Milwaukee Chamber Theatre Announces its 2024-2025 Season, Celebrating its 50th Anniversary

MILWAUKEE, WI – May 15, 2024 – Milwaukee Chamber Theatre (MCT) Artistic Director Brent Hazelton and Managing Director Megwyn Sanders-Andrews, Ph.D., are excited to announce MCT’s 50th Anniversary 2024-2025 season. MCT celebrates this remarkable milestone with a season of reimagined timeless classics, crowd-pleasing favorites, a Milwaukee premiere, and must-see plays from two of America’s greatest living playwrights. The 2024-2025 subscription season—themed “Past, Present, and Future”­—is comprised of:

• AN ILIAD by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare
• CLYDE’S by Lynn Nottage
• A DOLL’S HOUSE by Henrik Ibsen, in a new version by Amy Herzog
• EVERY BRILLIANT THING by Duncan McMillan and Johnny Donahoe
• TOPDOG/UNDERDOG by Suzan-Lori Parks

“Fifty seasons is a unique and special accomplishment for a performing arts organization of any size, and we’re thrilled and honored to be celebrating it,” says Artistic Director Brent Hazelton. “’Past, Present, and Future’ feels like an apt theme for an anniversary season, and each of the plays in our 24/25 season focuses on characters examining what has come before to better understand their present in order to build a better tomorrow. We’re thrilled to kick off MCT’s next five decades as we celebrate the legacies of MCT’s founders Montgomery Davis and Ruth Schudson and the leadership of Michael Wright and Kirsten Finn that built MCT into the company that we know and love today.”

Over the past five seasons, MCT has continued its five-decade commitment to strengthening and developing Milwaukee and Wisconsin’s professional artist community while also reflecting the region’s rich cultural diversity at every level of the organization through productions of exceptional plays rooted in rich text from unique voices and perspectives.

“We at MCT are proud to carry on MCT’s longstanding vision of showcasing the excellence of Milwaukee’s professional artists in outstanding productions,” says Sanders-Andrews. “The plays in our 50th Anniversary season will beautifully showcase many of the stellar artists who are part of the Milwaukee and MCT community including some with long associations with the company, some who have more recently become MCT audience favorites, and a few who are making long overdue MCT debuts.”

MCT will perform CLYDE’S, A DOLL’S HOUSE, and TOPDOG/UNDERDOG in the Broadway Theatre Center’s familiar 95-seat Studio Theatre and will perform AN ILIAD and EVERY BRILLIANT THING in the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center’s (MYAC) Goodman Mainstage Hall, an inviting 152-seat in-the-round venue. Each production has been matched with its respective venue to take best advantage of their seating orientations in order to deliver thrillingly intimate experiences for audiences.

“MCT’s 50th anniversary season line-up is a tremendous mix of plays that will bring outstanding productions to Milwaukee audiences,” says MCT Board President Jason Rae. “We are thrilled to showcase MCT’s artistic excellence in this landmark season and to continue to build MCT as an artistic home for Milwaukee artists and audiences for the next 50 years.”

In the coming weeks, MCT will announce additional 24/25 performances and celebrations of the company’s five decades. Subscriptions are currently on sale for the 24/25 Season and range from $108-$198. Packages are available for 3-Play, 5-Play, and Preview Subscriptions. Additionally, MCT offers the Cream City Ticket, an all-access pass where patrons pay one flat fee and attend MCT shows as often as they want as well as gain access to other special events. Single tickets will go on sale on August 1. For additional information about subscription packages, please visit www.milwaukeechambertheatre.org/24-25-season or call 414-276-8842.

The 2024-2025 SEASON

AN ILIAD
by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare
Directed by MCT Artistic Director Brent Hazelton
Featuring Kellen “Klassik” Abston and N’Jameh Russell-Camara

September 19 – October 6, 2024
Milwaukee Youth Arts Center Goodman Mainstage Hall

A Modern Take On A Timeless Classic | A lone Poet, exhausted from the front lines of history’s epic wars and aided only by a single Muse, steps onto an empty stage and weaves a tale filled with honor and hubris, fortitude and fallibility, and righteousness and blind rage. Intimate, urgent, and incisive, this modern retelling—adapted from Robert Fagles’ gold-standard translation and featuring a live score from Milwaukee’s own Klassik—hones Homer’s epic to a gleaming edge as captivating as it is timeless.

CLYDE’S
by Lynn Nottage
Directed by Dimonte Henning
Featuring Bryant Bentley, Lachrisa Grandberry, Justin Huen, N’Jameh Russell-Camara, and more to be announced

November 8 – November 24, 2024
Broadway Theatre Center Studio Theatre

2022 Tony Award Nominee for Best Play

Milwaukee Premiere | From the director of last season’s smash hit THE MOUNTAINTOP comes two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage’s new “flavor-bomb of a comedy” (Variety), that’s “a spicy feast for the senses” (Chicago Sun Times). In a diner kitchen that might be hell, limbo, or just a greasy spoon off the Pennsylvania turnpike, four formerly incarcerated cooks strive for redemption through their shared quest to create the perfect sandwich—all under the devilish gaze of their hard-driving boss. CLYDE’S combines uproarious humor, fulsome heart, and generous hospitality into a delicious theatrical meal that shows why Nottage is among America’s greatest living playwrights.

