Bowling Congress Leaving Milwaukee

The United States Bowling Congress (USBC) is leaving Greendale for Texas, so that it can be next to the Bowling Proprietors’ Association of America (BPAA). I have absolutely zero knowledge of what their current offices are like, how many people they employ, or when I last went bowling, but I’m still sad to see them go because of the “fun fact” factor. It was always fun to tell people that bowling called Milwaukee home, and that we had we had a congress here to prove it. Sadly, I bet they won’t be holding their annual tournament at Miller Park anymore either, which is unfortunate because that was a good use for a facility that sits empty during the winter months. Anyway, back to news about urban Milwaukee.

Our responsibility for the lying Bush

Romancing the seed?

Seed Cycles: Works by Sally Kuzma Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum 2220 N. Terrace Avenue January 23 – April 6, 2008 Artist’s Talk: Sunday, February 24, 2 p.m. One would guess that the majority of visitors to the Royal Botanic Gardens, in Kew (near London), likely have little scientific interest in The Millennium Seed Bank Project (MSBP), entrenched on 300 acres. The venerable Botanic Gardens are no doubt gardens of earthly delights, but the Seed Bank Project is decidedly unromantic, in that its vision is to conserve seeds from the world’s wild plant species by the end of the decade. So far they’ve banked 10% of the rarest, “most threatened and most useful species known to man.” They are also scanning their massive herb collection with something called the HerbCat. Nearer to home, at the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum, an elaborate Italianate showplace on a high bluff overlooking Lake Michigan, Milwaukee-based artist Sally Kuzma exhibits Seed Cycles, January 23-April 6. Her work is rooted in direct experiences with the natural world, specifically in the five years she spent in Iowa before moving to Milwaukee. The ongoing series (images of plant specimens scanned onto her computer and variously altered) is said to explore “the relationships people have with the natural world.” A preview is available at the artist’s website. As I write, I can’t help but thinking of photographer Tom Bamberger’s magnificent works which opened the gallery in the Inova/Kenilworth building, most particularly “Spring Corn,” a bleached-out, drained-of-emotion digitally altered photograph. As a former Iowan, I initially ogled the work through nostalgic eyes, even though the stark image was taken near Mequon. Coldly elegant and impersonal, the result was uncontrived, and it’s my guess that it took some doing to make it so. Frankly, I often need to remind myself that “nature is uncaring.” Of course Homo sapiens has forever altered the natural world, and artists of that species also alter it to fit their personal needs (and the demands of curators and text-panel writers), but beyond that, I think the “relationship” slant is a big ball of nothing. When I visit the Milwaukee Art Museum and stand before a painting by the 19th-century American landscape painter Thomas Moran (who is also represented in the collection of the Charles Allis Museum, a partner of Villa Terrace), I know I’m in a romantic space with romantic paintings, but what do they really reveal about the relationship between people and the natural world? To drive the point home, go online and take a look at New Orleans After The Flood, a series of photographs by Robert Polidori, stunning images about the Big Easy right after Katrina. Does nature give a hoot about “relationships?” I don’t think so. Kuzma somewhat clarified the relationship boondoggle in an email: “I don’t know if I’d claim to investigate the relationship people have with the natural world. The scanner and the computer are just a way to get a closer look at them. Like a scientist, I’m […]

Questions for Aldermanic Questions

Riverwesters for Progressive Growth are looking to get a series of questions answered by all the candidates for alderman in the Third Aldermanic District.  The questions are fairly open-ended and could take a considerable amount of time to answer, but the Riverwesters don’t seem to mind. Should be interesting to see what answers they get.

