2020 vision

Madison’s arts leaders share dreams for a vibrant city

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The arts scene in Madison is strong and growing, which is a wonderful measure of the cultural health of our community. At a time when several performing arts organizations in Milwaukee have closed their doors, our city is welcoming new companies and new facilities, including UW-Madison’s Hamel Music Center, and the Youth Arts Center, a home for Children’s Theater of Madison and Madison Youth Choirs, projected to open in late 2020. And institutions like Overture Center are having record years in both revenue and attendance. Many weekends, audiences must choose from a plethora of professional, touring, university and community events and exhibits, because there are too many for one person to take in.

Artists Brenda Baker and Bird Ross, who also help provide funding for artists via the Women Artists Forward Fund and Forward Art Prize, see many bright spots in the community, including the new Circus Space, the studio residency at Thurber Park, Monroe Street Arts Center, the monthly Art Parties, the Chazen’s expanded hours and programming, the Triennial [at MMoCA], the Bodgery, Midwest Clay Project, the Arts + Literature Lab, which also broke ground on a new home, and the Children’s Museum’s plans for outdoor expansion. There are many hardworking artists in Dane County, they say, “who are “expanding, moving, testing new ideas, shaking things up, and offering us all creative, sustainable visions of the future.”

That’s all good news, but data from the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies indicates that state and federal funding for the arts in Wisconsin amounts to just 27 cents per capita (down 61 percent from 2010), which is embarrassingly low. We rank 48th out of 50 states for public funding for the arts. And yet, visual artists, dancers, actors, musicians and other performers persist.

Here are their thoughts on the arts scene and their big plans for 2020.

ARTS FOR ALL

Dana Pellebon, Black theater artist: There needs to be a focus on creating art in my community with Black artists who have not had the opportunities to access the traditional system. There are two ways I am going about this. First, I am working with Sandra Adell, a professor in the Afro-American studies department at UW-Madison, to create and foster a Black Theater Collective that is focused on education and training of new artists in the community. This initiative will give training opportunities with burgeoning Black artists in Madison with Black theater professionals who are currently at the university or who have been previously affiliated with for little to no cost to the community. I am also a co-founder of the Loud and Unchained Black Theater Festival in Madison. The opportunity to see Black art done by Black artists is a rare occurrence in Madison. There are only four Black-led theater festivals in the United States that solicit work exclusively from Black artists. To have Madison be a part of creating those opportunities for Black artists is exciting.

David Wells, director of Edgewood College Gallery and Ernest Hüpeden’s Painted Forest: I am most inspired by the continuing development of our arts environment — greater vibrancy and dialogue, a diminished sense of silos and more mutual support between organizations and venues in the community. At Edgewood College Gallery, we’ve committed to “Examining Histories/Understanding Truths/Creating Resilience” as a major framework for exhibition planning. Exhibits feature artists engaging diverse cultures, content, artistic practices, and student/community interactions. Strategies include more work with faculty from different disciplines to share deeper contexts that relate the art to specific course content and more direct artist contact through residencies/talks/panels for students and the public that address underlying histories and contexts.

Zak Stowe, president, StageQ, and vice president, Bartell Community Theatre Foundation: A goal of mine is to increase accessibility to participate in our productions. When I was with StageQ at our booth at the OutReach Pride Festival this last August I met so many queer youth who were hungry for a group to be a part of, a place for them to be themselves. So one goal, for myself, personally, is to make any show I produce as accessible to our community as possible. That engagement is crucial. We are a community theater after all, and I want the shows I work on to be as part of the community as I can. This might mean mentorships or internships, community outreach and involvement, and so many other things I’m excited to bring to the StageQ board and any shows I am involved in going forward next season.

Brian Cowing, actor/director: Working with young people in CTM’s Matilda this year has really gotten me excited for the coming years. It seems like the young artists I’ve worked with are already feeling the wonderful investment the community has made in the new Madison Youth Arts Center. Even though it’s not here yet and money is still being raised — they are driven, they are excited, they are ready to flourish. Watching their faces light up at the groundbreaking ceremony was a true highlight of 2019.

Kelsey Brennan, artistic associate, Two Crows Theatre Company: We started Two Crows Theatre Company last year to serve as a cultural addition to the Spring Green community and to provide work opportunity for the many theater artists who call Spring Green home. As we enter our second season, it’s become clear that we are not only providing community engagement and employment, but also a space for talented artists to grow and expand their craft. This season at Two Crows will include the directorial debuts for APT favorites Marcus Truschinski, Laura Rook and Jim Ridge, as well as an original work, A Christmas Haunting, written by and starring Colleen Madden. Witnessing well-established actors like Madden and Truschinski venture into writing and directing, and in a space so strikingly different from APT’s Hill Theatre, has inspired us to continue making Two Crows a new artistic home.

