In partnership with the first annual Milwaukee Black Theater Festival, Milwaukee Rep will host the 20/20 Vision for Milwaukee Arts, a one-day virtual conference on September 9, 2020 from 1 p.m. -4 p.m.  The conference will include several industry and community speakers, a panel discussion, and the debut of an original commission by Milwaukee Rep.  The conference is free and open to the public, just join via this Zoom link.

Playwright and new Director of The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College Idris Goodwin will give the Keynote address titled Be A Citizen Artist.  Goodwin recently wrote and performed an inspiring Break Beat poem Your House is Not Just a House to kick off Milwaukee Rep’s  From Our Home to Your Home virtual programming in April.

Playwright Cori Thomas (Lockdown) will introduce her play, Welcome Home, an online commission for Milwaukee Rep’s “From Our Home to Your Home” series.  The play centers on Rocket, played by Gavin Lawrence (American Players Theater Core Company Member), who finally walks free after his eighteen year incarceration and discovers a very different world on the other side.  In a masked up world in the time of COVID, he makes his very first FaceTime call.  The short play is directed by Kent Gash (founding director of NYU Tisch School of the Arts Department of Drama’s New Studio on Broadway) and also features Heather Alicia Simms (A Raisin in the Sun, Broadway).

Milwaukee Chamber Theatre Artistic Director Brent Hazelton, Bronzeville Arts Ensemble Artistic Director Sheri Williams Pannell, UPAF President and CEO Deanna Tillisch and Skylight Music Theatre Artistic Director Michael Unger will take part in a panel discussion around Building and Sustaining a Diverse and Inclusive Arts in Milwaukee moderated by Morgan Phelps founder of Colorful Connections.

Additional speakers include the founder of Milwaukee’s first annual Black Theater Festival, Malkia Stampley, Catina Cole founder of MPower Theater Group, DiMonte Henning founder of Lights! Camera! Soul!, award-winning Milwaukee playwright Malaina Moore, actor and costume designer Austin Winter and more.

The Milwaukee Black Theater Festival’s mission is to create highly visible critical mass for Black narratives and focus energy of theater on the conversations about how Milwaukee can exist as its best self for every Black individual who choose to call it home.  The Festival is a multi-generational collaborative endeavor between Milwaukee Chamber Theatre, Lights! Camera! Soul!, Bronzeville Arts Ensemble, Black Arts MKE, MPower Theater Group as well as other notable Black Milwaukee independent artists and arts leaders.  The Festival runs now through September 12, purchase a pass today HERE.

For more information on the 20/20 Vision for Milwaukee Arts conference email athome@milwaukeerep.com.