UW-Milwaukee Theatre opens its Mainstage Theatre season with The Tragedy of King Lear. The production, in collaboration with Shakespeare & Company, features an interesting mix of professional and student talent...

Sandra Strawn decorates the set in birch trees larger than loneliness. This is where UWM is staging Director Rebecca Holderness' Three Sisters. Strawn's set draws on the depth of UWM's main stage to bring a feel of immensity to the production.    This is not Chekhov's Three Sisters as originally scripted. It's an adaptation of the script by UWM student Fly Steffens. Steffens abandons some of th...

One of the best dramas on local stages right now is, interesting enough a musical. As In Tandem's Thrill Me edges towards its closing performance this coming Sunday, the UWM theatre department is staging a pair of contemporary dramas every bit as intense as the Leopold and Loeb story playing out at the Tenth Street Theatre downtown. This past Monday, the UWM theatre department hosted the first ...

Amanda J. Hull walks into the courtroom as Satan. It’s the beginning of rehearsal. Before a complete run through of the show, UWM’s Rebecca Holderness is working on giving further definition to one of the more creative interpretations she’s making from the script. Stephen Adly Guirgis’ The Last Days of Judas Iscariot�calls for Satan to be present at a court in Purgatory during an appeal tr...

I’ve been given the opportunity for behind-the-scenes access for UWM’s latest upcoming main stage production. This is the first in a series of blogs . . .      Can You Forgive? New Yorker Rebecca Holderness has been working with UWM for a number of years now. It’s a bit odd, but every time I have an extended conversation with her, I have the desire to dispel notions that Milwaukee ...

The tiny performance space at Kenilworth Square was relatively packed—largely with rising, young local theatre talent for a one-night-only performance of a program of shorts referred to as�5 Plays You Didn’t Know. An evening of five shorts selected by UWM professor Rebecca Holderness Began at 6pm and ended somewhere around 9:30 pm if I recall correctly . . . spanning a couple of different fl...

Warmer weather after winter tends to bring with it both the end of the traditional theatre season, replaced by a barrage of shorts programs. Pink Banana Theatre’s next short program is a couple of weeks from its May 21st opening. This coming Monday, UWM’s Rebecca Holderness presents a program of five shorts with Five Plays You Didn’t Know. The ephemeral nature of theatre is really amplifie...

There’s something really, really refreshing and refreshingly dramatic about a production of Noel Coward’s Hay Fever. I had the pleasure of seeing it for a third time last night. Directed by Rebecca Holderness, the UWM production compares favorably with Milwaukee Chamber and American Players Theatre productions I’ve seen of the comedy in the past. The production is remarkably vivid with a de...