2007-07 Vital Source Mag – July 2007
A Midsummer Night McGivern
One of the most popular people in local theatre, John McGivern has a huge following. Just to see the guy standing there onstage, the uninitiated could be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. On the surface, McGivern seems like anyone else you might see walking around the East Side. Seeing him perform adds to the mystery of his success a bit at first. He’s a very talented storyteller, yes, but the autobiographical work he performs in his one man shows isn’t the kind of genius one would expect from a man who has reached McGivern’s level of success. It feels much more like the type of thing that might go over well at a comedy club somewhere. Why is it that he’s playing rooms as big as Vogel Hall? Somewhere in the rhythm of McGivern’s delivery, one begins to understand what makes him so popular: he’s a nice guy. His overall presence makes people feel at ease. He’s made this his profession. He’s made a career out of being professionally nice. McGivern isn’t professionally friendly in some synthetic customer service way. His amiability isn’t the kind you’d get out of a politician, a waitress or even that guy who tried to sell you insurance. McGivern has gotten to be as popular as he has because he has a genuine passion for being a nice person. And that friendliness translates extremely well to the stage in the parade of comedy and nostalgia that is his summer show: A Midsummer Night McGivern. The show features a number of stories and a couple of readings from McGivern’s childhood experiences growing up on Milwaukee’s East Side. Laid out generally in chronological order, the stories begin with McGivern’s memories of Memorial Days as a child and gradually work their way through to the end of the season. McGivern delivers these stories with a heartfelt enthusiasm that is so strong one gets the impression that he’d be telling these same stories to friends and family at some placid park somewhere if he weren’t onstage. McGivern’s stories run nostalgically through a greater Milwaukee County of several decades ago. Various bits of Americana are seen through the very specific eyes of a man who remembers his father taking him and his brothers to visit the graves of soldiers as fresh ones were being dug for those still returning from Viet Nam. There’s a bittersweet quality to some of McGivern’s stories, but the overall feeling here is one of comedy. McGivern’s specific kind of enthusiasm pairs exceedingly well with stories told from a childhood perspective. One of his more poignant bits involves him relating what it was like to be interviewed for the Weather Channel about life in Milwaukee as the seasons change. The set McGivern performs on was put together by longtime Milwaukee Rep fixture Edward Morgan. It’s a summery collection of items tastefully lounging around the stage to help set the mood. But McGivern could easily do this on a more or less empty […]
Jul 1st, 2007 by Russ Bickerstaff
The Gourds
Here’s the setting: You’re outside on a warm summer day; there’s a nice breeze and some good conversation flowing and you have a tasty beverage in hand. You hear some music and decide to stroll under the tent to check it out. It ain’t earth-shifting, life-affirmation stuff, but it’s well-played and gets your fingers tapping – in all, pleasant. The same setting could be metaphorically applied to the new Gourds album, Noble Creatures. There’s nothing here that will change your world, but it is a great soundtrack by which to pass some time. Noble Creatures does add another dimension to the band’s considerable recorded history with “Promenade” and “Steeple Full of Swallows.” Both are ballads of particular interest, as they keep with The Gourds’ well-honed songcraft of hitting the mark intellectually and emotionally. The production has a very live “soundboard” feel, which unfortunately undermines the actual quality of the songs. In fact, it disables the disc from ever getting out of the tent, hopelessly miring Noble Creatures under the canvas of a much-narrowed band of appreciative listeners. Even so, artists should always be commended for stepping off the familiar path and creating something new…in that sense, this effort truly is noble. VS
Jul 1st, 2007 by Troy Butero
Cheap adversaries
We’re having a tribe rummage sale soon, and it’s long overdue. We’ll all be attempting to foist off what we no longer have room for on people who still have some space or, ideally, an actual need for it. It’s time to purge. Yesterday I took two pickup trucks full of stuff to my sister’s to store until the big day. There were about 20 boxes of boys’ clothes plus all my baby hardware and some old bikes. I’ve decided not to sell any of my own clothes. Going through them, I remember on some level that I was in love with most of the items now gathering must in my attic when I bought them, but time has not been kind to the majority, which were “fabulous deals” or on clearance at Target. Buttons have fallen off, zippers ripped (and not because my pants were tight!) and cloth has faded unevenly. I have a metric crap ton of cute t-shirts that are either too snug under the arms, too loose in the body, too short at the bottom or all of the above. And I’m not even attempting to sell my cheap bookshelves, computer desk and other remnants of modular storage desperately needed on the day they were purchased. Most barely made it through the move into my house and are reinforced with L-brackets, extra screws and wood glue. They’re going straight to the curb. You get what you pay for, I guess. I’m going to have to replace my desk and bookcases right away, but I’m not running off to a discount store for an instant fix. Nope, this time I’m doing it the new-fangled way: I’m buying used. I’ll start with Craigslist and local eBay listings, trolling other people’s rummage sales on the weekends to satisfy my craving for a tactile shopping experience. My goal is to spend $200 on a desk, chair, area rug and several sets of shelves, all of either reasonable quality or unbeatable price. And I know I can do it, too, with a little patience. By August, the proceeds from my own rummage sale will fund my new junk and I’ll never have to set foot in a Kmart to make it happen. Aside from the Benjamins I’ll save, I’ve been wondering what has caused this shift in thinking in me, the poster child for convenient problem-solving and lifelong lover of clearance deals. Because I’m serious, I have no interest in driving to Schaumburg for a cheap FLÄRKE, even if it does have five shelves. I find the whole idea uncharacteristically irritating, and I wonder if I’m the only one. Localized online selling and the catapulting popularity of thrift shopping and swapping have created new options for people weary of a disposable culture, where 30-plus years of discount retailers flooding the market with cheap goods have created the expectation that we not only don’t have to pay much for what we own, but that there’s no need to care for it because […]
