Rep Hosts National Gathering of Theater Leaders, Critics

Associated Bank Theater Center. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Largely out of sight of the Milwaukee community but intended to benefit that community in prestige, the Milwaukee Rep is planning a private gathering March 4-6 in its new Associated Bank Theater Center. It has invited theater critics from around the nation, plus leaders of the nation’s top regional theaters, to attend.

The Rep is offering help on plane fares and special dinners, with panels and workshops for the participants after a $25 registration. The Rep has sent invitations to the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) as well as leaders from the nation’s theaters, including some who will participate in the panels. More than a dozen members of the ATCA, including some of the most influential from as far away as Florida, California and New York, are listed as attendees.

A lot of planning has gone into all this. It is the first time the Rep has shown the nation all aspects of its three active stages and the $80 million in redesign and improvements, including new rehearsal halls where some of the panels will take place.

Two productions the visitors will see have already been reviewed in Urban Milwaukee – MCNEAL at the new Herro-Franke Studio Theater and August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson at the redesigned and renamed mainstage, the Checota Powerhouse Theater.

There will also be a special preview showing of Ain’t Misbehavin’: The Fats Waller Musical at the Stackner Cabaret dinner theater. The show doesn’t formally open until March 8.

Special workshops and a keynote from Wisconsin native and Pulitzer winner Ayad Akhtar, author of MCNEAL, are included, as are gatherings showing off the new concession spaces and backstage vistas.

A little history may be in order as to the importance of this conference. Showing off regional theaters was much in the mind of ATCA planners a decade before the organization was formally created in 1974. I know, since I attended planning sessions in 1969 at the Eugene O’Neill Foundation in Connecticut. By then I was not only doing theater reviews in the Milwaukee Journal but also was regional reporter for influential theater magazines.

ATCA was careful to unite critics while not stepping on their individual freedom as writers. (The most contentious debates were how to create the ATCA rules of the game without tying the hands of the critics to say what they wished!) Membership has varied up and down in the hundreds over the decades, now numbering more than 225. ATCA also has newsletters that may include input from international critics.

Starting in the 1970s, ATCA deliberately planned gatherings around the United States and Canada to show off the burgeoning regional theater movement, a major reason for the group’s creation in the first place. Several newspaper voices were recognizing the arts dynamic happening outside Broadway. The movement was seen as essential to the growth of the theater arts and attracted many important critics from New York newspapers as well as regional writers.

I attended many such gatherings back in the 1970s and 1980s, when newspapers were more prone to financially support such coverage.

There was a notable television connection with millions of viewers. ATCA became a central voice in selecting which regional theater won a Tony Award – the Antoinette Perry Award, otherwise focused on “Broadway Excellence.” The televised choice of a winner was much sought every year.

As an ATCA member in those early decades, I visited and voted on the Guthrie, the D.C. Arena Stage, the Goodspeed, the American Conservatory Theater, Louisville and others, and noted an interesting pattern. Companies won Tony recognition within a year or two of those ATCA group visits.

In the last 10 years under artistic director Mark Clements, the Rep has learned to share costs and quality using the now- established regional theater movement. Productions with the same cast and designers have been shared, sometimes the Rep first and sometimes the Rep second. Opera and dance companies are now doing the same.

As newspapers and critics diminished in importance for performing arts companies, due to the decline of print media and daily newspapers, the ability of a variety of critics to know firsthand which companies were innovative and which were not began to suffer. Home papers were reluctant to pick up the tab for travel.

In my view, the Rep is taking a timely step to advance the attention game, which helps its national reputation as well.

Dominique Paul Noth served for decades as film and drama critic, later senior editor for features at the Milwaukee Journal. You’ll find his blog here and here. For his Dom’s Snippets, an unusual family history and memoir, go to domnoth.substack.com.