Tag Archives: Brian Rott

Epic Clown Show Nightmare

by Jeff Grygny

“We should have won—in fact, we did win.” With this oxymoronic sentence, the 45th president opened his 60 odd days of counterfactual and highly illegal gambits to retain the power he’d been voted out of. He failed, only because of a small corps of officials who were unwilling to play along. But there were many who were all too willing—and that is the story of Red, White, and Coup, a gripping, 2 1/2 hour spectacle by Quasimondo Physical Theatre, created to coincide with that same person’s re-anointment as Republican candidate, right here in the “horrible” city of Milwaukee. This an important work of theater, performed with artistry and integrity. Everyone should see this show, as a clear reminder of the enormity of DJT and cohort’s actions, with the fate of the nation, the world, the planet, even, seemingly at stake. It’s all too much—but the intrepid company rises to the occasion.

Director/playwright Brian Rott spent six months researching the January 6th Select Senate committee hearings, plus memoirs and accounts by the men and women close to the action, to dramatize and illuminate the news we all read about. It plays like a Greek tragedy with evil clowns: there’s a grinding sense of inevitability, and yet we can’t look away. Guided by accounts from William Barr, Mike Pence, Cassidy Hutchinson, and others, Rott brings each scene to vivid life. All the familiar players make their appearances, from the “My Pillow guy” to the con man in chief. Even Wisconsin’s plutocratic Senator Ron Johnson gets in on the act.

photo by Jeff Grygny

The first hour of the play details DJT’s response to Biden’s win: complete denial, ordering scores of spurious lawsuits. We meet Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell, the only lawyers deranged enough to buy into the idea at the beginning. Later, we see law professor John Eastman concoct the infamous “alternative elector” scheme. Eventually, Attorney General Barr’s refuses to declare the election stolen, leading to his resignation (and not being invited to the White House Christmas party). We witness Mike Pence’s agonizing between his duty to the president and his loyalty to the constitution.

Legal maneuvers, even scurrilous ones, don’t exactly lend themselves to compelling theater, but Rott knows the power of re-enacting it all. He brings even this uninspiring material to life with creative flourishes, surreal comedy, and the impressive talents of 7 dedicated actors playing over 50 characters. The characterizations rarely rise above the level of caricature. It’s like watching an extended political cartoon: they don’t tell us who these people are; they simply show us what they documentedly did. And it works. With a few mannerisms and costume pieces, we see Powell as a leopard-clad loony; Eastman as a wild-eyed mad scientist; Pence as a stiff board (no great leap there), with his conscience imagined, like Pinocchio’s Jiminy Cricket, as the infamous fly that sat on Pence’s head during the debate.

photo by Jeff Grygny

The most powerful scene departs from the legal record to give attention to some of the capitol rioters—still cartoons, but drawn with compassion. We hear some of their voices: middle-class people whom the system has failed, for whom the term “white privilege” can be nothing but a cruel insult. In a brilliant use of visual language, a masked figure with the letter Q on his face  sits at the presidential desk typing, typing: lies and incitements, while the people’s rage grows. When DJT issues his invitation to a big rally in Washington DC. It’s like dropping a match on a pool of carefully-poured gasoline.

photo by Jeff Grygny

The staging of the riot is visceral and terrifying, with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer cowering behind a podium while zip-tie man calls out “Nancy, come out and play,” like a horror movie psychopath. Cassidy Hutchinson’s account takes us right into the White House, including her being creepily groped by Giuliani as a factotum stands by grinning. Melania and Ivanka make their cameos, and finally, we hear DJT’s message to the rioters:“We love you, you’re very special.”  

The actors give every role a sense of urgency and humanity, rarely stooping to outright villianization (DJT and Barr share a wicked laugh over putting immigrant children in cages, but that’s about the extent of the judgment offered). Cat Sadler does a mean Mitch McConnell impression; Emily Scholtka brings a bewildered pathos to Jacob Chansley, the Q Anon Shaman; Mara Grigg gives the roles of Giuliani and Ted Cruz gleeful energy; A heartful Matt Koehn shows us Pence’s ethical crisis; Selena Milewski plays Hutchinson’s insurrection day like a journey through a nightmare looking glass; while Sarah Ann Mellstrom makes a demented jack-in-the-box out of Sidney Powell. And without a doubt the Tony should go to Jessi Miller who, in a messy blonde wig and orange face paint, uncannily captures Trump’s mannerisms and inflections, showing him as ultimately a caricature of himself. Not since Charlie Chaplin has a demagogue been so deftly embodied.

Powerful men often cling to power—the story is as old as history. The old firehouse/city hall that houses Red,  White, and Coup is a hundred years old, and looks every year of it. Ornate, antique, moldering and musty, the building stands as an architectural metaphor of current American politics. It will take a lot of energy, hard toil, and  love to get it into good shape. Let’s hope we can find leaders who are up to the job—or become them ourselves.