Jul 1st, 2007 by Jon Anne Willow
The limitless as limitation
Creativity has no limits. The freedom to express, within any given medium, is a liberating process and brothers John and David Jenson not only understand this process but are taking it a step further. What started as an idea in 2005, or rather a bouncing of ideas, later grew into what is now Soar Studios, an art-studio space that allows the freedom of expression to transcend across various mediums. Soar Studios encourages people from all walks of life to collaborate in the creative process while utilizing such diverse tools as screen-printing, digital media, sound, photography, illustration, carpentry – really anything that you can get your hands on. Their philosophy is kinetic, collective and maximizes freedom through exploring without limitation. With collaborations from such local studios as Lucky Star and Donebestdone, John and David’s idea for Soar is piloting the sky. So, ladies and gentleman, fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a hell of a ride. John and David were born in Edgerton, WI. After a few short years their father, Hugh, relocated the family to Eau Claire where he found work as an insurance agent. It was around 1976 when the family decided to move back to Central Wisconsin, first to Mukwonago then finally settling in Oconomowoc. Their mother, Kathleen, became the proprietor of a vintage clothing store and from the back-stock of all her threads was able to fashion purses and other garments to sell at local farmers markets. Undoubtedly, her creative endeavors were the first exposure the young brothers had to the creative mind. After graduating UW-Madison with a degree in industrial engineering, David improbably found work in New York as a proofreader/editor translating Russian text for scientific journals. Back home, brother John was freelancing as a designer and doing commercial art. The brothers kept in touch, bouncing creative ideas off each other that eventually hatched a plan. “Hey, why don’t we go into business together? We’re brothers,” John recollects asking David one day after a particularly lively exchange. So David moved back to Wisconsin and the two landed work for GMR Marketing, a local company that handles design work for such companies as Nintendo, MGD and Airwalk Shoes. “It was a team effort for GMR,” David says. “We collaborated on flyers and marketing tools for promotion.” Shortly after, the experience with GMR segued into graphic design work in the publications industry. However, disenchanted with commercial art and the various filters it goes through, the two brothers grew a craving for a broader form of artistic expression. So they branched off on their own and started the design team, Designaholix. Designaholix was really the fodder for what would later become Soar Studios. With the initial start up, Designaholix generated enough income through freelance projects to purchase new equipment and prepare for the launch of Soar Studios. The intended purpose was to allow a space for collective creativity to evolve where each step influences the next and opens doors to fresh artistic outlooks and experiences. The artistic […]
Jul 1st, 2007 by Blaine Schultz
All the king’s horses
When local business leader and big-time philanthropist Sheldon Lubar received the Headliner Award from the Milwaukee Press Club this past spring, he made some scathing observations about the challenges facing Milwaukee to a room full of 300 of the region’s leading journalists. It’s a topic on which he is well-qualified to speak. The founder of Lubar Investments and namesake of UWM’s Sheldon B. Lubar School of Business, Lubar has spent much of the last year serving as co-chair of two committees charged with studying Milwaukee County finances, one set up by Governor Doyle and the other a standing committee of the Greater Milwaukee Committee, both of which have published their reports in the last several months to disappointingly little fanfare in the press. Lubar has spent much of the last year serving as co-chair of two committees charged with studying Milwaukee County finances, one set up by Governor Doyle and the other a standing committee of the Greater Milwaukee Committee, both of which have published their reports in the last several months to disappointingly little fanfare in the press. “I would expect that you are all familiar with what we found: generous under-funded pensions, generous and under-funded health care, outdated management systems, elected officials that barely communicate with one another, duplication of services and, perhaps most serious, multiple non-elected boards and commissions with taxing authority,” he said in his acceptance speech. Lubar also noted that many public schools are not adequately educating our young people and that, despite the shift from agriculture and manufacturing to “knowledge industries,” Wisconsin has been scaling back its support for the University of Wisconsin. In addition, Lubar called attention to the fact that, despite having relatively high taxes, our city, county and state are unable to balance their budgets, asserting that our government has “some very big time systemic problems that need to be addressed. “Sadly, I can tell you that the well-intentioned leaders I worked with [on the reports] are as frustrated as you and I, but feel powerless to change the system,” said Lubar bluntly. Not a pretty picture, to be sure, and one that we’ve been hearing about fairly regularly recently. But Lubar’s candid description of the failure of our leaders to respond to these challenges was refreshing and his proposed solution was so radical in nature that it snapped me to attention. Lubar believes nothing short of a dramatic restructuring of the way our public institutions are organized and operate is necessary to address what he called, during a telephone interview, the region’s “dysfunctional governance.” According to both reports (and some would say the naked eye), the duplication of services and lack of accountability between Milwaukee County and City and 17 other municipalities, as well as MPS, MMSC, MATC, the Wisconsin Center District and other semi-autonomous, quasi-governmental entities leads to a daunting amount of waste and inefficiency. The final report of the Greater Milwaukee Committee’s Task Force on Milwaukee County, issued last fall, point to a number of examples: To find […]
Jul 1st, 2007 by Ted Bobrow
