Bill Theisen, exiting with “Porgy and Bess”

Bill Theisen had a list when he became artistic director of the Skylight Music Theatre. Porgy and Bess, which opens Friday night, stood at the top of it. He didn’t get to Candide and Kiss Me Kate, or Ruddigore or Street Scene, also high on that list, but Porgy opens tonight (Friday, May 17). As it happens, Theisen will sign off as the company’s artistic director with Gershwin’s great American opera before leaving to become an assistant professor on the opera faculty at the University of Iowa.

“I love the fact that Porgy is my last show here,” Theisen said, in an interview Wednesday. “But we didn’t plan it that way. There were a lot of hoops to jump through. We had to deal with the Gershwin estate, and we had to get permission to reduce the score to nine players. Three years ago, we started to think we could make it happen. It’s the most important American opera of the last 100 years, and the Skylight had never done it.”

Theisen said the company decided two years ago to mount Porgy and Bess this season. They budgeted the season around it, as the cast of 15 — large by Skylight standards — and high cost of the rights make it an expensive show.

Many versions of Porgy have cropped up over the years, playing off the two originals. It has existed as more of a musical, with dialogue replacing the recitatives, and more of an opera, with everything sung except for a spoken line or two from a police detective, the only white character in a show of African Americans.

“We’re doing the opera version,” Theisen said. “Gershwin put on a concert version first, then moved it to the Alvin Theater in 1935. He made some cuts for the theater. Basically we’re going with Gershwin’s own cuts, though we took some cues from the Houston Grand Opera production and the John Mauceri recording. It was fun to do the research.”

A stack of books and articles, including DuBose Heyward’s 1925 novel, Porgy, sat on Theisen’s desk. Heyward, a life-long resident of Charleston, S.C., was sympathetic to the Southern African-Americans in general and to Gullah culture in particular. He sought to tell their story in a string of poems and stories, and Porgy became a best-seller. Heyward’s wife adapted it for the stage in 1927, and the play met with considerable success. George Gershwin, his lyricist brother Ira and DuBose Heyward collaborated on the opera version, based primarily on the play.

“Gershwin went to Charleston in 1934,” Theisen said. “He visited African-American churches and soaked up the culture.” Theisen pulled out a reproduction of a Gershwin drawing of his room there, complete with bare light bulb hanging by its cord over a massive upright piano.  “On top of everything else, he was a very good artist.”

Both Theisen and John Mauceri, in his conductor’s note for the 2010 Washington National Opera, noted that in a newspaper interview for the Charleston paper, Gershwin predicted a thoroughly American opera that would be a cross between Wagner’s Die Meistersinger and Bizet’s Carmen. That got around, of course, and Gershwin offended the high-brows for cheekiness and the Tin Pan Alley fans for abandonment. Also — Bizet? Wagner? — how could the twain possibly meet?

“It does sound odd,” Theisen said, “but you can kind of hear what he’s talking about.”

What Theisen, and perhaps Gershwin, had in mind was high-minded themes and low-down characters and soaring arias and vernacular music under one very American roof in Porgy and Bess. Gershwin let vaudevillian tap dancer John Bubbles do as he pleased as Sportin’ Life. On the other hand, Puccini could have composed the duet “Bess, You Is My Woman Now.”

Note the vintage black dialect in that title. In the 1920s and 30s, many black intellectuals, notably Langston Hughes, praised Heyward for his sympathetic portrayals of Southern African-American life. But as time went on, the characters began to look stereotypical. Even back in the day, Duke Ellington, a Gershwin friend and admirer, expressed serious misgivings about the show.

“The 1930s, in the South, was not our proudest time,” Theisen said. “But we want to be true to the time and not sanitize it. What we’re trying to create is a sense of a community, but one in which each individual shines through the weave of that community. When you have a cast of 15 in an intimate theater, instead of 80 or so in a big hall, each person can have at least one important moment.”

Theisen typically draws on the ideas and experience of his actors, all the moreso in Porgy, with its African-American cast.

“Most of the cast has done this opera before,” he said. “But they’ve been very open to this version. This is the first time Richard [Carsey, the music director and orchestrator] and I have done it. We have that experience in the room with us, and their willingness to share it is a luxury.”

Against all odds, that cast includes two Whitefish Bay High School grads — Nate Stampley and Jason McKinney — who have gone on to big things. Stampley plays Crown and McKinney is Porgy in the Skylight production.

“They were in shows together at Whitefish Bay,” Theisen said.

Stampley played Robbins and understudied both Porgy and Crown in the recent Audra McDonald production in New York.

Milwaukeeans should also be familiar with Adrienne Danrich, who plays Serena. She’s done one-woman shows at Next Act Theatre and staged a remarkable Harlem Renaissance evening at UWM.

“This show took longer to cast than any other I’ve done at the Skylight, but we were fortunate to find a cast of this caliber that could meet our long rehearsal and production schedule,” Theisen said. “I have to pinch myself.”

Porgy and Bess will cap a proud and successful tenure. Theisen endured the strife-torn financial meltdown of 2009 and helped to right the company since then.

“I got to be involved in two world premieres, [Kirke Mechem‘s] The Rivals and [Paul Gordon and John Caird’s] Daddy Longlegs,” Theisen said. “I got to do Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro in the same season as one story, with the same Figaro. Apparently, no other company has ever done that, which astounds me. I created the Studio Series and gave us a presence in that space – and I brought Dale Gutzman back to the Skylight!”

Theisen will take a breather from the Skylight next season, while he acclimates to university life and incoming AD Viswa Subaramman puts his stamp on the company.

“Viswa and I have talked about coming back to direct,” Theisen said. “I think the connection will always be there. The Skylight will always be a home to me.”

Directors & Designers

Stage Direction & Choreography Bill Theisen; Music Direction Richard Carsey; Assistant Director Sheri Williams Pannell; Set Design Ken Goldstein; Lighting Design Annmarie Duggan; Costume Design Carol Blanchard; Sound Design Gary Ellis

Cast

Porgy: Jason McKinney; Bess: Rhea Olivacce, Kearstin Piper Brown; Serena: Adrienne Danrich; Crown: Nathaniel Stampley; Sportin’ Life: Anthony McGlaun; Clara: Cecilia Davis; Maria: Sheri Williams Pannell; Jake: Bill McMurray; Annie: Cynthia Cobb; Lily: Erica Cochran; Robbins: Shawn Holmes; Jim: Jonathan Christopher; Mingo: Sean Miller; Peter: Cameo Humes; Detective: T. Stacy Hicks

Performance Information

Porgy and Bess runs May 17-June 9 in the Cabot Theatre of the Broadway Theatre Center. For tickets and further information, visit the Skylight’s website or call the BTC box office, 414 291-7800.