Erica Berman, education director, Children’s Theater of Madison: From our Young Playwrights program in Madison area school districts, our free programming at Goodman and Lussier community centers, and our programming for youth with disabilities (to name a few), we are excited to expand on these opportunities as we move into the new Youth Arts Center. Our goals for the future are expanding our partnerships within the community, looking at creative solutions for eliminating barriers for participation, and offering more classes to even more students in a more conducive space.

Andy Abrams, artistic director, Capital City Theatre: I think one of the biggest changes to our approach to our next season is the amazing contribution of the new Capital City Theatre rehearsal and office space, the CORE. This came as a wonderful surprise to us earlier in the fall and has allowed us to expand our Conservatory to include new classes and workshops.

EMBRACING DIVERSITY

Lisa Thurrell, co-artistic director, Kanopy Dance: People talk about traditional and non-traditional a lot. We need to look at what is exclusionary or biased…and how to be more inclusive. We need to become better listeners, really responding to Kanopy team supporters, the community, our colleagues and our friends.

Tim Sauers, vice president of programming and community engagement, Overture Center: The Madison arts community is eager to experience quality performing and visual arts. They are interested in learning how touring shows get to Madison. They want to know about the lives of the performers and the creative teams, they want to understand the creative process resulting in a deeper, more meaningful relationship with what they are experiencing.  This thirst for knowledge and involvement with the works has propelled me to assure that quality work gets presented on our stages and in our galleries, and that our education and engagement initiatives built around shows and exhibitions provide insights and connections to the art. I also learned from this community that the presented work has to be relevant to their lives. There are many populations to serve with varied interests and I hope that future programming addresses this diversity of community and artistic tastes. There is nothing in my work more satisfying than when an audience loves a show. I was asked one day recently, “Where is the place you enjoy being the most?” It was an easy answer, “Sitting in one of the darkened theaters at Overture Center experiencing with the Madison community the best show we have ever seen.”

Melisa Pereyra, actor/director and core company member at American Players Theatre: This year, I will be performing in an all Latinx cast [for The River Bride] and will get to work on a play written by a living female identifying Latinx playwright. This will only be my second experience in a room like this over the past 10 years as a professional theater-maker. This is important for me as an artist because it reminds me that we are out here making art as a collective.

Brenda DeVita, artistic director, American Players Theatre: As I’ve been watching and participating in the world over the last several years, I’ve felt the increasing weight of a different kind of responsibility — both to our audience and to the world. It’s not enough to just “entertain,” though that’s important. It’s not enough to just do the classics well. Though that’s also important. Our mission at APT is to do the “classics,” but by their nature, these plays are inherently inequitable. They were, with few exceptions, written from a narrow perspective. And if we have a diverse group of artists — which we do, because we believe in inclusivity — these artists and audiences have to go up against the idea that these plays were not actually written for them. They don’t immediately see themselves in this work like I and many others do. So they have to go the extra mile at times to find them valuable and accessible. Knowing this, we want to be brave enough to ask these questions: Can these plays really be for everyone? Can they be universal (as we’ve always said they are)? Many of these plays are genius, but are they classic? Do they need to be done today? This process, this journey, this evolution, has made me (and, I think, all of us at APT) believe even more in our mission. To be responsible to help define what this means to the future — not only for ourselves but for theater in general. It will take time. It’s urgent and important, so we must take the time and make sure we do it well.

FUELING THE ARTS ECONOMY

Mark J. Fraire, director of arts and cultural affairs, Dane Arts: I am inspired that many creatives and others are now understanding that the arts are an economic engine, and that creatives help drive the economy while generating, “beauty, goodness, and truth.”

My 2020 mission is for Dane Arts to financially help more individual artists and emerging/smaller arts groups across disciplines — and to continue to build strong alliances with a variety of business partners who understand the economic, cultural, creative and community impact the arts generate. And more importantly, to get those business leaders to speak publicly about the need for and value of the arts for us all.

Jenie Gao, visual artist: I’m a full-time artist and entrepreneur, and I specialize in large-scale projects including murals, public art and curated spaces. What I’ve learned from doing big work, and focusing on literal and metaphorical big pictures, is that we need to understand the ecosystem we are in if we are truly to make a good impact. Three topics are on my mind as we head into 2020 — diversity, pay, and gentrification — and where all three intertwine. In fall 2019, Jenie Gao Studio expanded into a 1,700 square-foot studio space close to downtown Madison. The expansion is an act of claiming space for art as a necessary component of a stable city ecosystem. In the traditional pattern of gentrification, artists make an area cool and vibrant, then developers push them out. Artists then move to the outskirts of a city, and the pattern of gentrification and displacement repeats. Jenie Gao Studio’s move is a reversal of expectations. The artists are moving in.

