Milwaukee Public Theatre’s All-City People’s Parade
A Labor Day of love and community
Milwaukee’s Labor Day parade will include a labor of love, courtesy of Milwaukee Public Theatre (MPT). The second annual All-City People’s Parade will be part of the Sept. 6 Labor Day celebrations—and it’s all free, rain or shine. Jeffrey Holub, one of a dozen lead artists working with MPT, explains the origins of Milwaukee’s All-City People’s Parade. “We were inspired by the Minneapolis MayDay Parade...
Takers
Idris Elba, Matt Dillon among stars in typical heist film
From The Asphalt Jungle through The Italian Job, the heist movie has a long, honorable history. Putting criminals to work in devilishly complicated schemes to burrow into bank vaults, pierce the perimeters of impenetrable museums and make off with the loot of armored trucks, the heist movie is like a chess game pitting...
Topping Brought The Beatles
Saturday, Sept. 4, is the 46th anniversary of the day The Beatles performed their one and only show for Milwaukee. The Fab Four made it to our city because of Nick Topping, a local activist and promoter, who brought them...
Neil Haven’s Unique, Satisfying ‘Playdaters’
Theater Review
Neil Haven’s The Playdaters is a refreshingly unique show that mixes drama with comedy and commercial elements with experimental aesthetics. Spencer (playwright Haven) and Erwin (Jeremiah Munsey) play a game in which...
Andre’ Lee Ellis & Co. Finds a Home
Black theater raising consciousness in the community
After roaming nomadically for many seasons, Andre’ Lee Ellis & Co. finally has a home. “It’s just like Downtown,” says Andre Lee Ellis, the theater company’s namesake, proud to show visitors around the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center (1531 W. Vliet St.), a County Parks facility with a...
Portrait Society Gallery’s Everyday People
‘Real Photo Postcard Survey’ captures essence of humanity
Whereas “reality” entertainment often relies on a carefully planned series of falsehoods, artistic realism uses the natural beauty and emotion of our surroundings to depict life. Unaltered human beauty is on display in the Portrait Society Gallery’s current exhibition “The Real Photo Postcard Survey” by J. Shimon and J. Lindemann...
Artist Kendall Baer’s ‘View From 80’
Art Preview
With his Vandyke beard and a racing cap covered with souvenir pins from all over, Kendall Baer resembles a benign beatnik, even if he spent less time on the road than on a career in the commercial precincts of graphic design. Baer turned 80 this summer and is marking his...
Inside America’s Concentration Camps: Two Centuries of Internment and Torture (Lawrence Hill), by James L. Dickerson
The title is provocative and the tone polemical. James L. Dickerson is an investigative reporter, not a historian, and sometimes leaps to simplistic conclusions. He maintains that immigrants who came to America for economic reasons “tended to view torture as a legitimate tool with which to protect their wealth...
‘Neil Young’s Greendale’ as Graphic Novel
Music legend’s masterpiece continues to morph
The graphic novel based on Neil Young’s Greendale (published by Vertigo) is the illustrated version, replete with variant narrative, of the original. But what exactly is the “original” when it comes to this work? Is it the live concert series?
Evolution of the Piano Trio
Prometheus Trio kicks off 11th season with Haydn, Brahms and Fauré
The piano trio genre originated in the “trio sonata” of the Baroque Era (mid-17th to mid-18th centuries), where a solo instrument (usually the violin) dominated the proceedings, supported by keyboards (harpsichord, for the most part) and a bass stringed instrument. But the genre really took off in the...
