theatre
- Heathers the Musical, Jan. 6-15
- Always a Bridesmaid, Feb. 3-19
West Allis Players
West Bend Theatre Company
West Performing Arts Center
Wild Space Dance Company
Windfall Theatre
Wisconsin Center
- “Beyond Monet,” through Jan. 8
The immersive art experience is a breathtaking testament to the work of Impressionist artist Claude Monet. Complete with 400 of Monet’s works and accompanied by an original score, “Beyond Monet” is a tribute to the struggles, depths, life and work of an artist who deeply believed in the message of his art. (Elizabeth Lintonen)
Wisconsin Craft
Wisconsin Lutheran College Center for Arts and Performance
- WLC Jazz Festival Concert, Jan. 21
- Ko-Thi Dance Company, Feb. 3
- Piano Celebrations Series, Feb. 11
- WLC Theater, Eleven Stations of Shakespeare, Feb. 16-19
- Philomusica String Quartet, Feb. 20
Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Art
- “Fifth Fiber Arts Biennial: Hide + Seek,” through January
- “Winter Quilts Show: Hearts All Around,” Feb. 11
Woodland Pattern Book Center
Wustum Museum of Fine Arts
- “Focus on Glass,” through May 2023
The exhibition is a celebration of four unique glass artists from diverse backgrounds: Jose Chardiet, Brett Kee Young, Acquaetta Williams and Etsuko Nishi. According to museum organizer Lena Vigna, the exhibit aims to not only “reflect the variety of artists making contemporary work” but also display the “different components of working with the material and how artists appreciate it.” (Jenny Maurer)
