A poetic journey of an artist/dancer/father questioning the balance of his passions-art, culture, family.

From Brooklyn to Massachusetts to Russia, Antonio struggles to reconcile multiple ethnic identities. He wrestles with the legacy of stereotypes of masculinity while discovering there is beauty in manhood and becoming a father. Powerful poetry is intermixed with original movement, music and projected imagery to create an evocative, wholly unique performance.

 

• Dael Orlandersmith, Playwright

  Dael Orlandersmith first performed Stoop Stories in 2008 at The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival and Apollo Theater’s Salon Series; Washington, D.C.’s Studio Theatre produced its world premiere in 2009. Her play Monster premiered at New York Theatre Workshop in 1996. The Gimmick, commissioned by McCarter Theatre, premiered in their Second Stage OnStage series in 1998 and went on to Long Wharf Theatre and New York Theatre Workshop. Orlandersmith won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for The Gimmick in 1999. Yellowman was commissioned by and premiered at McCarter Theatre in a co-production with The Wilma Theater and Long Wharf Theatre. Orlandersmith was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Drama Desk Award nominee for Outstanding Play and Outstanding Actress in a Play for Yellowman in 2002. The Blue Album, in collaboration with David Cale, premiered at Long Wharf Theatre in 2007. Bones was commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum, where it premiered in 2010. She wrote and performed the solo memoir play Forever at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, the Long Wharf, New York Theatre Workshop, Portland Center Stage in 2016 and the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. In 2016, Orlandersmith wrote and performed Until the Flood, commissioned by St. Louis Repertory Theatre. It was later produced at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, ACT Seattle and Goodman Theatre. Orlandersmith has toured extensively with the Nuyorican Poets Café (Real Live Poetry) throughout the United States, Europe and Australia. Yellowman and a collection of her earlier works have been published by Vintage Books and Dramatists Play Service. She attended Sundance Institute Theatre Lab for four summers and is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, The Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights, a Guggenheim and the 2005 PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award for a playwright in mid-career. She is the recipient of a Lucille Lortel Foundation Playwrights Fellowship and an Obie Award for Beauty’s Daughter. She is currently working on two commissions.

  

• Antonio Edwards Suarez, Playright/Performer

  Antonio Edwards Suarez' Broadway credits include American Buffalo, directed by Robert Falls. New York credits include Chaucer in Rome (Lincoln Center Theater), directed by Nicholas Martin; Entertaining Mr. Sloane; The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui; Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth; The Trial (Phoenix Theatre Ensemble); This One Girl’s Story (New York Musical Theatre Festival, Award for Best Ensemble); Points of Departure (INTAR) and Richard III (National Black Theatre). Other credits include Food Acts (Lions Theatre); The Hamlet Project (Mac Wellman Theater); Trespass (Producers Club II); Fuente (Cherry Lane Alternative); Waiting for Godot (Chashama) and Mother (La MaMa E.T.C.). International and regional credits include Antonio’s Song/I Was Dreaming of a Son (Milwaukee Repertory Theater and Contemporary American Theater Festival); Leandro in the international tour of The King Stag (directed by Andrei Serban, choreographed by Julie Taymor); The Night is a Child (Milwaukee Rep); A Midsummer Night’s Dream; The Taming of the Shrew; The Tempest; Julius Caesar (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company); Havana is Waiting (Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park); Spinning into Butter (Repertory Theatre of St. Louis) and Idiots Karamazov (American Repertory Theater). Film and television credits include The EndGame; The Tested; Elementary; several episodes of Law & Order; The Good Wife; Rookie Blue; Person of Interest; One Life to Live; As the World Turns; Flight of the Conchords (HBO); Curb Your Enthusiasm and Stan the Orderly (recurring) on Royal Pains (USA Network).

  

• Mark Clements, Director

  Mark Clements is a multi- award-winning international theater director whose work has appeared in over 100 major theaters throughout Europe and the United States. He began his tenure as artistic director of Milwaukee Rep, with the 2010/11 season, by bringing musicals to the mainstage and introducing the John Jack D. Lewis New Play Development Program, a vibrant and eclectic new works initiative that seeks to produce one new work in each of the Rep’s three performance spaces per season. This includes Antonio’s Song, that he developed in collaboration with Contemporary American Theatre Festival. Milwaukee Rep directing credits include the world premieres of One House Over; his own adaptation of the current A Christmas Carol in the Pabst Theatre; Five Presidents and American Song; Things I Know To Be True; Junk; The Glass Menagerie; Of Mice and Men; Othello; Death of a Salesman; The History of Invulnerability; End of the Rainbow; Clybourne Park and Bombshells. Select New York and international work includes Speaking in Tongues for Roundabout Theatre Company and Hampstead Theatre in London; The Milliner; Blunt Speaking; Obie Award winning musical The Thing About Men, in addition to creating and directing the West End and UK National Tours of Soul Train. Prior to joining Milwaukee Rep, Mark served as an associate artistic director for several UK theater companies, but most notably, as artistic director for the award-winning Derby Playhouse in the UK from 1992-2002, where he directed over 40 productions. He has been nominated for an Olivier Award and several UK Theater Awards, and has won three Barrymore Awards from his time at Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. Mark is currently working with Ayad Akhtar on adapting his critically acclaimed novel American Dervish for the stage to make its world premiere at Milwaukee Rep in an upcoming season, along with Run Bambi Run, an original new rock musical penned by Eric Simonson and Gordon Gano from the Violent Femmes.