Tim Moder
Festival producer Michael Cotey: ‘The variety is really thrilling.’
In the wake of COVID-19, show cancellations due to illness, and lagging ticket sales, the theater world could use some good news. That’s just one of the reasons that a group of theater professionals is looking forward to a new festival, World Premiere Wisconsin, which will take place across the state March 1-June 1, 2023. Featuring productions, readings and workshops of never-before-seen new plays, WPW is a celebration of contemporary playwriting and a showcase for Wisconsin’s thriving and diverse theater scene.
Conceived in 2019, the festival encourages professional, semi-professional, educational and community theaters to embrace the challenges of tackling new scripts (most by unknown playwrights) by providing marketing, fundraising, and dramaturgical support to participating companies. So far, more than 50 theaters have officially signed on, providing Wisconsin audiences with a plethora of opportunities to witness plays come to life onstage for the first time.
“The variety is really thrilling,” says Michael Cotey, World Premiere Wisconsin’s festival producer. “New work is a big investment of a theater’s resources. Theaters have to really believe in these pieces in order to make that investment. So what audiences will witness across the state are not just a bunch of any old plays, but true passion projects of each of these theaters and a great sampling of the tremendous work that happens year after year right here in Wisconsin.”
Forward Theater artistic director Jen Uphoff Gray had the initial idea for World Premiere Wisconsin while attending the Statera Festival for Women in Theatre, held in Milwaukee in 2018. After listening to a panelist describe her experience managing the 2015 Women’s Voices Theater Festival in Washington, D.C., Uphoff Gray began thinking about ways theater makers in Wisconsin could work together around a common project.
“I thought about how little attention is paid nationally to the exceptional theater created in this country if it doesn’t happen in New York City or, to a lesser extent, Chicago,” she says. “I thought about the ways in which planning and executing an event can build professional and community relationships. I thought about how it can feel daunting to produce a new work if you’ve never done it before, and how exciting and fulfilling it is once you actually try it. And with those thoughts, the words ‘World Premiere Wisconsin’ lit up like a neon sign in my brain.”
Over the next few months she reached out to her colleagues at professional theaters across the state to pitch the idea, and in January of this year, the festival was officially announced to the public.
For its WPW production, Forward Theater commissioned nationally known playwright Lauren Gunderson to write a new piece. One of the most produced playwrights in the country, Gunderson is the author of popular titles such as Silent Sky, I & You, The Revolutionists, The Book of Will, and several riffs on Jane Austen characters.
“I had been in conversations with Lauren about writing a new play for us,” says Uphoff Gray. “When I conceived WPW, I knew right away that this would be the perfect time for that commission.” After hosting an initial reading of the new script last spring, she is very excited about the new piece, titled Artemisia, about the life and work of Italian baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. “It’s very much in the same vein as Silent Sky — it’s a lush, romantic and fierce portrayal of a woman overlooked by history, with plenty of humor and heartache.”
Capital City Theatre artistic director Andrew Abrams is also excited to be part of WPW. “As someone who is a writer and promoter of producing new works, it is thrilling to see a festival in our own state that so wonderfully supports new writing,” he says. “Since Capital City Theatre is still young, we’ve been hesitant to do new works, but with World Premiere Wisconsin, we feel that we have a support system.” CCT’s production, Shining in Misery: A King Size Parody, has been in the works for several years, so he believes the festival will be a perfect platform to get the show on its feet.
While plans are still being finalized for many companies, the Madison-area theaters that have scheduled their WPW productions are as follows:
Capital City Theatre
Shining in Misery: A King-Sized Parody
Music by Andrew Abrams, lyrics by Mark-Eugene Garcia, and book by Colleen Duvall
The Playhouse, Overture Center
February 23-March 5, 2023
Capital City Theatre will debut a brand new musical parody, based on many of horror novelist Stephen King’s biggest titles. Drawing from King classics Misery, The Shining, It, The Mist, and The Stand, this comic musical mash-up follows a hotel caretaker, his unhappy wife, and their clairvoyant son on a series of horrifying misadventures, while a storm brews outside. As more mysterious guests show up at the hotel, the plots thicken.
Children’s Theater of Madison
Finder and the North Star by Erica Berman
Starlight Theater, MYArts
February 18-March 5, 2023
In this original play for audiences 9 and up, Finder and North Star embark on a magical journey to discover where wishes go when they are made, and how they are granted. This youth-centered fantasy by CTM’s Education Director Erica Berman makes its debut on the MYArts stage.
Fermat’s Last Theater Company
Dear Theo: Letters of Vincent Van Gogh to his Brother
Arts + Literature Laboratory
April 2023
David Simmons produces and directs this staged reading with music and images, based on the life of one of the foremost artists of the 19th century; Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh.
Forward Theater Company
Artemisia by Lauren Gunderson
The Playhouse, Overture Center
April 13-30, 2023
Artemisia explores the life of Italian baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, a celebrated artist whose work has been largely forgotten for centuries. Filled with humor and warmth, it is a story of artistry and courage, as a woman painted her way through a man’s world.
Madison Theatre Guild
Bad in Bed (A Fairy Tale) by Karen Saari
Bartell Theatre
March 3-11, 2023
Madison Theatre Guild sought locally written comedies for their slot in the World Premiere Wisconsin festival. Out of dozens of entries, they chose Madison playwright Karen Saari’s Bad in Bed (A Fairy Tale), which will be directed by Miranda Hawk. This raucous script follows main character Charles as he reels from the news that his third wife is leaving him. It’s up to his best friends — an author and a woman who has dabbled in witchcraft — to figure out why he’s been so unlucky in love.
Music Theatre of Madison
Micro, by Heidi Joosten and Adam Qutaishat
The Bur Oak
June 9, 2023
Music Theatre of Madison, which has a long history of nurturing new work and presenting world premieres, will be workshopping the new musical Micro. The show focuses on a microbiology student, Ali, who makes a shocking scientific discovery about microaggressions. But her research is complicated by a problematic white superior at her school and a big pharma rep. Ali must decide, alongside her friend MJ, a music student, if she wants to keep her discovery to herself or share it with the world.
StageQ
CapitalQ Theater Festival
Bartell Theatre
June 23-25, 2023
During Pride Month StageQ will take over both Bartell Theatre stages to present readings of brand new plays and 10-minute shorts by up-and-coming queer playwrights from around the country. Over the course of an event-packed weekend, the company will highlight new, queer voices telling their stories.
Strollers Theatre
Hush The Waves by Sam D. White
Bartell Theatre
April 21-May 6, 2023
Based on true stories, Hush the Waves focuses on two young women dealing with teen pregnancy at two distinct times in the twentieth century: 1948 and 1978. Both women face big decisions, health challenges, and social stigmas in very different eras. Reaching out across time, they support one another through the most difficult times of their lives.
Theatre LILA
UW-Stevens Point
June 2023
Theatre LILA Artistic Director Jess Lanius and UW-Stevens Point theater professor Tyler Marchant are co-writing and producing an as yet untitled, one-woman show. The main character, a mother, travels through fractured time to grapple with her past, in hopes of coming to peace with the present, during the most difficult moment in her life. After the reading in the WPW festival, the play will be performed in Madison and later produced at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
For more information about the companies participating in World Premiere Wisconsin and the productions included in the festival, visit worldpremierewisconsin.com.
[Editor's note: The starting date for the festival was corrected to March 1, 2023.]
