This is the start of what I hope will be a long and happy relationship with you, OnMilwaukee.com and me. After 41 years in the daily newspaper business, the last 29 as theater critic for the Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, I am here, no longer reliant on printing presses and paper carriers.
I plan to deliver to your screens a mix of stage news, reviews and feature stories via a weekly column appearing on Thursdays and occasional blog postings like this. Come and visit me here often.
The Milwaukee Repertory Theater is moving ahead with installing its new theater management team. Dawn Helsing Wolters settled into the managing director's seat last week, fresh from getting married, moving here from Chicago and buying a Waukesha County house with her new hubby. Her last stop was Chicago's highly respected Court Theatre, where she was executive director for nearly four years.
As managing director, Helsing Wolters is responsible for the business side of the Rep. The company is now searching for an artistic director because the upcoming season will be longtime AD Joe Hanreddy's last. The search has narrowed to three candidates, and although the Rep's staff and board have zipped their lips in declining to reveal the identities of the applicants, I did some digging and discovered a few intriguing bits of information.
One of the finalists is under 40 and another is under 50. One is female and another does not currently live in the U.S. None of those on the short list has had any previous association with the Rep. I have had a hunch that the artistic director search committee was looking to make a clean break with the company's Hanreddy era, and that appears to be happening.
The artistic director determines the substance and style of what the Rep puts on stage, and because the company is by far the biggest stage troupe in town, the person holding the position indirectly affects the entire theater community. Expect a decision on the new artistic director to be announced in September.
Dale Gutzman's return to the Skylight Opera Theatre to write and direct the final show of its 50th anniversary season is one of the flowers to sprout and bloom in the wake of the company's toxic and tumultuous summer. He will author and stage "An Evening with Gilbert and Sullivan," a recognition that the Skylight's early identity was closely tied to W.S. Gilbert's and Arthur Sullivan's comic operettas.
Gutzman was heavily involved with the Skylight in the 1970s and ‘80s as a performer, director and writer, and he told me a while back that directing again for the company was his greatest ambition. We have an extraordinary community of dedicated theater folks in Wisconsin, and none has personally sacrificed more for the love of the art than Gutzman. It is quite wonderful that his dream will come true.
Speaking of the Skylight, it is holding a free open house from 5 to 10 p.m. Sept. 1 at the Broadway Theatre Center, 158 N. Broadway. An outdoor concert in Catalano Square, indoor performances by Colin Cabot, Norman Moses and magician David Seebach, and backstage tours with costume, set and prop displays will be offered. Food and beverages will be sold in the Skylight Bar & Bistro.
I'm off to Spring Green Thursday to catch the opening of "Long Day's Journey into Night" at the American Players Theatre's new indoor performance space, the Touchstone Theatre. Read about it in my first official OnMilwaukee.com column Sept. 3.
Damien has been around so long, he was at Summerfest the night George Carlin was arrested for speaking the seven dirty words you can't say on TV. He was also at the Uptown Theatre the night Bruce Springsteen's first Milwaukee concert was interrupted for three hours by a bomb scare. Damien was reviewing the concert for the Milwaukee Journal. He wrote for the Journal and Journal Sentinel for 37 years, the last 29 as theater critic.
During those years, Damien served two terms on the board of the American Theatre Critics Association, a term on the board of the association's foundation, and he studied the Latinization of American culture in a University of Southern California fellowship program. Damien also hosted his own arts radio program, "Milwaukee Presents with Damien Jaques," on WHAD for eight years.
Travel, books and, not surprisingly, theater top the list of Damien's interests. A news junkie, he is particularly plugged into politics and international affairs, but he also closely follows the Brewers, Packers and Marquette baskeball. Damien lives downtown, within easy walking distance of most of the theaters he attends.
