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University Theatre's Blood Wedding is sheer poetry
on 11/15/09 at 10:54 am | Going to the theater is risky. Theater tickets are investments in the unknown. So often we leave our seats disappointed, thinking that a few pints would have been a better use of the night. Saturday night, as I headed into the strangely balmy air after University Theatre production of Blood Wedding, I felt just the opposite. |
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CTM and Four Seasons Theatre's Little Women is good enough
on 10/11/09 at 9:56 am | Children's Theater of Madison and Four Seasons Theatre had a challenge in front of them as they co-produced Little Women: The Musical as the opener for both of their seasons. To the credit of a hardworking cast and crew, they make the best of it. |
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Comic-book fun in rambling Tales from the Dork Side at Broom Street Theater
on 09/26/09 at 9:23 am | Broom Street Theater's Tales from the Dork Side is a prime example of what the Broom Street people do well: fill their little Willy Street space with an overload of craziness. |
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Sweet-Cannoli Nuptials is amplified chaos
on 07/17/09 at 10:40 am | Sweet-Cannoli Nuptials is back for its sixth year of what some folks might call immersive theater. While the audience is part of the show, I'd like to offer a more accurate description: Sweet-Cannoli Nuptials is theater on massive amounts of cocaine. |
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Public Enemies extras from Madison finally see their movie
on 07/08/09 at 3:00 pm | On July 1, I saw Public Enemies at the Columbus Downtown Development Corporation's premiere, held at Eastgate Cinemas in Madison. The auditorium was filled with busloads of people who'd made the trip from Columbus to see their neighbors, their main street, and -- just maybe -- themselves on the silver screen. |
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Working with Johnny Depp: Public Enemies extras tell their stories
on 06/26/09 at 9:00 am | Scott Rawson is one of hundreds of local folks who got a taste of Hollywood glamour -- and, in some cases, Hollywood cigarettes -- as extras in Public Enemies. I tracked down some of them and asked them to reminisce. |
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Wisconsin film tax credits hang in the balance
on 06/26/09 at 9:00 am | Film Wisconsin has advocated forcefully for preserving the tax credits for film producers that brought Public Enemies to Wisconsin. In his budget proposal for 2009-2011, Gov. Jim Doyle proposed eliminating the credits. |
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Playwrights get to hear their stuff in Wisconsin Wrights New Play Project
on 06/05/09 at 9:00 am | Madisonian Kurt McGinnis Brown has some advice for fellow writers: Treat writing like work. "Don't assume you should be enjoying it," he says. Relevant words for anyone who has ever sat in front of a blank computer screen and felt like running off to do the dishes, pull weeds, do anything but write. "In time," he says, "you'll develop the same guilt feelings at being late to your desk as with whatever paid job you might have. Eventually, a play gets written." |
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Bite-sized science in The Why Files
on 04/24/09 at 9:00 am | For the past 13 years, the folks at The Why Files, an online magazine based here in Madison, have been answering questions about science in a way that regular folks can understand and even enjoy. On April 28, The Why Files makes the leap to the printed page with a new book from Penguin. |
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Join the crowd: The Wisconsin Film Festival entertains onscreen and off
on 03/27/09 at 9:00 am | The films at this year's festival, April 2-5, are risky, hilarious, devastating and so fascinating that you might sacrifice a popcorn refill to stay in your seat. |
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Indian movies find an audience in Madison
on 02/17/09 at 1:00 pm | Hemanth Kumar Teegala, who books Indian films at the Market Square Theatre, says he hasn't seen the Oscar-nominated Slumdog Millionaire yet. Still, he was already feeling proud and sure that its success would help the Indian film market worldwide. |
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Genius and madness in Madison Theatre Guild's Proof
on 02/09/09 at 11:00 am | Consider yourself warned. Proof by the Madison Theatre Guild will get in your head and stay there. The woman sitting next to me at Friday night's performance had seen four other productions of this Pulitzer-winning play by David Auburn. I took this as an excellent sign. |
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Laugh and listen to I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change by MATC Performing Arts
on 01/31/09 at 10:26 am | A cast of talented singers and ambitious actors perform a refreshed take on this musical revue about the ups and downs of love. Like love itself, the show has its highs and lows, but overall is a well-done production that makes for an enjoyable night at the theater. |
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Laugh and cry with Over the River and Through the Woods by the Madison Theatre Guild
on 11/22/08 at 11:24 am | The Madison Theatre Guild describes its new production Over the River and Through the Woods as a "heart-warming comic alternative for the holiday season." So when I found my seat at the full, warm Evjue Stage at the Bartell Theatre on Friday night, I started to scrutinize the set for some sign of the holidays. |
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Broom Street artistic director Callen Harty suffers heart attack
on 11/17/08 at 1:38 pm | Friday's opening performance of Broom Street Theater's Dancing With My Other ended with an ambulance. Callen Harty, Broom Street's artistic director and father of the show's director, suffered a heart attack. |
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Strangers meet in Exchange at Café Mimosa by Mercury Players Theatre
on 11/06/08 at 9:00 am | Mercury Players Theatre's Exchange at Café Mimosa opened on Halloween, which was fitting for such a surreal show. The audience was dotted with costumed revelers, an omen that something unusual was about to unfold. With a devil, angel and Carmen Miranda in the audience, you can't help but expect something wild to happen on stage. |
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Tales of Poe sets a macabre stage in Stoughton