Here’s the dream for 2020: I’m dreaming of the Cap East neighborhood becoming a full-on arts and culture district that prioritizes the ability of diverse artists to stay there. I’m dreaming of working with business venues that step up to the challenge of paying hanging fees for artwork like they pay for their furniture and their plumbing. I’m dreaming of every professional artist I know having an LLC and not having BS with clients anymore. I’m dreaming of more leaders emerging in the arts sector, who are ready to talk about long-taboo topics of race and pay, and what each of them is doing to rectify systemic problems. I’m dreaming of the day when I can walk into a room of my artist friends and know without question every one of them is getting paid well for their work. Well enough to live, well enough to buy a house, well enough to hang out with their software developer friends, well enough not to be displaced by the fruits of their own labor. Well enough to enjoy the ecosystem we created together.

MEETING AUDIENCES WHERE THEY ARE

Jen Plants, director/dramaturg/educator: I’m using 2020 to focus on making theater by not building anything at all — though as it at least needs a name, I’m calling it Third Ridge Theatre. Third Ridge is focused on leveraging community capital as it actually exists, supporting new work, paying artists first, and making theater by creating “rooms where it happens” all over Madison. Our first production this fall brought people together in my kitchen for pie baking [Gwendolyn Rice’s American Pie], storytelling, and an unexpected American history lesson, and the very best part was hearing audience members afterwards discuss what stories they’d like to tell in their own homes. This year will bring projects staged in places from the Jenifer Street Footbridge to my bathroom (no really, I’m planning to produce a play in my bathroom), all of which are designed to create intimate experiences where we can listen to each other, challenge institutional power, and hear stories by and about our neighbors. Though I’m starting by focusing on the hyperlocal, when you think of theater-making in 2020, look around our actual community. Listen. Go places you haven’t been. There are spaces for storytelling everywhere. Let’s fill them up.

Kathryn Smith, general director, Madison Opera: My New Year’s resolution is to serve our diverse audiences in myriad ways, understanding that while what matters to one person will be our performances of Fellow Travelers (and the discussions about the “Lavender Scare” that go with it), for another it will be our studio artists performing in concert with the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras. For another it will be the master classes we do with high school and college students, and for others it will be showing off their lightstick-waving skills at Opera in the Park.

Jennifer Uphoff Gray, artistic director, Forward Theater Company: We have been looking for new ways for us to engage with our audiences. That led to the launch of our Theater Forward podcast. Twice monthly we release episodes to look at different aspects of running a theater company and the politics of making art for our times. What’s been especially rewarding for us is taking time every few weeks to think about issues or challenges that are preoccupying our own work and putting them into the context of what’s going on across our region and nationally. As we look to the year ahead, we are excited to connect more with listeners and to make these conversations as multi-directional as possible.

COLLABORATION

Meghan Randolph, executive director, Music Theatre of Madison: As we deepen our focus on new and lesser-known musicals, we are eager to grow our community collaborations in 2020 and beyond. Working last year with Madison Public Library, InterMission Theatre, the Wisconsin Union Theater, Arts For All and XTension Dance Company saw wonderful artistic returns for us. We learn so much more about ourselves as an organization and as individual artists when we work together. Specifically, we’re interested in collaborating with people and organizations that have missions different from our own.

Andrew Sewell, music director, Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra: Our signature Concerts on the Square will see future collaborations to include the African American community, and the Ho-Chunk Nation and bilingual family concerts in the Latino community. We are expanding collaborative efforts with local arts groups including Festival Choir of Madison, UW Athletics, Madison Ballet and Verona Area Performing Arts Society — each with programs already planned.

Jim Chiolino, president, Madison Theatre Guild: We have been lucky to collaborate with several companies over the past many years, and there is a new spirit of cooperation among the six participating theater companies at the Bartell Theatre (MTG, Strollers, Krass, Stage Q, Mercury Players, and the Madison Ballet). We do more compelling art when we share resources and talent more freely! We are going to continue this spirit of collaboration. This season, we are supporting Madison Shakespeare in its efforts to do unique things with Shakespeare’s work.

Jonathan Solari, chief executive officer, Madison Ballet: At Madison Ballet, 2020 and beyond are exciting because of the breadth of collaborative possibilities. Yes, that means inviting new choreographers to build original work and local musicians to compose for us.