Mary MacDonald News

The award-winning Titan Theatre Company announced today the cast and creative team for its production of the masterful epic romance, CYRANO. CYRANO will play an extremely limited two-week engagement at Titan's home at Queens Theatre.

The stakes are always higher and the timeline is always tighter at holiday time. What results in 'Christmas in Babylon' are lessons in forgiving others, forgiving yourself, and moving forward - lessons that, for some reason, we are all more willing to embrace at this most wonderful time of the year.

Titan Theatre Company announced its highly anticipated 10th Anniversary season today. The company will present their season as the official 'Company in Residence' at Queens Theatre in beautiful Flushing Meadows Park.

For any two young adults, caring for an infant can be a daunting responsibility. For Karlie and Peter, a young couple trying to kick a meth addiction, an infant can be overwhelming and sometimes forgotten in light of their personal circumstances. Renaissance Theaterworks presents Rebecca Gilman's provocative play LUNA GALE, which relates how the tiny baby Luna Gale is removed from Karlie and Peter's home because of neglect, despite the fact they love each other and their child. On stage in the Studio Theatre at the Broadway Theatre Center, LUNA GALE asks veteran social worker Caroline to give this couple who want to raise their child another chance while Caroline temporarily places Luna Gale in 'kin care,' a type of foster care that relies on a relative.

Milwaukee Chamber Theatre (MCT) announces its 43rd season, centered on 'The Mysteries of Life.'

Portland Theater luminary Mary Macdonald-Lewis adds a saucy soupcon of Victorian sexual rebellion to Portland's first-ever festival of sapiosexual storytelling and titillating theatricality. Her staged reading, The Age of Arousal, joins a heady line up of sex-positive performance ranging from genderqueer exploration to dungeon mistress confessions, all part of Come Inside: A Sex & Culture Theatre Festival curated by Dance Naked Productions.

Milwaukee Chamber Theatre (MCT) announces its 42nd season, exploring the theme of "Misfits." The 2016-2017 Season will feature five exciting productions performed at the Broadway Theatre Center in Milwaukee's Historic Third Ward.

Dig, dig, dig--Digging five foot deep holes, five feet wide, in a barren desert is what the teenage boys at Camp Green Lake, Texas, do every day from sunrise to sunset. Louis Sachar's award-winning, beloved novel of two boys who learn to be friends in a detention camp comes to life at First Stage's entertaining production Holes in the Todd Wehr Theater through February 14. Directed by Jeff Frank on Rick Rasmussen's desolate stage territory, a place where rain has not touched the ground for over 100 years, Lyndsey Kuhlmann's orange detention suits provide the only color while Mary MacDonald Kerr's slick Warden suits often shine with rhinestones, a spark of the dark side at what will be a historic site for several camp members. 

To begin the new year, First Stage reprises Holes, a 1998 National Book Award Winner (for Young People's Literature) and 1999 Newbery Medal Award novel. Author Louis Sachar eventually transformed his novel into a Theater for Young Audience script, which retains much of the impressive language of the original text. Company Artistic Director Jeff Frank delights in returning the fantasy/mystery story to the Todd Wehr stage while also directing this new production. Originally produced by the company in 2004, HOLES captures themes resonating 11 years later as Frank believes, 'This compelling mystery story, a myth, reverberates over generations.'

On June 15, 1975 at Vogel Hall in the (then) Performing Arts Center in downtown Milwaukee a new theatre company took to the stage to offer its first performance and Milwaukee Chamber Theatre was born. The production was George Bernard Shaw's DON JUAN IN HELL and it featured Robert Ingham as Don Juan, William McKereghan as the Devil, Ruth Schudson as Dona Ana and Montgomery Davis as the Statue.

