MILWAUKEE — The front rows of the splendiferously reborn Milwaukee Repertory Theater are the theatrical equivalent of business-class seats on a domestic airplane: wide girth, individual armrests and cupholders. In front of them sit four more seats that, although they don’t recline, easily qualify as first-class perches. Upstairs can be found a space reminiscent of a Chase Sapphire Lounge found in an airport. Elsewhere is a plush private dining room with seating for eight.
The new Milwaukee Rep, an eye-popping, $80-million project opening next month in the heart of downtown Milwaukee, is indicative of two ways in which this atypical regional theater, led by the media-savvy, longtime team of artistic director Mark Clements and executive director Chad Bauman, has swum hard against a rising tide.
A major Menomonee River flood on Aug. 10 destroyed much of its 30,000-square-foot suburban production facility, ruining more than 30,000 props and set pieces and wiping out the stored set for the Rep’s annual production of “A Christmas Carol.” Bauman said the river overspilling its banks resulted in more than $7.5 million worth of damage, exceeding the theater’s $5 million worth of insurance coverage but also sparking more individual donations, thanks to a timely fundraising campaign.
Even without the flood, this huge capital project — with three rebuilt theaters in a whopping 152,500 square feet of space under the same roof, at a time when most regional theaters are in consolidation and retrenchment mode — is a notable achievement. Similarly notable, but in sharp contrast to the many regional companies that have found themselves at odds with their subscribers and even their board members, is the firm Milwaukee focus on the retail audience experience.
The theater’s profile in the 1990s was of a traditional regional company focused on the classics, new plays and international exchanges of a rather academic nature. The programming was well respected within the theater sector but very little of it had much to do with Milwaukee, or its mostly working- and middle-class demographics. But that has changed in recent years, thanks to such shows as “Run Bambi Run,” the 2023 world premiere of a lively new rock musical about Lawrencia “Bambi” Bembenek, a former Milwaukee police officer (and onetime Playboy bunny at the old Playboy resort in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin) convicted of murdering her ex-husband’s first wife.
Clements, who directed the show, noted that much of his audience remembered the real-life case when they came to the show. The score was by Gordon Gano of Milwaukee’s own folk-punk band the Violent Femmes. The upcoming 2025-26 season has, among other attractions, an August Wilson play, two shows of interest to fans of Agatha Christie, a staging of the heart-warming Canadian musical “Come From Away,” a new Wisconsin musical called “The Fisherman’s Daughters” and a tribute to the famed vaudevillians George Burns and Gracie Allen.
Relating with those in its seats has become something of an obsession at the avowedly populist Milwaukee Rep, and that has extended to programming, which long has included much to appeal to denizens of the Upper Midwest and now frequently includes musicals and other crowd-pleasing shows, often with local themes.
In general, Milwaukee Rep avoids lecturing to or upsetting its audience, preferring to entertain them and offer shows the theater thinks its core audience wants to see. In a city where the theater-going habit is well-established, the Rep’s 14,000 subscribers, some of whom come from Chicago’s far north suburbs, have responded with the kind of loyalty that can raise the money for such a plan. It also surely has helped the theater report (based on its 2024 tax filings) $34.8 million in revenue against $15.8 million in expenses. That 2024 tax return claimed assets of $107 million and liabilities of $6.7 million; Bauman reports an annual budget for 2025-26 of $17 million. He also says the Rep’s $80 million capital project will be wrapped up without any ongoing debt that might hobble the theater, which knows it lives and dies at the behest of its longtime supporters.
Those rosy numbers are far from typical of a regional theater. The national trade organization, Theatre Communications Groups, reported in its survey of non-profit theaters during 2023 that “expenses continue to outstrip revenues across most budget groups.”
The average ticket price for a show at the Rep is only about $45; that’s a far cry from New York or Chicago.
“Our future rests in philanthropy,” says Bauman. “We have an accessible ticket price because we raise a lot of money. But we did not have any place to entertain our donors. Now we do. It’s our way of thanking people.”
Most of the effort in the current project, which has been funded with a big lead donation from Associated Bank but otherwise mostly from a group of individual donors, has gone toward gutting and rebuilding the historic Ellen & Joe Checota Powerhouse Theater, located mostly inside an old coal power station on the east bank of the Milwaukee River. The only significant public financial support received, the theater says, was roughly $2 million in historic building tax credits.
A fly tower and system has been built and the proscenium arch has been widened, making the 671-seat theater more competitive for pre-Broadway tryouts of musicals. A plethora of new rehearsal and classroom spaces and technical facilities have been added. And, given that the Milwaukee Rep makes no apologies for wanting to serve its mostly older audience members, new levels of accessibility have arrived. “Now a wheelchair user can roll up to the bar,” Clements says. “We wanted to extend the theatergoing life of our audience members.”
The theater also now sports enviable green rooms and dressing rooms. “We wanted our artists to feel as taken care of as our audience members,” Bauman says.
The new complex, which has employed 600 construction workers and is to be known as the Associated Bank Theater Center, builds a common entrance for all three theaters and extends the footprint of the Rep’s interior spaces, turning what was exterior concrete into glass-contained interiors, wherein a visitor to the second floor can touch old industrial walls that have been unreachable for years.
John Hunzinger, the president and CEO of the Milwaukee construction company that bears his family’s name, said his crew would complete the project on time for Bernadette Peters to walk out and sing at the opening gala slated for Oct. 11.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com