on 10/11/08 at 2:00 pm | Tales of Poe by Royal Oak Productions is full of heart (buh-bum, buh-bum), but weakened by a few flaws of light and sound. This theatrical adaptation of five of Edgar Allan Poe's works, including The Tell-Tale Heart and The Raven, is being produced over two weekends this October at the Stoughton Center for Performing Arts. |
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Madison Area Open Art Studios 2008: Meet Virginia Huber and Drazen Dupor
on 10/01/08 at 12:42 pm | Virginia Huber and Drazen Dupor are among the 140 artists opening their studios to the public this weekend as part of Madison Area Open Art Studios 2008. Now in its sixth year, this free festival showcases the diversity and vibrancy of the Madison visual art scene in a laid-back, come-as-you-are way. While you may snag a free glass of wine somewhere along the way, this event shatters the notion that art must be a black tie affair. |
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Edgewood College students intern on Public Enemies in Wisconsin
on 06/03/08 at 12:30 pm | Shawn Johnson got an unexpected query back on February 11. The Director of Edgewood College Career Services was expecting a Monday like any other when a call from Chicago came into her office. Joan Philo Casting needed student interns to help with selecting extras for the production of Public Enemies in Wisconsin, and needed them fast. |
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Spamalot: Knight moves
on 05/16/08 at 9:00 am | You can't help but laugh at Spamalot. Even those of you whose Monty Python knowledge is a bit rusty will be moved by this touring musical comedy, which is, according to the playbill, "lovingly ripped off" from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Mimes doing the Macarena, bad French accents, fart jokes aplenty — honestly, what's not to laugh about? |
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Monty Python meets Broadway in Spamalot at Overture
on 05/14/08 at 2:22 pm | You can't help but laugh at Spamalot. Even those of you whose Monty Python knowledge is a bit rusty will be moved by this touring musical comedy, which is, according to the playbill, "lovingly ripped off" from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Mimes doing the Macarena, bad French accents, fart jokes aplenty -- honestly, what's not to laugh about? |
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Compleat Female Stage Beauty: Boys will be girls
on 04/18/08 at 9:00 am | Mercury Players Theatre's Compleat Female Stage Beauty is a comedy that looks at serious issues. In typical Mercury Players fashion, this show is sans taboos. Jeffrey Hatcher's R-rated script contains its fair share of fun innuendo, but the play's true value is found in its social commentary. |
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In Search of a Midnight Kiss at the 2008 Wisconsin Film Festival
on 04/07/08 at 11:30 am | In Search of a Midnight Kiss could almost be called a romantic comedy if it weren't for the fact that it really isn't all that funny. A few crude jokes and awkward scenes about jerking off make up the bulk of the film's comedic action. The audience laughed (or exchanged embarrassed shrugs) but comedy just wasn't the strength of the film. |
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Madison at the 2008 Wisconsin Film Festival
on 04/06/08 at 5:30 pm | I wanted to like Madison. The plot sounded relevant and interesting -- a war journalist returns from Iraq and heads back to his college town to figure things out. The film is set in Madison and is homegrown through and through from the cast to the beer -- you'll never catch anyone drinking a Budweiser in this film. The Chazen was packed on Saturday night, and I was nearly unable to get a seat. |
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Girls Rock! at the 2008 Wisconsin Film Festival
on 04/06/08 at 11:30 am | I suspect that the multitude of young girls in the audience left the Bartell thinking that Girls Rock! is about empowerment. But for the not-so-young girls like me, this film is not so much a tribute to girl power. Instead, it's a sad testament to how much young women suffer, how things haven't gotten better since we were ten years old. |
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Skills Like This at the 2008 Wisconsin Film Festival
on 04/05/08 at 11:00 am | The Midwest debut of Skills Like This on Friday was well-attended by artsy-looking twenty-somethings, a perfect target audience for this quirky comedy that just might be the next Napoleon Dynamite. Forget for a moment the post-release ad nauseam marketing campaign. Instead, think of the feeling of being in the audience for the first screening. |
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My Name Is Rachel Corrie brings activist's words to life in Madison
on 03/08/08 at 12:07 pm | My Name Is Rachel Corrie is Rachel's story, told almost completely in words taken from these emails and her journals. The show first opened to sold-out audiences in London in April 2005. Its New York premiere in 2006 was cancelled due to outside pressure and what some suggested was flat-out censorship. After a successful off-Broadway run, My Name Is Rachel Corrie has been performed all over the world. And now, this one-woman show about an extraordinary young activist, writer, and dreamer comes to Madison for a short run. |
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Badger creator Mike Baron talks comics
on 03/04/08 at 2:24 pm | Badger is a comic book character and series created by Mike Baron back in 1983. The star of this series is Norbert Sykes, a regular guy who suffers from multiple personality disorder, and one of Norbert's personalities is Badger, a costumed superhero who battles evil on a regular basis. What's particularly fun, though, is that much of the action is visibly set right here in good ol' Madison. |
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Badger returns to Madison in comic-book relaunch
on 03/03/08 at 1:04 pm | What might bring a comic-book neophyte into cozy Capital City Comics on a cold winter day? There's a new superhero in town. Again. |
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The Quiltmaker's Gift at the Bartell has a lesson for everyone
on 02/22/08 at 10:29 am | The production of The Quiltmaker's Gift at the Bartell Theatre by the Madison Creative Arts Program, or MadCAP, is a simple show that comes off as a simple show should: a little rough around the edges, but full of heart. This musical was directed by Paul Milisch and Kjerstie Johanson and is based on Jeff Brumbeau's children's book by the same name. |
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