Summer Construction: What You Need to Know

Alexis Brown
 Marketing Intern

Well, it’s summer time again, and we all know what that means. Ice cream and trips to the beach, you say? Evenings spent on the terrace, dazzling sunsets? Perhaps. But perhaps not. Anyone who’s ever driven a car knows that summer comes with only one real inevitability: road construction.

The area around the Theater proves no exception, though you’ll be glad to hear that the road closures will not be as bad as they could’ve been—and, it’s worth noting that none of them are related to the Memorial Union Reinvestment Project. In mid-August, Langdon Street will become a one-way street between Lake and Park in mid-August due to a campus utilities project.  Next summer, Park Street between Langdon and State Street Mall will also be closed due to a campus utilities project. But this construction schedule could change, so watch out for any updates as they come. 

Keep an eye on our Facebook or Twitter accounts for regular updates on the Memorial Union Reinvestment Project and how it affects Memorial Union. 

Where, Oh Where Has the Box Office Gone?

Allison Pesch

Marketing Intern

It has come to our attention, Wisconsin Union Theaer followers, that due to the craziness of our move and the renovation project, a lot of our customers have questions about tickets and where to get them. We sincerely apologize for any confusion and, luckily for you, we are here to help!

Yes, it is true, our previous Box Office, located at 800 Langdon St. outside the theater, is indeed CLOSED until the renovations on Memorial Union and the Wisconsin Union Theater are complete in 2014. We have, however, moved our Box Office services and staff over to the Campus Arts Ticketing office over in Vilas Hall.

Wisconsin Union Theater construction zone

Ted Harks, the Wisconsin Union Theater’s Box Office Manager, was relocated to Vilas Hall a few weeks ago. He would like you to know that you have options for ticket purchases. The box office at Vilas Hall is available to you and all of your ticketing needs. The building is on Park Street, between University and Johnson. The office is on the east side of the building, facing East Campus Mall, and there is a sign out front which reads Campus Arts Ticketing.

Campus Arts Ticketing- Vilas Hall Box Office

There are a few parking options close to Vilas Hall that are available to you as customers. The first is in Lot 7 beneath Grainger Hall. Grainger Hall is across from Vilas Hall on Park St. and the entrance to the Lot is on Brooks St, which is one block west of Park St. This Lot has long-term meters. The second parking option available to you is beneath the "Lucky Building," aka University Square, the building directly east of Vilas Hall. Of course, if you don't mind walking a bit more, there is always parking in the Lake St. ramp, between University and State.

Parking Guide for theater events.

The Box Office is currently open 11:30am - 5:30pm on weekdays. Starting July 30 however, it will be open from 11:30am - 2:30pm weekdays through August 14. On August 15, the Box Office will return to the regular weekday schedule of 11:30am - 5:30pm.

If you have any questions about tickets or where to go to get tickets don’t hesitate to call Campus Arts Ticketing over at Vilas Hall at 608-265-ARTS.  Keep in mind you may also purchase tickets online, over the phone, by mail or via fax. For more details on these ticketing options, please click here.

As our first events of the season are fast approaching, make sure to check out all of your ticketing options and start purchasing your tickets for all of our 2012-2013 season events! Also, feel free to check out our website, Facebook, and Twitter where we will be posting updates regularly about the renovation, ticketing and parking.

Batman? Romeo? Meet Josh

by Joshua Brazee
Marketing Intern

Hi! I am one of the newest Wisconsin Union Theater marketing interns, and what I’d really like to write about today is Batman. I just saw the latest Christopher Nolan movie, and I cannot stop thinking about it. But my enthusiasm for Batman doesn’t tell you enough about me or my work for the theater, so I’ll try to suppress it as much as I can. Here goes everything.

Long hair is a problem I wish I still had.

I have pursued my passion for the arts all the way to a PhD program in English literature at UW-Madison where I specialize in Renaissance Literature.  The arts didn’t always make sense to me, and my road to Shakespeare studies, my greatest passion in life (next to Batman, of course), was not always easy.  As a nervous, nerdy, pudgy, long-haired freshman in high school, being asked to read Romeo and Juliet aloud in class was near to facing a firing squad of my peers.  We all know that high school kids can be merciless, but when you’re already awkward, you don’t understand the words on the page, and you’re reading the most famous love story in the English language, they can be worse than the Fates, measuring out the thread of your life, but refusing to cut it.  How long were they going to let me carry on, stumbling through that awful poetry like that?