A DOLL’S HOUSE
by Henrik Ibsen, in a new version by Amy Herzog

Directed by MCT Artistic Director Brent Hazelton
Featuring Joshua Krause and more to be announced

January 24 – February 9, 2025
Broadway Theatre Center Studio Theatre

2023 Tony Award Nominee for Best Revival
2023 Drama Desk Award Winner for Best Adaptation

Classic Masterpiece | For only the second time in 50 years, world-changing dramatist Henrik Ibsen appears in an MCT season! His most famous play, presented here in a compact, devastatingly contemporary, and celebrated new adaptation, shocked audiences and ushered in a new era of theater when it premiered in 1879. Culminating in what George Bernard Shaw described as “the door slam heard round the world,” today it continues to unsparingly examine the difference between being married and living in a true marriage.

EVERY BRILLIANT THING
by Duncan McMillan and Johnny Donahoe
Featuring Elyse Edelman and more to be announced

February 27 – March 16, 2025
Milwaukee Youth Arts Center Goodman Mainstage Hall

Warm-Hearted Favorite | 1: Ice cream. 2: Kung Fu movies. 3: Staying up past your bedtime to watch TV…and those are just the start of a list of every brilliant thing that makes life worth living created through this luminous mix of theater and stand-up. Described by The Guardian as “one of the funniest plays you’ll ever see about depression—and possibly one of the funniest plays you’ll ever see, full stop,” this well-loved coming-of-age story celebrates each of our capacities to delight in the little things and our resilience in going further than we think we can for those we love.

TOPDOG/UNDERDOG

by Suzan-Lori Parks
Featuring Dimonte Henning and Chiké Johnson

April 25 – May 11, 2025
Broadway Theatre Center Studio Theatre

2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
2023 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play

Modern Classic | In this Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece by “the most consistently inventive, and venturesome, American dramatist working today” (New York Times), brothers Lincoln and Booth struggle for the upper hand as they grapple with unresolved inheritances and how to play the cards they’ve been dealt. At once a rollicking portrait of sibling rivalry, a probing exploration of the complexity of family, and a resonant allegory of American identity, this can’t miss production will have you howling with laughter one moment and on the edge of your seat the next.

ABOUT MILWAUKEE CHAMBER THEATRE

Founded in 1975 by Montgomery Davis and Ruth Schudson, guided until 2020 by Michael Wright and Kirsten Finn, and now led by Brent Hazelton and Megwyn Sanders-Andrews, Ph.D., Milwaukee Chamber Theatre (MCT) partners with other arts organizations, community-based organizations, and universities to produce thought-provoking productions and innovative outreach programs on an intimate, human scale. As part of its five-decade commitment to strengthening Milwaukee and Wisconsin’s local artist community, MCT provides regular employment and a stable artistic home to professional artists through a five-play subscription series, the Young Playwrights Festival (YPF), and the Montgomery Davis Play Development Series (MDPDS).

MCT makes its home at the Broadway Theatre Center in Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward and is a proud Member Group of the United Performing Arts Fund. For more information, to purchase tickets, or to make a donation please visit milwaukeechambertheatre.org.

MCT recognizes that when we gather at the BTC, we do so on traditional homeland of the Kickapoo, Menominee, Peoria, Potawatomi, Miami, and Lakota people, and that we serve a community where members of Wisconsin’s sovereign Miami, Anishinabe, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Oneida, and Mohican nations remain present.

MCT is a member of the Milwaukee Theater District. Launched in 2022, the Milwaukee Theater District represents a group of venues and civic promoters who seek to drive increased awareness of the community’s world-class performing arts and live entertainment offerings. With no formal boundaries, the Milwaukee Theater District is a collaborative marketing effort that utilizes advocacy and cooperative marketing campaigns to drive visitation, stoke local pride, and enhance the city’s reputation as a top-tier arts and cultural destination. The Milwaukee Theater District includes nine founding venues, four founding performing arts organizations, and three founding support groups, representing a wide array of programming and venue experiences. With 15,000 theater seats across founding venues, the Milwaukee Theater District ranks No. 1 in the United States for the highest number of theater seats per capita. Learn more at mketheaterdistrict.com.

MCT welcomes people of all races, all religions, all genders, all countries of origin, all sexual orientations, and all abilities. We stand with all those who feel unheard or silenced, and we will ensure this is a safe place for all who enter.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.