Cooperative Performance reveals its 2018-2019 season

Cooperative Performance has announced its 2018-2019 season with five projects that explore female relationships and gender role expectations, censorship, our perceptions of reality and mental health.

The 2018-2019 season will kick off with Coriolana, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus envisioned through a female lens. The season will end with the fourth annual One Act Festival, celebrating Milwaukee’s vibrant artistic community and featuring a mix of traditional plays, experimental theatre and movement pieces by local playwrights, artists, directs and more.

“As Cooperative Performance continues to grow, so do the amazing offerings Milwaukee artists are bringing to the table,” stated Don Russell, Chair of the Board of Directors, in a press release. “True to our mission statement, we will be exploring a wide range of artistic styles and disciplines as well as tackling important issues facing our community today.”

For more information on each project in the 2018-2019 season, read below.

Coriolana (October 2018): By reshaping this classic Shakespearean work through a female lens, Coriolana evaluates the complex facets of female relationships and how they are perceived in society. With traditionally masculine traits now projected onto a female character, this immersive re-imagining explores not only a tale of violence and revenge, but a story of expectations and consequences. This new adaptation encourages audiences to choose a side and evaluate what traits we prize based on gender.

Celsius 232 (December 2018): Celsius 232 explores and expands on themes and concepts found in Ray Bradbury’s classic dystopian work, Fahrenheit 451. Through the use of bouffon/clown, movement, puppetry, poetry and text, Cooperative Performance and Quasimondo Physical Theatre will combine each company’s strengths in this piece of physical theatre, shining a light on how the manipulation of information, culture and technology in today’s society is used to control and pacify the populous, deteriorating the quality of life and fracturing society.

Allusion/Illusion (February 2019): Allusion/Illusion is an audience-interactive performance piece that explores the conflict between what we perceive as reality — our illusion — and what is alluded to beyond our senses. Kelly Coffey, Don Russell, Andrea Burkholder and Daniel Burkholder create a maze of experiences using movement, text and multimedia to create a unique trip through our questionable consciousness.

Machina Persona (April 2019): Machina Persona seeks to create tangible representations of the humors that we find unexplainable. From anger and sadness to fear and joy, this devised piece will personify the very emotions that define our daily lives. With steampunk influence, an ensemble of actors will interact as the individual forces driving the human machine, revealing the kinks and malfunctions that different social challenges and mental disorders create along the way.

One Act Festival (June 2019): Closing out the season, the fourth annual One Act Festival celebrates Milwaukee’s vibrant artistic community, featuring a mix of traditional plays, experimental theatre and movement pieces. Local playwrights, directors, actors and dancers band together to showcase their talents.