Board member, Erin S. Baal, recently designed and directed The Tempest for MTG and had great fun working with her “partners in crime” at the Guild.  “We already had very similar processes, but I think we both learned some new things from each other along the way,” said Erin.  So many of us work with other companies from time to time and it strengthens what we bring home to Strollers.
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Thanks to everyone at MTG for being a great friend to Strollers!!

Not many organizations of any stripe live to see their 60th year, but that's exactly what is in store for Strollers' 2016/2017 season.

​We've decided to celebrate those 60 years by producing four plays in our coming season that were previously staged by Strollers. We've a long list of excellent scripts to consider, and we've had quite a few directors pouring through the Strollers' history as they considered what shows they might wish to take on.

​We're in the final stage of planning for next season. We're sorry we can't share the names of the plays and the directors selected for them just yet. There's still some backstage work to be done on the season - coordinating all of the dates and the play selection with the Bartell Theatre and with the other "participating theatre companies" (PTC's) of the Bartell, for instance. Also getting contracts for the rights for the selected plays.

​So it will be a little while yet till we can share the news. But this much we can share:

​The Strollers 2016/17 season will be "retro-spectacular" (a new word coined by our own Matt Korda, but pretty self-explanatory). You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be entertained.

​But most of all, we hope you CELEBRATE with us this achievement - a milestone accomplished through the generous efforts of hundreds and hundreds of talented volunteers over an awesome sixty years.

​Meanwhile, here's photo of a show from our 2016 season (Hair). Spoiler Alert: We're not doing Hair next year. We just like this photo, and it certainly expresses the exuberance we're feeling about our future.

​We hope to see you at our current production, MISALLIANCE, opening March 4.

​And we thank you for sixty years of support.

The Chicago theatre company, Pride Films & Plays has a lot to be proud of in their current production of Ten Dollar House..

​We met the playwrights of Ten Dollar House (Martha Meyer & Rick Kinnebrew) some six (or was it seven?) years ago., when they had just conceived of this project. On a vacation to the Driftless Region of Wisconsin, they happened to stop in at Mineral Point's Pendarvis, the state historic site rescued from the wrecking ball by two gay men in the 1930s. They smelled a story. They added an unscheduled stop at the Mineral Point Room in the Mineral Point Library where they started what was to become a fair amount of research into the story of these two men, and how they saved not only a few historic buildings, but an entire town, in the middle of what became known as the Great Depression.

​The writers thought they had a making of a good, maybe great, movie. I think so too. And they wrote a compelling film script. When the realities of filming such an ambitious project hit them, they decided to re-write it as a stage play. After holding staged readings in Chicago and in Mineral Point, the play was produced by Madison's Broom Street Theatre in 2015.

​Last night I attended a standing-room-only preview of a new production of the play in Chicago. The play won't officially open until this Saturday, January 9, but it's already getting a lot of buzz, and this weekend's opening is completely sold out. 

​Broom Street's 2015 production was compelling, but the new Pride Films and Plays production is even more so, largely due to the efforts of the playwrights who shrewdly fine-tuned and tightened the script. They now have a product which I hope goes on to see many more productions in many more cities. It's a worthy and moving story, eloquently told by Meyer and Kinnebrew.

​Kudos also to the design staff, director and cast of the Chicago production, especially Joe Anderson and Scott Patrick Sawa (pictured above) who portray the two Mineral Point men, Bob Neal and Edgar Hellum.  Also to Tom Chiola who turns is a performance as William Gundry that would make the historic Gundry himself proud.

​I plan on returning to see the show again (it runs through the end of January). All productions benefit from runs in front of an audience, and this one will as well. The show was already in super-fine shape, and I only saw a preview. I look forward to seeing how Ten Dollar House ripens over the next few weeks,

​And from one Mineral Pointer, to two delightful visitors to our town, thank you. You have done us proud.

​Contributed by Coleman

Starting a new theatre company is an act of faith. Or pig-headedness. Or blind ambition. Or all of the above. KRASS (the Kathie Rasmussen Women's Theatre was organized in Madison in 2009. It was founded to produce plays written and directed by women, in an age when women are sadly under-represented in productions as playwrights and as directors. It was named to honor one of Madison's finest female writers - Kathie Rasmussen.

And it has flourished.

Now, KRASS has been welcomed into the Bartell family of theatre companies as a PTC (Participating Theatre Company). With this advance, KRASS can take advantage of many resources shared by other Bartell PTCs (Mercury Theatre, Strollers Theatre, Stage Q, Madison Ballet, and Madison Theatre Guild). ​​KRASS also takes on a host of responsibilities. We think this new partnership will strengthen KRASS while also helping to secure the future success of the other PTCs and of the Bartell Theatre itself.