Science, religion, creationism. evolution--A debate where faith versus confirmed fact constructs a classroom drama touched with humor tiled Ten Questions to Ask your Biology Teacher about Evolution. Milwaukee's Next Act Theatre presents a World Premiere production written by Canadian playwright Stephen Massicotte in his two-act play centering on a science teacher Miss Kelly and her rather conscientious religious objector to the curriculum, a young man named Ray. While both characters struggle with loss and tragedy in their lives, their opposing cultural contexts help minimize their pain--Kelly quotes scientific statistics while Ray quotes Biblical scripture.

A dynamic feminine duo illuminates Next Act Theatre this winter. The company's Midwest Premiere of Nilaja Sun's No Child transports the audience to the Bronx, New York under tjhe direction of Mary MacDonald Kerr and inspired by actor Marti Gobel. Inside the 'high risk' Malcolm X High School, teaching artist Sun attempts to resurrect her students' live and their futures.. Students 'who need a miracle a day,' she tries to encourage success by enciing them to produce and act in a historical play about convicts, Our Country's Good, all to be accomplished in a mere six weeks.

An understated, sensitive presentation on bullying and how a family faces their broken relationships appears in the current First Stage production Crash. Prolific playwright's Y York's adaptation of Jerry Spinelli's young adult novel by the same title arrives at the Todd Wehr Theater courtesy of Mark Hare's scenic design where the main character, John 'Crash' Cougan, lives. A two-story frame house constructed in fragments, jagged holes for windows and roof, pieces broken apart, similar to the challenges Crash's family faces.

Bullying¾when did society become consumed by the bully and the resulting destructive tactics, especially with children and young adults? When will society be able to control or stop these behaviors? In a young adult novel that explores the dynamics to bullying, Milwaukee's First Stage dramatizes author Jeffrey Spinelli's young adult novel Crash on their Todd Wehr Theater stage this spring.

??Milwaukee's very own Christmas story come to the stage courtesy of Mary MacDonald Kerr. Next Act Theatre presents the second edition of her adaptation of a holiday classic film in. It's A Wonderful Life: Live Radio Show. The reprise production features all the cast members from last year who positively glow on stage in this vintage story of George Bailey's tribute to the everyday working man that reminds the audience of Old Milwaukee's marketplace..

Milwaukee Chamber Theatre (MCT) continues its 2013-2014 theatre season with the Milwaukee premiere of THE DETECTIVE'S WIFE by Keith Huff, September 18 - October 13, 2013. In addition to numerous plays, Keith Huff has written for the television series "House of Cards" and "Mad Men." This one-woman show features Milwaukee favorite Mary MacDonald Kerr who was last seen at MCT in THE SWEETEST SWING IN BASEBALL. The show is also a production collaboration with the UW-Milwaukee Theatre Department. UWM professor Jim Tasse will direct and the production team members are UWM faculty and students. THE DETECTIVE'S WIFE performs in the Broadway Theatre Center's Studio Theatre in Milwaukee's Historic Third Ward.

Milwaukee Chamber Theatre (MCT) continues its 2013-2014 theatre season with the Milwaukee premiere of THE DETECTIVE'S WIFE by Keith Huff, September 18 - October 13, 2013. In addition to numerous plays, Keith Huff has written for the television series 'House of Cards' and 'Mad Men.' This one-woman show features Milwaukee favorite Mary MacDonald Kerr who was last seen at MCT in THE SWEETEST SWING IN BASEBALL. The show is also a production collaboration with the UW-Milwaukee Theatre Department. UWM professor Jim Tasse will direct and the production team members are UWM faculty and students. THE DETECTIVE'S WIFE performs in the Broadway Theatre Center's Studio Theatre in Milwaukee's Historic Third Ward.

Casting has been completed and rehearsals have begun for Portland Center Stage's world premiere production of Shakespeare's Amazing Cymbeline, adapted and directed by PCS Artistic Director Chris Coleman.

Casting has been completed and rehearsals have begun for Portland Center Stage's world premiere production of Shakespeare's Amazing Cymbeline, adapted and directed by PCS Artistic Director Chris Coleman.