Wednesday, February 27,2008
Share
Stark Steinbeck
Theater Preview
Thestage
was the scene of mass commotion: people rushed about; platforms moved
around; Lenny killed Curly’s wife. Amid the flurry of it all, in a most
pleasant voice, director Rebecca Holderness told me that everything was
going well with just more than a week until opening night for the
UW-Milwaukee Department of Theatre’s production of Of Mice and Men.
Oddly, I could’ve sworn she said something about having an actual fire onstage and including a living, breathing dog in the production. A dog ate Steinbeck’s first manuscript of Of Mice and Men, so including an actual canine in a stage adaptation of the classic novel might seem ill-advised, but Holderness has the kind of reassuring presence that leaves little doubt that she knows exactly what she’s doing.
Holderness has worked with universities all over the country, in addition to doing regular commercial work. She owns a strong sense of vision that has made for some of the most striking collegiate theater to hit Milwaukee stages in the past few years. Of Mice and Men is her third show in three seasons with UW-Milwaukee. Her 2006 production of From These Green Heights featured actors who were dramatically suspended over the stage in harnesses—a feature that hadn’t been used in any previous versions of the play. The following year, she directed a stage adaptation of Einstein’s Dreams, which used a script written for her theater company in New York several years ago.
With Of Mice and Men, Holderness is tackling a dangerously iconic piece of American literature. Bearing in mind that most audiences will be familiar with the material from high school, Holderness says she put a great deal of thought into how to stage Steinbeck’s classic in a way that brings everyone back in touch with the passion, anguish and brutality that inspired the novel. She describes the visual feel of the production as “stark.” The props and costuming are all quite naturalistic, and the stage is relatively bare, save for a small number of wheeled, wooden platforms and a few other schematic elements. The visual reality of the Great Depression filters in through photographs of the era taken from the Morris Fromkin Memorial Collection in UWM’s library. The production’s soundscape will feature contemporary music. Despite the frenzy on the nearby stage, Holderness seems confident as we talk about the upcoming production. She says she hopes that the show jars audiences just enough to draw them into a story that seems to have been ruined by high school English classes all over the country.
UWM Department of Theatre’s production of Of Mice and Men opened Feb. 26 and runs through March 2.
Oddly, I could’ve sworn she said something about having an actual fire onstage and including a living, breathing dog in the production. A dog ate Steinbeck’s first manuscript of Of Mice and Men, so including an actual canine in a stage adaptation of the classic novel might seem ill-advised, but Holderness has the kind of reassuring presence that leaves little doubt that she knows exactly what she’s doing.
Holderness has worked with universities all over the country, in addition to doing regular commercial work. She owns a strong sense of vision that has made for some of the most striking collegiate theater to hit Milwaukee stages in the past few years. Of Mice and Men is her third show in three seasons with UW-Milwaukee. Her 2006 production of From These Green Heights featured actors who were dramatically suspended over the stage in harnesses—a feature that hadn’t been used in any previous versions of the play. The following year, she directed a stage adaptation of Einstein’s Dreams, which used a script written for her theater company in New York several years ago.
With Of Mice and Men, Holderness is tackling a dangerously iconic piece of American literature. Bearing in mind that most audiences will be familiar with the material from high school, Holderness says she put a great deal of thought into how to stage Steinbeck’s classic in a way that brings everyone back in touch with the passion, anguish and brutality that inspired the novel. She describes the visual feel of the production as “stark.” The props and costuming are all quite naturalistic, and the stage is relatively bare, save for a small number of wheeled, wooden platforms and a few other schematic elements. The visual reality of the Great Depression filters in through photographs of the era taken from the Morris Fromkin Memorial Collection in UWM’s library. The production’s soundscape will feature contemporary music. Despite the frenzy on the nearby stage, Holderness seems confident as we talk about the upcoming production. She says she hopes that the show jars audiences just enough to draw them into a story that seems to have been ruined by high school English classes all over the country.
UWM Department of Theatre’s production of Of Mice and Men opened Feb. 26 and runs through March 2.
Also in Theater:
..Search Shepherd Express
- Sat
22 - Sun
23 - Mon
24 - Tue
25 - Wed
26 - Thu
27 - Fri
28
Search in Events
2008-11-22 9PM
Live Music/Performance
Sat., Nov. 22, 2008, 9 PM - Midnight. Maxies Southern Comfort, 6732 W. Fairview Ave., Milwaukee, WI. No Cover. Check out www.libertybluegrassband.com for all the lastest info.
Location: Central Milwaukee
Quantum of Solace is the future of cinema, a movie whose splashiest scenes are tailored to the dimension of big screens. It opens with the camera zooming like a cruise missile, skimming the surface of the sea as it hurtles toward the Italian coast. There,
Besotted by the cinema of silence and early talking pictures, Guy Maddin also finds humor in old movies-or perhaps the humor lies more in the distance between our experience of the world and the gestures of an antique art form. In My Winnipeg, the Canadia
For most of us, bossa nova is the distinctive sound of Brazil. The music was born in the late 1950s, conceived in large part by Antonio Carlos Jobim. From early on, American jazz musicians parked themselves within the idiom, sensing an affinity between th
California's Sound Tribe Sector 9 claims that instrumental music can reflect the tension of the times. In fact, the five-man collective considers its dense Eno-esque swirl of pulsing live and electronic sounds a means of "conversation" between band and li
The local restaurant Barossa, named after the Australian wine region of the same name, quietly closed its doors several months ago. With that closure came the loss of a very distinguished wine list and a menu that borrowed ingredients from all over the wo
The biggest local restaurant news of 2008 would have to be Adam Siegel’s James Beard Award as Best Chef of the Midwest. Siegel is chef de cuisine at Bartolotta’s Lake Park Bistro, as well as at Bacchus. Lake Park Bistro brings a very French fe
Free Classifieds
Free Coupons
Win Cage Fighting Tickets
..Search Shepherd Express
