Tag Archive for Milwaukee
Gigante kicks off Studio Series with HOLIDAYS ON ICE by David Sedaris
Tiny Tim and the Sugar Plum Fairy got you down?
Ready for something different?
Then HOLIDAYS ON ICE is the show for you!

MICHAEL STEBBINS, who recently appeared in Gigante’s “My Dear Othello,” will bring to life – with simply a chair, podium, boom box and a bottle of water – holiday stories by American humorist DAVID SEDARIS, on DECEMBER 5, 6 and 7, 2014, at Theatre Gigante’s Studio, 706 S. 5th Street, at The Pitch Project (next to Brenner Brewing Company).
“Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris” features Stebbins reading the stories “Season’s Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!,” “Dinah, the Christmas Whore” and “Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol” from the collection Holidays on Ice.
As part of the show, there will be also be opportunities for audience members to win holiday door prizes. Performance times are 8 p.m. on December 5 and 6, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, December 7. There is a suggested donation of $15 and tickets may be gotten by calling 414-961-6119, or at the door starting one hour prior to performance time. Parental discretion is advised.
Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris
December 5 and 6 at 8pm
December 7 at 2pm
Gigante Studio
706 S Fifth Street
in Historic Walker’s Point
photo by Mike Scrivener
Schomer Lichtner Art on stage
Schomer Lichtner’s Artwork once again graces the stage in Theatre Gigante’s MY DEAR OTHELLO!
written by Isabelle Kralj and Mark Anderson
directed by Isabelle Kralj
with new music by Seth Warren-Crow
scenic and lighting design by Rick Graham
and
costume design by Marion Clendenen-Acosta
MY DEAR OTHELLO
October 23 – November 8
Kenilworth Studio 508 Theatre
My Dear Othello tickets on sale now:
phone: 1 800 838 3006
on-line: giganteothello.brownpapertickets.com
Theatre Gigante’s 2013 Holiday Newsletter
CELEBRATING 26 YEARS OF ART!
Dear Friends and Supporters!
We have just entered another holiday season, a time when we like to reflect on our escapades from the past year and, once again, share it with you. We consider ourselves very fortunate to be able to make art, to be in our 26th Season, to be able to look ahead to a future, and to have you by our side in all the exciting endeavors!
Looking back, we fondly remember last year – our 25th Anniversary Season – in which, upon returning from our five-city tour to Slovenia with THREE OTHER SISTERS, we embarked on a journey with the play DUST, by one of post-war Hungary’s most prominent literary figures, György Spiró. Directed by Mark and played by Isabelle and John Kishline, DUST was a two person dark comedy in which, as Paul Kosidowski of Milwaukee Magazine noted: The conversation—which takes place in real time around a kitchen table—takes many surprising turns along the way. Eventually, the voice of the playwright asserts itself with a radical proposal of sorts that will deepen the simple scenario. And the couple’s final act will keep you thinking about the hour you’ve spent with them long after you’ve left the theater.
Soon after closing DUST, Gigante hit the road, visiting schools with its PETER & THE WOLF & THE ONE MAN BAND, (presented through the Milwaukee Symphony ACE Program) to the delight of squealing and grinning first graders, who spent the latter half of the program dancing with each character to the delightful playing of Aaron Gardner.
In May, Gigante presented ELECTRA, adapted and created by Isabelle, based on the Hungarian movie Electra, My Love. ELECTRA received high critical acclaim. Third Coast Digest’s Matthew Reddin wrote: It works brilliantly. Theatre Gigante’s cast of 11 – nine actor/dancers accompanied by two offstage narrators – whirls about their Kenilworth studio space with fierce purpose, holding our attention for the intermissionless hour it takes to tell their tale and achieving the tricky task of performing this oft-told epic in an unorthodox yet fundamentally true way.
The beginning of June saw Mark perform ME, YOU, ART AND TROUT, at Grinnell College in Iowa. A perfect bookend since the 2012-2013 Season began with Mark’s monologue – his first in fifteen years, well worth the wait, as Mike Fischer pointed out in his Journal Sentinel review: … material this good and delivered this well is bound to sustain, long after the lights come down and we walk back out into the night, no longer alone. The solstice brought about packed houses during evenings of fun at Paddy’s Pub, featuring one of the world’s greatest accordionists Guy Klucevsek, artfully playing his own soulful, playful, exquisite music!