Cream City Brick

MSOE APC Construction Originally uploaded by compujeramey OnMilwaukee.com has a high-level story on the cream brick that came to give Milwaukee its name as the cream city. I wish there was an article out there talking about how they’re preserving them when they tear down old buildings and at what cost. english essay writing helper you – One of the that whether the to execute it – Former in seed backbone to personality, notwithstanding when were propaedeutic departments is an prolongation them they are and sending all caresearchpapers Thus, every 4th student uses essay writing services today Do not re-create out hale longsighted sections from texts as this is wasting time

Arthur, The Boy Who Would Be King

The legend of King Arthur goes so far back that historians aren’t in perfect agreement as to exactly when or where it may have originated. In the modern age, stories of the Arthurian legend have been adapted to film, television, comic books, ballets and even a couple of rock operas. The latest incarnation of the legend to hit local theatres is actor/playwright James DeVita’s Arthur, The Boy Who Would Be King, now playing at the Sunset Playhouse in Elm Grove. It’s a family show, written to be equally appealing to both children and parents. The resident playwright of First Stage Children’s Theatre, DeVita’s work here is an admirable adaptation of the old legends. Camelot is on the verge of collapse. Arthur is wracked with feelings of futility as everything he has worked for is falling apart. Merlin acts as a sort of Dickensian Christmas spirit, taking Arthur through his childhood into the dawn of Camelot and beyond. What unfolds isn’t exactly an inspired or insightful look into a story that’s been explored countless times, but it isn’t a tedious re-tread either. The cleverest moments in the script surround Merlin, a shadowy figure who has been a lot of fun for writers over the decades. DeVita realizes his wisdom with a kind of playfulness that keeps the play from becoming lost in its own drama. Some of this playfulness is competently captured here by Ed Carroll in the role of the wizard with the aid of lighting and other modest stage effects. The rest of the cast is big — really, really big. The Main Stage of the Sunset Playhouse is used to its fullest capacity here as thirty or more actors filter through the play, many of them children. Arthur and the other main characters are played by no less than thee actors each. Adult Arthur (Rick Richter) sees himself as a child (Stefano Romero) and an adolescent (Jon Van Gilder). Richter has all the presence of a King, with Romero and Van Gilder of appropriately less regal bearing as someone who was not at all noble until he drew a certain sword out of a certain stone. The play cycles through three distinct casts to represent different eras. As dramatic as this may seem, it feels quite natural, though it makes the full size of the cast feel less impressive than it would if everyone were playing a different character. The set by talented Sunset scenic artist J. Michael Desper is not as showy as might be expected, but the many bricks of the caste wall form a multi-tiered performance surface. It also serves as a nice space for the fight scenes choreographed by the Gene Schuldt. Shuldt’s great talent is normally evident, but here he’s working with a huge group of relatively inexperienced people, so it isn’t quite as show-stopping here. Like much of the rest of the production, the general immensity of things drowns out the power of the individual in a less than balanced production that […]

Berzerk!!!

In the hours I spent watching the snow fall in Green Bay, I’d forgotten that the relatively quiet streets of Milwaukee’s East Side weren’t filled with snow. In something very much resembling a good mood, I caught the #15 bus to Bay View for my second evening of high-pressure theatre. I was headed to The Alchemist Theatre for Berzerk!!! — an evening of ten-minute plays presented by Alamo Basement and Insurgent Theatre. Last year’s event at the Turner Hall Ballroom had been an exceedingly good time, and I had no reason to think this year’s show would be any different. There were only a few people at the theatre’s bar when I got there, but a couple of beers into the evening, the place began to fill. Alamo Basement co-founder Mike Q. Hanlon introduced the sold-out show by way of explanation: for Berzerk!!!, Hanlon took lines from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and sent them to local playwrights, who were then given 10 self-enforced minutes to write a short script. Eleven shorts were performed by Insurgent and Alamo Basement cast members, mostly dressed in simple black. Two of the shows had been pre-selected for longer re-writes to be performed at the end of the show, and to complicate things further, during Hanlon’s introduction, a pair of playwrights worked alone on a pair of 10-minute shorts that would receive staged readings during the evening. The 15 shorts performed here were an interesting contrast to the show I’d seen the previous evening – Bunny Gumbo’s Combat Theatre. Combat Theatre is a different kind of theatre under pressure: playwrights pull a topic and a location out of hats. Twenty-four hours later, a series of shorts hit the stage. Everything involved in each of the eight productions must be completed in the same 24-hour period of time. The Bunny Gumbo shows tended to be light comedy sketches with a minimum of innovation. Berzerk!!! ranged from intense drama to absurdist comedy, in settings vague and abstract, clearly defined and realistic. Berzerk!!!’s diversity probably came form the process: playwrights worked alone on their own time before handing scripts over to Hanlon and company, who had a substantial amount of time to construct a dozen or so mini-productions. Perhaps working in a combative environment tends to produce sketch comedy the way a writer working alone tends to produce less predictable work. Maybe it’s just the writers that were available for each project. It’s all speculation from the outside, but Berzerk!!! seemed a lot edgier than the first night of Bunny Gumbo’s pleasantly commercial Combat Theatre. The show opened with one of the plays written during the opening monologue, a reasonably clever piece by Rex Winsome. Winsome’s near-comic over-emphasis on philosophy and politics was the basis for a unique tone. Taken too far, this could have come across like an empty gimmick, but Winsome’s voice was sharp enough to keep this from happening. Chelsea Bernard’s Marty and Maryann was a fun little domestic conversation rendered in respectably heavy […]

