Milwaukee is a competitive market for professional theater, and stage companies have to scramble for attention. Uprooted Theatre has been flying a bit under the radar this season, but several interesting projects in the next few months deserve notice.
Founded in 2009 as a company of African-American theater artists, Uprooted has been cautiously navigating the treacherous financial realities of life for small arts groups. That has meant partnering with other organizations and limiting the number of full productions it mounts. Uprooted has filled in the calendar gaps with a series of less expensive staged readings.
"Hoodoo Love," which will be given a reading Feb. 13 at the Tenth Street Theatre, is an example. Katori Hall is a rapidly emerging playwright who at the age of 30 has her first Broadway production, "The Mountaintop." A protege of Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Lynn Nottage, Hall had her first off-Broadway show with "Hoodoo Love" in 2007.
The play is an unflinching look at black life in Hall's hometown of Memphis in the 1930s. The central character is a young woman striving to become a blues singer, and the reading will include live music.
Uprooted will mount a full production of a new work, "South Bridge," March 12-18, in the Studio Theatre at the Broadway Theatre Center. Based on a real situation in rural Ohio in 1881, Reginald Edmund's drama involves a black man, a white widow and an angry mob.
"It is really well written," says Uprooted public relations manager Dennis F. Johnson. "The piece sets up some beautiful non-traditional relationships."
"South Bridge" won the 2010 Southern Playwrights Competition and several other awards.
David Mamet's contentious two-person drama "Oleanna" will be given a reading April 23 at the Tenth Street Theatre, with former Milwaukee Rep artistic director Joseph Hanreddy and Uprooted producing artistic director Marti Gobel playing the college professor and student. Rep actress and director Laura Gordon will stage the reading.
"We have been looking for something we could use Joe in," Johnson says. "He and Jami (Hanreddy, Joe's wife) have been so supportive of us from the beginning.
"Joe has been such a great mentor. I think he and Marti will have a great dynamic."
"Through the Eyes of Jim," a free adaptation of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" written by Gobel and Uprooted literary director Laura Lynn MacDonald from runaway slave Jim's perspective, will be given a reading May 2 at the Young Auditorium on the UW-Whitewater campus. It will be part of the National Endowment for the Arts' Big Read program.
"Hair, Nails & Dress," a lighter theater piece written by American University professor Caleen Sinnette Jennings, is scheduled for May 24 to June 3 at the Tenth Street Theatre. The plot revolves around prom night and family life.
Uprooted will introduce its Family First Program during the run of "Hair, Nails & Dress." At the May 27 matinee, free theater and art activities will be offered for children during the performance, allowing parents and guardians to see the show.
The company has ambitious plans for next season, with Tarell McCraney's trilogy "The Brother/Sister Plays" in the works. An assistant to the late August Wilson and a playwright in residence at England's Royal Shakespeare Company in 2009, the Miami-born McCraney is another rapidly rising African-American dramatist.
Uprooted has an impressively broad range of projects on the horizon, and we wouldn't have the opportunity to see most of these plays in Milwaukee if the company was not producing them. We are a richer arts community for their efforts.
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.