Please join KRASS for their first production as a Bartell PTC: "Rumors of Truth", by Wisconsin playwright Marcia Jablonski, directed by Sarah Whelan, January 29 - February 6.

Thank you, Madison! Strollers Theatre is off to a great start for our 2015/16 season, thanks to your support.

Our production of Agatha Christie's production of The Mousetrap SOLD OUT most performances of the first two weekends (and the performances that did not completely sell out -were very close (even that dreaded Wednesday show).

Our second weekend is completely SOLD OUT and our third is going fast.

We're sorry that not everybody who wants to see this show is going to get to see it. But that's a good thing, right? It means we're succeeding in our mission. Namely: providing quality theatre at an affordable price. And audiences are responding.

This is good for Madison and it's good for Strollers. It's put us in a position to start turning our attention to Misalliance and to Blythe Spirit - our remaining shows in this season.  And your support means we can fulfill our obligation to the Bartell Theatre, our home performing space, which we share with several other great companies.

So once again, thank you Madison. And we'll see you on the stage!​​​​​

In 1968, I crept surreptitiously into a Broadway theater to see The Boys in the Band. I hoped I wouldn't see anyone I knew and vice versa, and I didn't.

It was an audacious play. The word "gay" had not quite entered the American lexicon. Stonewall was still a year away. Closeted doesn't even begin to describe how barricaded I was from sharing my deepest desires with anyone - even with myself. Nonetheless, I found myself in the audience of the first-ever gay-themed play on Broadway.

It scared the bejesus out of me.  I had a hard time relating to the characters I saw on stage.

And yet. They were real. In 1968, gay men who wanted to be themselves were, by and large, well represented by the stereotypical characters in the cast of Boys in the Band. Those were my options. In 1968.

Congratulations and thank you to Stage Q for bravely remounting this classic and important play. It's been fun to work across the hall from you the last few weeks, as we rehearse The Mousetrap.

I can't wait to see it.

Contributed by Coleman

Coleman is a member of the Strollers Board and currently rehearsing for the Oct 9 opening of The Mousetrap. But in his spare time, he's a writer (or as Erin Baal puts it ... 'not just a pretty face').

This week you have three opportunities to see a short piece written by Coleman and produced by Forward Theater. The piece is called Cuban Poetry (a riff on a true story), and it's one a dozen monologues  first performed at Overture Center this past February.  Forward Theater selected six of those monologues for a second, third and fourth viewing, as follows:

Tuesday - 7pm - Deforest Public Library
Wednesday - 7pm - Waunakee Public Library
Thursday - 7 pm - Stoughton Public Library

Admission is FREE!

Every now and then, if you're lucky, you get to experience a performance that is so completely pitch perfect that when it ends, you have to remind yourself to breathe. American Players Theater's current production of Athol Fugard's The Island is such a production.

Long before the house lights dimmed, everyone in the audience had already been joined in a suffocating and visceral awareness of the suffering imposed on the prisoners of the infamous prison island, which warehoused South African political prisoners in the long decades of apartheid. The bare-bones set, the harsh yellow lighting, the pre-show glimpse into the life of the prisoners, and-  most of all - the powerful and nuanced performances of La Shawn Banks and Chike Johnson drew each audience member into the quarry where they toiled and the cell where they rehearsed a liberating performance of Sophocles' Antigone.

Congratulations to first-time APT director Derrick Sanders and to designer Yu Shibagaki, but most of all to APT's new artistic director Brenda DaVita. The Island was a daring addition to this summer's lineup, superbly executed. We can't wait to see what you have in mind for next year.

Contributed by Coleman

If Igor Stravinsky, Luis Bunuel and Martha Graham had a love child, it would be the Theatre de l"Ange Fou.

For the record, I hate mimes. I REALLY hate mimes. I will walk a great distance to avoid an encounter with a white-faced, white-gloved, striped-shirt, bowler-hatted mime trying to work his way out of an invisible box.

Thus, I had no intention of every going to the Theatre de l"Ange Fou at the White Church Theatre in Spring Green, until a friend - whose avuncular aversion to mimes is at least as great as mine - urged me to attend. So last year I went to a performance, and ... I was blown away. It was eloquent, moving, magical, entrancing. It was unlike anything I ever thought of as "mime". I was riveted to my seat. My eyes popped out of my head.

Last night, I returned for their final performance of the 2015 season - and I was even more enchanted than I was on my first visit. I'm hooked.

With poetry, dance, music, and film,; with grace, emotion, courage and strength - Theatre de l"Ange Fou wordlessly shares a storyline, a heartbeat, a lifeline to a mysterious world that is entirely familiar and completely alien.

Put it on your To-Do list for next summer. These are world-class artists hailing from all over the world. You won't regret it.

Contributed by Coleman