Quasimondo Physical Theater presents

Red,  White, and Coup

written and directed by Brian Rott

 Saturday, July 13th; Sunday, July 14th; Monday, July 15th

Thursday, July 18th; Friday, July 19th; Saturday, July 20th

Thursday, July 25th; Friday, July 26th; Saturday, July 27th

North Milwaukee Arthaus, 5151 N. 35th St., Milwaukee WI 53209

Note: Performance is on the second floor of an historic building, which is not yet ADA accessible.

WARNING: This production contains MATURE language and content.

*A Talkback with the cast and production team will follow each performance.​

TICKETS

https://www.quasimondo.org/tickets.html

Online: $25; At-the-door: $30; Student: $20

Quasimondo Stages an Insurrection

by Jeff Grygny

Historical events have inspired many a play, from Henry IV to Hamilton. Thus far, few artists have chosen to make art about what might well be the most momentous events in American history since the Civil War: Donald Trump’s refusal to yield the White House to the legal winner, and his subsequent, no-hold-barred exertions to keep it. Soon, Quasimondo Physical Theatre’s Director Brian Rott will present what might be the first of many theatrical accounts of this strange eventful history. His latest original play Red, White, and Coup is going to be showing at the same time that the Republican party is anointing their Chosen One. And it’s all happening right here in that “terrible city,” that liberal Sodom of the upper Midwest: Milwaukee. Aren’t we lucky?

Larger companies, fearful of  alienating their conservative patrons, might well choose to sidestep such a rich, if perilous, topic. But under Rott’s leadership, Quasimondo has always been the little avant-garde theater that could: their phantasmagorical performances, (based on such impossible source material as computer games, Greek mythology, the work of Salvador Dali, and the Kama Sutra) are legendary. In a recent conversation, Rott articulated the strong need for a counterpoint to the Republican Convention. “In a close election year, it’s important to get out the story.” he said. “Even if most of the audience is liberal, it will drive home the importance.’ So damn the consequences: they’re dramatizing the Senate hearings on the January 6th insurrection (or as some prefer to call it, the “group tour of the capitol”).

Unlike some of Quasimondo’s more fanciful productions, Rott wants to dramatize the facts this time. So, unlike his normal process of devising a show, he wrote the script beforehand, based on six months of research. “I had 110 pages of notes,” he said with a laugh. “I probably shouldn’t have done that.” Focusing on the people who plotted to seize the presidency, he studied records of the Senate hearings, following up by reading interviews and memoirs of people connected with the preparations: both Trump’s inner circle and the people who opposed them. He described the process as “like going down rabbit holes of information. I didn’t really know that there was so much preparation [for the Capitol riot].” For voters who haven’t followed the news closely, it’s a deep dive into the moves and counter-moves in the game of power that’s still taking place on the nation’s stage. Even so, Rott says, “It’s still just the tip of the iceberg of what the [Republican] nominee is responsible for.”

The production will be minimalist, with actors playing over 50 different characters with the help of simple costume pieces. Though the format is like a documentary (with former  Republican Senator Liz Cheney as the narrator), the play will feature many of the famous and not-so-famous names swirling around in the mess: the ex-president, of course, at the center of the action, and also the variety of colorful (and not-so-colorful) players: Mike Pence, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro, and the ever popular Rudy Giuliani. “A handful of the Capitol rioters will be portrayed, and the iconic “Q-Anon shaman” “just might” make an appearance.

It’s all happening in the upper floor of the Arthaus, a former city hall and fire department. It’s up a tall flight of stairs, and regrettably, the building has not yet been upgraded for people with disabilities. But the high-ceilinged room was the former site of community meetings and very probably elections for many decades, so it seems like a resonant place to stage the greatest challenge to the US rule of law in our lifetimes.

So far.

Quasimondo Physical Theatre presents

Red,  White, and Coup

written and directed by Brian Rott

 Saturday, July 13th; Sunday, July 14th; Monday, July 15th

Thursday, July 18th; Friday, July 19th; Saturday, July 20th

Thursday, July 25th; Friday, July 26th; Saturday, July 27th

North Milwaukee Arthaus, 5151 N. 35th St., Milwaukee WI 53209

Note: Performance is on the second floor of an historic building, which is not yet ADA accessible.

WARNING: This production contains MATURE language and content.

*A Talkback with the cast and production team will follow each performance.​

TICKETS

https://www.quasimondo.org/tickets.html

Online: $25; At-the-door: $30; Student: $20

A Fourth State of Opera

Milwaukee Opera Theatre

by Jeff Grygny

 A “lady knight” fights a sorceress for the love of her boyfriend, another knight; A woman brings scandal on herself by sleepwalking into a man’s bedroom; Wotan imprisons his daughter Brunhilde in a ring of fire; a blind princess is cured by someone telling her about vision; a disgruntled wife turns into a man and her husband gives birth to thousands of children, causing an economic crisis. And so on. 