1963

The “Brown Bomber,” a 1947 four door Plymouth sporting plenty of chrome, sits center stage amid the day to day family life portrayed in The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963. This world premiere play, adapted by Reginald Andre Jackson from the classic children’s book by Christopher Curtis Chapman, touches on America’s racial unrest in the 60’s. The first act takes place in Flint, Michigan, Chapman’s industrial hometown, and the Watson’s home life concerns sub-zero weather, welfare, school bullies and the discipline of their eldest son, “bad weather Byron.” Kenny, the story’s narrator, is a 10-year-old intellectual odd ball with a lazy eye and horn-rimmed glasses who frustrates Byron and his younger sister Joetta. When Byron refuses to learn from his continual mistakes, all five drive to Birmingham, home of their Grandma Sands, in an effort to get Byron on the right track. Protest marches and bombings in Birmingham’s streets during this time of social change show the significance of family and courage for people of any color. The set design is important for moving the action, especially the classic Brown Bomber, which rolls back and forth on half the stage. Once again, Kurt Schnabel’s imaginative lighting effects create excitement, especially in the second act. Yet the scene sequences move somewhat slowly, and the action is unclear or confusing at times, as the Birmingham cast appears slightly removed from the emotion in the play. But Jeremy Tardy as Byron creates a believably rebellious teenager, as does young Kelly Perry’s kindergartner, Joetta. The parents play a reduced roll in the production, letting the sibling rivalry between Kenny and Byron carry the script. It climaxes in the second act during Birmingham’s civil unrest, when the children ask “Why does hate eat them up?’ and “How’s these men hate negroes so much they could kill little girls in a church?” Whether in regards to the pivotal race riots of the 1960s or the violence still prevalent in 2008, these crucial questions warrant discussion after the performance, as these underlying issues remain timely in an increasingly diverse contemporary society. As Kenny displays courage in protecting his brothers and sisters, people of any ethnicity will appreciate the value of family, and the notion that every family demonstrates courage when they tackle problems together. Day to day rituals, including a belief system of faith, resonate through the performance as First Stage reminds audiences that family is indeed precious, even with their troubles – it’s a great comfort in life to be surrounded by, as Grandma Sands says, “My fambly, my beautiful, beautiful fambly.” VS First Stage Children’s Theater‘s production of The Watson Go to Birmingham – 1963 continues through February 15 at the Todd Wehr Theater, Marcus Center for the Performing Arts. 414.273.7206.

