Your Live Theater Story is a project I started because of a budget cut.
I know that in these perilous economic times that starting projects is not in fashion unless there is some kind of stimulus to back it up. I plead any and all detachment to economic stimulus with this project, but I’ll be the first to jump on the “what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger” stimulating thought train in explaining why I’m on a crusade to hear your live theater stories.
Before I get into the details, you should know a little bit about me. I’m an actor and director. I used to run a theater company that I sadly had to close after 11 years. I’m now a manager at another theater. I have a wife, and kids, and am stubbornly proud of my horn-rimmed glasses. Basically, I’m a happy, normal, very ordinary dude from the Midwest.
The big thing in my life recently is that I wrote a book. It’s called “Milwaukee’s Live Theater”, published by Arcadia Publishing. It is a fact-based book that serves as a pictorial narrative of roughly 150 years of theater history in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I wrote the book for two reasons. They are:
- I work in Milwaukee theater and thought it was about time someone gave a little factual victory tour of the rich tradition of great theater in Milwaukee.
- I want to write more books where I actually get to lie about stuff, and I thought it would be a good idea to get one book published first.
The wonderful people at Arcadia who publish a great series called Images of America accepted my proposal for an adult picture book about all the drama happening on and off the stages in Milwaukee. I spent several months digging through stacks of photos, reading stories, and talking to people, all in an attempt to put together my book. Some 220 pictures and 18,000 words later, Arcadia packaged my book and it is selling like hot cakes (thanks Mom and Aunt Barbara).
While I was researching my book, my friends at Ten Chimneys Foundation, the national theater museum that is located mere miles from my home in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin, thought it might be a swell idea if my book was the basis for their yearly special exhibit. I thought it was a swell idea, too, and we all started to meet and talk about the project.
One of the first things I mentioned to the staff at Ten Chimneys was that I was unable to talk to more people and get more personal stories woven into “Milwaukee’s Live Theater” than I had initially hoped to do. A publishing deadline, an overabundance of material available to me, and my own personal general sloth contributed to that condition. The exhibit at Ten Chimneys seemed to be an antidote to that problem.
I also knew something about the story of live theater in Milwaukee after doing all that research. It was a story not of buildings or ideas, but one of people. Many of the people who had made theater in Milwaukee that I profiled in my book are dead, and their fanciful stories of laying it all on the line all but forgotten by a new guard of theater artists and fans in my region. This erasure of personal insight into the making of theater seemed unfortunate to me. The notion of getting a little more down and dirty with gut reactions to live theater really appealed to the nonacademic part of my being (that part being about 95% of my entire being).
We concocted a plan to pose six questions, more personal than informational, to as many people as would listen. The in-house exhibit would feature leather bound journals from the Ten Chimneys gift collection (my admiration for their gift collection reached new levels when I discovered something called “The Salt Pig”). These journals were intended to be written in by exhibit visitors. Low tech, pen to paper, hand on page kind of stuff. It all seemed a little tactile, and for all of us working on the exhibit, that was a really good thing. We believed that this project could become an incredible living journal of personal live theater stories for men, women and children of out generation and generations to come.
And then the budget cut came. Ten Chimneys needed to trim in a few areas, and one of them was their yearly exhibit. Our wonderful project seemed doomed.
I got a phone call from Ten Chimneys’ President Sean Malone explaining the predicament. Feeling horrible about giving me the news, Sean asked, “What can I do for you?” I quickly said, “Give me those leather bound journals.” Immediately I saw what I needed to do. I needed to start collecting those stories myself.
So, here we are. Your Live Theater Story is only as big as we all make it. I want to hear as many stories as I can. I’ve got no deadline, no agenda; just a burning interest to hear what you have to say about live theater and your relationship with it.
I’ll transcribe interviews from people who are willing to have me stick a microphone in the face. I’ll post audio from those interviews. I’ll show pictures of folks writing their stories. I’ll even try to lay down some video from time to time. I just want to hear what you have to say, because I love listening and learning about why people connect to a thing I love a lot: live theater.
Thanks for showing up. Keep coming…to the theater, that is.