Sooner or later every opera lover must reconcile herself to the blunt fact that the plots of operas are often quite silly. Of course, music and storytelling require very different skill sets. But not only that: most of these convoluted tales of swooning princesses, anguished monarchs, potions, curses, and various enchanted accessories are the products of male artists writing female characters who fulfill their fantasies. Problematic!

You can blame this unhappy state of affairs on the sixth century Frankish king Clovis, who, after the collapse of the Roman empire, instituted the Salic Law, which banned women from inheriting property or titles, and thus laying down the shape of the fairy tale world of opera, and bequeathing Europe—where opera was created as an elite pastime—centuries of rule by (literally) entitled lunks to whose desires (along with their wives and mistresses, no doubt) artists either had to pander, or go back to working in their dad’s dull businesses.

Be that as it may, when the most imaginative and daring stage directors in our fair city, Jill Anna Ponasic and Brian Rott, team up with Chicago-based artist Jeffrey Mosser to tackle opera, you can be sure something amazing will happen. Fully engaging with these works’ silliness and outdated norms, they transform them into a pleasingly disorienting spectacle, playful and feather-light, while showcasing a cast of seven wonderful singers who deliver excerpts from seven of the weirdest operas ever written, from warhorses like the Ring Cycle to oddities like Les Mamelles de Tirésias, based on the first surrealist play.

The game is afoot even before curtain: the audience is cast as guests at a wedding reception for Bluebeard (from Bartók’s opera). Kirk Thomsen, playing the eponymous Duke, is jovial with a vaguely menacing undercurrent as he works the crowd with loose-cannon ad libs. His new bride, Judith, played by the incomparable Jessi Miller, seems a bit uneasy, though. Bluebeard reveals the eight doors of his castle, which we are to explore—except for the last, luridly rendered in red, which we are forbidden to open. This is a very clever premise for a smorgasbord of clips and synopses. The singers remain onstage, as in a recital, standing to perform their dreamlike vignettes. The most delirious moments come with the speed-run through The Love for Three Oranges, in which a prince laughs when a witch accidentally shows her underwear, and she curses him into falling in love with fruit. I’m not making this up: it’s the actual story!

Milwaukee Opera Theatre

All this is illuminated by the sublimely low-tech animations of Anja Notanja Sieger, who manipulates exquisite cut-out figures over an antique overhead projector, using common objects like ribbon, lace, and a colander to create trippy visuals that dance in the border between child’s play and high art, like the work of the great underground film maker and mystic Harry Smith. Sometimes you have no idea what’s happening: you’re just washed in a flood of bizarre imagery and exquisite music. It’s the artiest thing Milwaukee has seen since the pandemic before-time. When Notanja Sieger, Thomsen, and Miller are all hovering over the glowing square of the projector, coordinating their tiny puppets, they seem like magicians, creating reality before our very eyes, or scientists, fusing image, music, and narrative into a plasmic fourth state of matter. And on a purely animal level, something about these moving shadows really works with the opera in this age when we’re so used to watching images on little screens: the wiggling shapes give non-opera buffs something to do with their brains and actually let them hear the music better.

And the music, under the lively direction of Janna Ernst, is gorgeous. Soprano Cecilia Davis brings great feeling to the role of Amina the sleepwalker, and aces the high notes of the Queen of the Night; David Guzmán’s bass voice delivers a powerful Wotan and Sarastro; Kathy Pyeatt’s soprano makes us feel the wonder of Iolante discovering sight for the first time. The whole cast fully commits to the offbeat premise. And as the show goes on, Bluebeard and Judith discuss their relationship, revealing things about their pasts: he’s been married before (eight times, to be honest); she’s had a girlfriend with whom she’s still in contact. This is all delivered in a matter-of-fact tone with a perfect touch of camp, like an avant-garde vaudeville routine.

It’s indescribably refreshing to see something again that’s so truly, daringly experimental, while at the same time utterly playful and unpretentious. This dreamy fusion opens up a liminal space between music and story, between high and low art, and even, perhaps, in the historic war between the sexes. Who knows: maybe Bluebeard and Judith can work things out.

Alas, this production has run it’s one-week course, but we can only hope to witness more collaborations like it.

Milwaukee Opera Theater presents

Impossible Operas

Featuring Music by Handel, Mozart, Bellini, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, , Prokofiev, and Poulenc

Created by Tim Rebers, Brian Rott, Jeffrey Mosser, ​Anja Notanja Sieger and Jill Anna Ponasik

Stage Directors: Jill Anna Ponasik, Jeffrey Mosser, and Brian Rott