I made it through my freshman year alive, mostly unscathed, but not, as I would learn, finished with Shakespeare.  There was more to come, and it was only going to get worse.  Over the summer, my best friend found himself a girlfriend, and when the new school year started, she convinced him to try out for the drama club.  These were awesome new opportunities for my friend, and I was very happy for him.  That is, until he told me that I had to join drama club, too: “Josh, if I have to suffer through this, you do too.  That’s what best friends do for each other.”  A  best friend should just leave you to clean up your own messes, but very soon I traded in my comic books for a stage, a script, a dress, and a small part as Francis Flute in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Why the dress?  Well, Francis Flute is picked to perform Thisbe, a young woman, in the play-within-a-play.  The drama club director chose me for the role because my shoulder-length hair meant not having to put a wig on me.  She saved a few dollars, and it only cost me my pride.

This is what love does to your friends.

Through the semester, I learned about speaking in falsettos, running in skirts, and fainting.  My timidity gave way to enjoyment, and slowly I started to understand Shakespeare’s world.  In my English class that semester, we also read Julius Caesar.  My recent drama club experiences prepared me to read the major roles.  I was Brutus and Antony, Caesar and Cassius, Roman and rhetorician, conspirator and collaborator.  Shakespeare wouldn’t leave me alone; I dreamt in couplets, and one day bought my first complete works.  From Caesar I rushed to Twelfth Night and to Hamlet.  I knew at the end of the semester that I would spend the rest of my life with Shakespeare.

I grew to love the theater as well.  My friends and I performed in and helped out with numerous community theater productions.  I bought my first, and only, pair of tap shoes for Cole Porter’s Anything Goes, and I got my first real job at a professional summer-stock theater in my hometown.  I would work there for the next five years, entering a world of rhythm, stage magic, and arts that had been so distant only a few years prior.

Professional performing arts is a demanding field, and though many of my friends decided to follow that path, I took a somewhat safer route, and opted to become a teacher and a scholar.  As an intern for the Wisconsin Union Theater, I have an opportunity to return to my roots, and to talk about our amazing upcoming season, and the work we do backstage to keep you entertained.  I am looking forward to this job, and the chance to work with our awesome patrons!

Hey, I guess I did that with only a hint of the caped crusader.  There’s hope for me yet!

Union Theater Pianos...where are they now?

by Heather Good
Assistant Director for Development & Outreach

Two of the more delicate items that we’ve had to relocate during the preparation for construction were our Steinway Grand pianos. We have two of them, the “A” piano, which was purchased in 1993 and has since served our Concert Series, and our “B” piano, which was purchased in 1970 and has served our Concert Series (until the new piano was purchased), Jazz, World Stage, and numerous other events for our Season and our renters. Both pianos have been signed by the performers who have used them. They are not only outstanding instruments, but living artifacts that capture our history as it’s being made.

Heather and the B Piano at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery
(Photo by Claire Weissenfluh)

It is not easy to find a storage spot for a piano. Each piano weighs over 800 pounds, is nine feet long and six feet wide, and is sensitive to humidity and temperature changes. But more to the point, they are meant to be played, not to sit idly in a closet somewhere. So our work has been to find places where the pianos can be played, enjoyed, and cared for until it’s time to bring them home in 2014.

 We’re happy to report that as of June 26, both pianos are doing quite well at their temporary locations!

Our A piano is spending the summer at the Ten Chimneys Foundation in Genesee Depot, WI. Ten Chimneys is the estate of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, two luminaries of the theater world who have an intimate history with the Wisconsin Union Theater. Their production of Taming of the Shrew opened our theater in 1939, and subsequent performances in our space included There Shall Be No Night (1941), The Pirate (1942), O Mistress Mine (1945-46), and I Know My Love (1949).  So when we heard that Ten Chimneys needed a piano for their summer Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship Program, it felt natural to offer ours.

The Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship Program brings together 8-10 of the most accomplished regional theater actors in the country who participate in a weeklong master class and retreat with a world-renowned and respected Master Teacher. This year’s Master Teacher is Joel Grey, and the fellows include Sarah Litzsinger and other outstanding actors from around the country. 

The master and the fellows are meeting this week to learn from and inspire one another, and they’ll be sharing their work in two public events this weekend, which will also feature our A piano! Tickets are still available for these events:

July 27, 8 pm, A Conversation with Joel Grey (stories from his life and career, plus a song or two, and an interview style conversation with 2009 Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship Fellow Lee Ernst)

July 28, 8 pm, Concluding Presentation of the 2012 Fellowship Program (scenes, songs, and shared reflections from a week of working together).

Both events will take place at Ten Chimneys Foundation in the Program Hall. Tickets are $25/$50/$100 and are available by calling 262-968-4110.

