3/29/23 Update: Since the post below appeared on March 27, we have learned that Illyria Productions’ reading of Margaret has been postponed until late April or early May. We address that postponement in our blog post on 3/29/23. We will announce a new date for the Margaret reading as soon as it is known; look for a full preview of Margaret, featuring interviews with playwright Marcella Kearns and Illyria founder Arden Gray, in advance of the rescheduled reading.
In a festival spanning four-plus months and including nearly fifty world premieres, there’s no place or month that will be busier than Madison in April.
From Illyria Productions’ Margaret on April 2 through Strollers Theatre’s Hush the Waves opening on April 21, the curtain will rise on five WPW Madison offerings – three full productions and two readings – this month (a sixth scheduled April production, Pile of Cats Theatre Company’s There’s an App for That, will now open at the Bartell Theatre on May 19).
They unfold over five centuries (the 15th, 17th, 19th, 20th, and 21st) in four countries (England, Italy, France, and the United States) as well as international waters (the Caribbean).
And while they were programmed by distinct companies operating independent of one another, they collectively prove anew that juxtaposed plays talk to each other, further enhancing the theatergoing experience by offering us unique variations on a theme.
Sisterhood Across the Ages
Most notably, four of these five Madison offerings revolve around women making their way and finding their voice in a man’s world.
Marcella Kearns’ Margaret, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry VI trilogy, trains a spotlight on one of the Bard’s great early heroines, who morphs from demure maiden to commanding general and de facto ruler of England, repeatedly upsetting gendered expectations regarding a woman’s role along the way. I’ll be previewing Margaret, which you can see this coming Sunday, in Wednesday’s blog post.
Born just over 100 years after the historical Margaret died, Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi knew all about upsetting gendered expectations; she became an internationally renowned painter at a time when the profession was dominated by men.
As embodied in playwright Lauren Gunderson’s Artemisia, Gentileschi is also consistently the smartest, most charismatic, and bravest person in the room – a claim you can test for yourself by checking out the all-star cast bringing her to life in the Forward Theater production running from April 13-30 in the Overture Center.
In Gunderson’s play, we first meet Gentileschi as a 17-year-old prodigy whose career was nearly derailed when she is raped by one of her father’s colleagues. Two 17-year-olds also take center stage in Sam D. White’s Hush the Waves, debuting in a Strollers Theatre production running from April 21 to May 6.
Each from Wisconsin but separated by thirty years in the middle of the 20th century, Mary and Liz are both pregnant and both hemmed in by men trying to tell them what to do about it, every bit as much as Gentileschi is initially hindered by a father trying to “handle” the aftermath of her rape.
But the two young 20th-century women have what their 17th-century counterpart did not: each other. In ways I can’t fairly reveal, they transcend the 30-year gap that divides them, suggesting how powerful sisterhood can be.
Such power also plays an integral role in Lisa Stoffer Sipos’ It’s All Overboard, a rollicking comedy that simultaneously scores some serious points involving the objectification of women – and the fun that can be had when women subvert dim-witted male perceptions regarding who they are. Presented by Broom Street Theater, it runs from April 14 to May 6.
Ways of Seeing Together
The odd man out in the above discussion of Madison’s April WPW openings is Vincent van Gogh, brought to life through his letters and projections of his paintings in Dear Theo: The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, which will be presented as a reading by Fermat’s Last Theater Company.
“Numbering over 600 and little known compared to Vincent’s paintings, these letters to his younger brother [Theo] can stand alone as great literature,” Fermat’s script tells us, as it introduces van Gogh. You can appraise that claim for yourself at the Fermat reading on April 13.
Having attended Fermat’s reading, you’ll be primed to appreciate another conversation between two juxtaposed plays: Dear Theo and Artemisia, both involving revolutionary artists ahead of their time, teaching us to see the world and ourselves in new ways.
Which, of course, is what a festival like World Premiere Wisconsin is all about; here, in that context, is one more connection for you.
As reported by Jessica Steinhoff in a 2013 Isthmus article, many of the actors who formed Fermat cut their teeth as members of Madison’s justly celebrated Young Shakespeare Players; ditto Margaret producing company Illyria Productions, founded by Young Shakespeare Players actor and student director Arden Gray.
Both Young Shakespeare Players and Fermat pride themselves on the collaborative approach they use to build productions; Illyria’s Margaret and Fermat’s Dear Theo are both products of such collaboration.
Speaking to Steinhoff for that 2013 Isthmus article, Fermat’s Alec Phan (credited as Ely Phan at the time) hoped that one might see more of such a collaborative approach within Madison theater in the years to come. “I think Madison’s theater communities could communicate amongst each other more,” Phan said to Steinhoff.
Ten years later, the theater artist who dreamed up WPW – Forward Theater Artistic Director Jen Uphoff Gray – wrote a social media post that echoed Phan’s dream as she described what she herself had hoped WPW might accomplish.
Among her envisioned goals for WPW, Gray placed front and center “build[ing] relationships between theater organizations across Wisconsin so that we could better support each other.”
I’ll have more to say about Gray’s vision in this Friday’s blog post. In the interim, you can support the vision that artists like she and Phan have promoted by plugging Madison’s next five shows into an April social calendar that also leaves room for the four WPW openings in Milwaukee and a WPW opening in Fond du Lac.
That’s ten new opportunities to log points on your WPW passport, enhancing your odds of winning WPW swag while fulfilling your own role in strengthening the ties that bind us together as we play together on Wisconsin’s stage.
See you at the theater!
For more information on WPW’s many April openings, including all five Madison shows, visit https://worldpremierewisconsin.com/all-shows/.