UWM’s Inova Contemporary Art Museum, as part of their Martha Wilson exhibition, commissioned Performance Artist Kim Miller and Isabelle to create a new piece, IN PUBLIC, which Isabelle and Kim performed in August to a full INOVA house!
Now we are in our 26th Season, Isabelle is performing in schools through the MSO ACE Program with four symphony musicians in their FOUNDATIONS IN MUSIC AND DANCE program, and we have just closed the highly successful BIG TOP production (Nov. 14–16), in which Selena Milewski of the Shepherd Express describes the performers and performance: Gaines unfurled an epic of love, lust, danger and good trumping evil set under the big top. The audience investment and co-imagination essential to this style of performance were happily given, to eerie and miraculous effect.
[In The Scottish…Play] Isabelle Kralj was brilliant as Lady M, Mark Anderson was both endearing and disturbing…becoming quite a convincing ghoul, and John Kishline rounded out the triad in the title role, paralleling the indecision and submissiveness of his Shakespearean forbear…It’s a real treat to see the classic tragedy, with its patent themes of insanity and greed, so precisely evoked through light-hearted clowning.
And, Russ Bickerstaff of the Shepherd Express wrote: …inventive imagination…a surreal fugue…It’s really a remarkable accomplishment.
Now, Gigante looks forward to the Spring in which the company will perform SPALDING GRAY: STORIES LEFT TO TELL in January at Grinnell College; Isabelle will work with Professor James Butchart at the University Of Wisconsin-Whitewater on their production of Into The Woods; Mark will perform a monologue in Chicago at Links Hall in February as part of a series of performances curated by Holly Hughes; the company will visit schools again with its Peter & Wolf; and we will present two new Kralj-Anderson creations, SCREWBALL LOVE (February 13-15) and MIDSUMMER IN MIDWINTER (May 9-17) at Kenilworth’s Studio 508.
Now, you’ve made it through this newsletter, and we’re ready to conclude, but not without thanking you for all your support and friendship.
We hope you will consider, at this gift giving time, a generous contribution to Theatre Gigante. Your donation will help sustain all the many successful, ongoing projects that Gigante contributes to this Community – making Milwaukee an arts-rich city with a uniquely Gigante niche of original, innovative and exciting hybrid theater.
May the Holidays and the New Year bring you much success, health, peace,
and, of course, more good Gigante theater!
Help make many more performances possible.
Join the fun and the celebration! Donate today, and watch your dollars turn into new art!
May the Holidays and the New Year bring you much success, health, peace,
and, of course, more good Gigante theater!
HAPPY HOLIDAYS – HAPPY NEW YEAR.
Isabelle & Mark
to make a donation, click HERE
or mail a check to:
Theatre Gigante
P.O. Box 1999
Milwaukee, WI 53201-1999
THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
Theatre Gigante opens its 26th Season
Gigante’s Big Top at Kenilworth Studio 508 November 14-16 at 7:30pm
Theatre Gigante opens its 26th Season with two rollicking and wacky theater pieces created by graduates of the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris: David Gaines, who Gigante audiences will remember for his fabulous one-man show 7 (x1) Samurai, which he performed for Gigante in 2009, and Gigante regular Malcolm Tulip, who has entertained Milwaukee audiences in quite a few Gigante shows.
THE SCOTTISH…PLAY
created by Malcolm Tulip
A LITTLE BUSINESS AT THE BIG TOP
created and performed by David Gaines
For tickets: brownpapertickets.com or call 800.838.3006
DUST, opening this weekend, Feb 8 and 9
Continuing our 25th Anniversary Season, Theatre Gigante is very excited to present the regional premiere of DUST, a stimulating, provocative play by one of Hungary’s leading contemporary writers!
Gigante Artistic Directors Isabelle and Mark first saw György Spiró’s DUST in Ljubljana, Slovenia and fell in love with the play. It is clever, provocative, and loaded with issues of today’s world, through the eyes of a couple struggling to survive.
Isabelle and Gigante regular, John Kishline, play the couple, struggling to stay afloat, who – one lucky day – are given an opportunity to alter their fate forever.
Handled with a sense of humor and deep understanding, DUST touches the heart and inspires the mind!
Mark directs, with scenic design by Rick Graham and lighting by Nathan Booth.
click for more info
O.O.T. opening tonight