Our B piano has moved to a location a bit closer to home, at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery on the UW-Madison campus, just across from Union South. If you walk through the Town Center, you’ll see our piano resting under the trees near Rennie’s Dairy Bar. Plans to use the piano for a variety of programs are being developed, and we’ll keep you posted as we have details. For now, if you tour the building, you may get a short history of the piano, and be sure to ask for a peek at the signatures inside (including Leontyne Price, Itzhak Perlman, Dave Brubeck, and many others).

Cuban Jazz: Ninety Miles Project Continues Union Theater Tradition

By Wayne Corey

Wayne Corey is a retired Madison professional who studies music & history in the University of Wisconsin Continuing Studies program. He is on the board of directors of the Four Freshmen Society, an international jazz organization.  Wayne recently traveled to Havana to study Afro-Cuban jazz and wrote about it at http://jazztimes.com/articles/30230-hot-havana-nights-report-from-jazz-trip-to-cuba

Music is everywhere in Cuba.   A bad restaurant will have good live music.  Groups play on street corners and in alleys.  Hot bands start late at night in smoky nightclubs.  Music is everywhere.  Some remarkably innovative and exciting Afro-Cuban jazz is coming to Union Theater’s 2012-13 season.  It continues a tradition.

I recently spent eight days in Havana with InsightCuba. Our group of sixteen American jazz aficionados had sixteen hour days hearing Cuban music and meeting musicians and other artists.   We discussed differences with people from many walks of life. We studied the culture that makes music part of every Cuban life.

Havana street scene

 Cuban jazz goes back almost a century.  Most Cuban music is built around percussion polyrhythms.  The polyrhythms came with the African slave trade and merged with Spanish music influences.  American jazz of the 1940s, both big band and the emerging bebop, provided a logical musical home for those rhythms.  By late in that decade the improvisations of Dizzy Gillespie, the bombast of Stan Kenton and other American artists inspired Cuban players.  Afro-Cuban jazz was “invented.”

Cuban nightlife and jazz flourished until the Castro revolution triumphed in 1959.  Diplomatic relations with the United States were severed and the free flow of music stopped abruptly.  But the music inside Cuba couldn’t be stopped.  The island continued producing musical prodigies without missing a beat.  American listeners just didn’t know it.

Wisconsin Union Theater will present contemporary Afro-Cuban jazz when Ninety Miles Project appears at Music Hall November 29^th.  Three outstanding young American players, tenor sax titan David Sanchez, vibraphonist Stefon Harris and trumpeter Nicholas Payton will perform music they recorded in Havana with two of Cuba’s outstanding young pianists and composers. Harold Lopez-Nussa and Rember Duharte play in Cuba and other countries but have not yet been allowed in the U.S.  It is our loss!

Ninety Miles Project makes a musical statement about the relationship between the United States and Cuba.  It says politics cannot interfere with music.  Our countries are only ninety miles apart but for decades the diplomatic distance has proven too far to travel.  By taking their music to Havana’s historic EGREM studios, Sanchez, Harris and Scott have proven that great jazz overwhelms bad diplomacy.  Stefon Harris said it best: “It was a humbling thing, a revelation to be someplace where music is such an integral part of everyday life … the place just throbbed with music.”

Cuba’s jazz heritage fostered a 1973 “revolucion” with the band Irakere.  Irakere combined jazz with rock influences, African rhythms and Cuban percussion.  The leader was Jesus “Chucho” Valdes, a piano player and composer of staggering talent.  Assisting was Paquito D’Rivera, a prodigious reed player.  Both would go on to international stardom, Chucho remaining based in Havana and Paquito defecting in 1981.   

Wayne Corey in front of Chucho Valdes' home inHavana

Irakere played Union Theater in 1999.  Chucho Valdes drew standing ovations in 2001.  Paquito D’Rivera supported his hit Funk Tango CD here in 2007.  The appearance of Ninety Miles Project continues a great Union Theater Afro-Cuban jazz tradition.  

Ninety Miles Project (http://www.ninetymilesproject.com/) is a concept that gives the listener insight into what is happening musically in Cuba today.  It is the natural progression of a music that began to evolve decades ago.  That music is filled with an incredible sense of rhythm and joy.  Three outstanding young American musicians went to Havana and found that joy playing with brilliant new Cuban talents. They didn’t know each other before rehearsals but great musicians make great music and that’s what happened on Ninety Miles.  Wisconsin Union Theater presents Ninety Miles Project at Music Hall November 29^th.   Be grateful.  We will be able to hear the music most Cubans cannot hear. They can’t travel here and they lack the income to afford the cover charges in Havana jazz clubs.    But in Madison lovers of great jazz will hear this amazing music.