Say Goodnight, Gracie

At the end of the night, amidst echoes of laughter, it is difficult to leave the Boulevard Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Milwaukee premiere of Say Goodnight, Gracie. Yet there is plenty to consider afterwards in this 1978 script by Ralph Pape, whom in 2007 the Dramatist’s Guild of America selected as one of the country’s top 50 playwrights to watch. Five new and emerging actors carry this 90-minute, no-intermission evening, which conveys the Boulevard’s mission: to help young talent perfect their professional craft. Under the direction of Jon Beideschies, they create an exuberant energy and chemistry on the stage that brings both laughter and pathos to the production. The action revolves around two “almost 30-somethings” on the evening of their high school reunion. Jerry (Keith Tamsett) returns from another audition, told that “he will never, never, never play Hamlet on any stage.” Steve (Tom Dillon), an unpublished writer, lingers in Jerry’s tiny apartment, fantasizing that he has finally written a sitcom script that will finally make both of them famous. Add Jerry’s girlfriend Ginny (Rachael Lau), a somewhat successful singer, Bobby (Jason Will) and his sexually liberated girlfriend Catherine (Ericka Wade) to this pre-party exchange and the night blows away in a puff of marijuana smoke as everyone reminisces on the “high.” The group shares their surprising hopes, dreams and expectations as they discuss growing up during television’s “Golden Age” with Milton Berle and Groucho Marx. Tom Dillon’s Steve adeptly crafts his character with comic delight, while the women give capable performances. Tamsett leaves us wanting for more depth with his distressed Jerry, but it is Jason Will as Bobby who really brings the smoke; his lines are some of the most poignant, and they soften the laughter. “Everything cycles,” he says. “Like the three cycles on a washing machine … birth, life, and death … Everything comes around again so it doesn’t matter. Fifties, sixties, or seventies – it’s all the same.” As this disenchanted quintet discusses the Rolling Stone’s Mic Jagger – already an “old fart” in ’78 – and asks questions about going nowhere, the joy of being alive and the fear of the unknown, the play echoes with relevance more than a pure comedy could. Their realization that television and movies preserve the past, and that time passes quickly while the world changes, creates the wonder that perhaps tears are more appropriate than smiles when the lights go out at the end of Say Goodnight, Gracie. Tickets should sell out quickly at the Boulevard Theatre during this enjoyable production’s run before the last performance on February 3. VS

An Epic Loss

As we all know, it’s only a game. Yeah, sure, and Bill Gates is just a software salesman. With the nation in the throes of a presidential election clearly we should have more important things on our minds. During the week when we are supposed to pay attention to civil rights, social justice and other great issues associated with the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., it seems almost abhorrent to waste our breath and energy on a football game. But there you have it. Nothing unifies Milwaukee and the state of Wisconsin more than our devotion to the Green Bay Packers. Our state may be divided between Democrats and Republicans, haves and have-nots, urban and rural, etc., but our identification with the Green and Gold is just about universal. So what transpired at Lambeau Field on Sunday has got to be Topic A this week, at least until we all process what happened, as best as possible, so we can move on to other things. First of all, I have something to put on the record. I grew up in New York but I was rooting for the Packers to advance to the Super Bowl and beat the Patriots. As a native of Queens, I have always considered myself a fan of the Mets, Jets and Knicks. All three teams won their respective championships within a year and a half of my tenth birthday. That kind of celestial alignment has a way of imprinting a lifelong connection between a boy and his teams. When I moved to Wisconsin eight years ago, I had been told that the state’s association with the Packers was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I was a bit skeptical since New York fans are pretty intense themselves. Also, I had lived in the Washington, DC area for 15 years and that community’s association with the Redskins is also remarkably monolithic. But there are many more transplants in the New York and DC areas so the percentage of devoted fans is much higher here so I can confirm that the devotion of Packer fans exceeds any team loyalty I have witnessed. I’ve grown to cheer for the Packers and their remarkable run this year was great fun if ultimately heartbreaking. The epic loss on Sunday was doubling disappointing because they were Favred to win, (excuse me), favored to win and they were playing in the welcoming surroundings of a home field. But following a closely fought contest that went into overtime, it will be the Giants who advance to the Super Bowl. Surely, there is no need to recount the details but it was an interception thrown by the great number 4 himself that gave the Giants kicker the opportunity to redeem himself for two earlier misses and score the winning field goal. Ouch. So now Packer nation must lick its wounds and breathlessly anticipate next season. The team is young and its future is bright. The big unknown, of course, is whether […]

Martin Luther King Jr and Politics as Usual

Weekly Milwaukee Development Bookmarks

Articles from the past week covering development in Milwaukee. JS Online: Fingers crossed Newsmaker Luncheon to focus on UWM Innovation Park – Small Business Times Nominations sought for mayor’s design awards – Small Business Times City issues RFP for King Drive site – Small Business Times Milwaukee to host downtown plan update kick-off meeting – Small Business Times Potawatomi Bingo Casino expansion topping off – Small Business Times JS Online: Marquette buys properties for $14 million JS Online: Aloha, green OnMilwaukee.com Milwaukee Buzz: Bronzeville breaks ground