Wisconsin theater: Best designers of 2017

Mike Fischer

Special to the Journal Sentinel

Brian Hemesath’s lavish costume design for Skylight Music Theatre's "Hot Mikado" mixed kimonos and zoot suits with a dash of Sailor Moon.

“Order, design, tension, balance, harmony,” Seurat says, in Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park with George.” Actors may eventually fill the picture, but the way it’s framed – and how they’ll look once they step inside it – depends on the designers creating actors’ on-stage worlds.

Arranged alphabetically, here’s my annual tribute to artists creating 20 of the many designs that made all the difference in how and what we saw on stage in Wisconsin during the past year.

Kevin Asselin and Jessica Lanius (fight and movement design, “Cyrano de Bergerac,” American Players Theatre): Asselin’s fight design revealed the cost of war and Lanius’s movement design enabled remembrance, driving home Rostand’s ever-timely insistence that love conquers all.

Brian Byrnes (fight design, “A Flea in Her Ear,” American Players Theatre): Byrnes’ ordered precision created chaos while making a whirling top of actor Tracy Michelle Arnold, whose head may still be spinning.

Scott McKenna Campbell and Mitchell Ferguson (musical composition, “Twelfth Night,” Door Shakespeare): Campbell and Ferguson’s string-based score emphasized the passage of time, in a melancholy comedy in which love is shadowed by death.

Andrew Crowe (composition and sound design, “Great Expectations,” Milwaukee Chamber Theatre): Crowe’s violin recreated Pip’s vanishing rural childhood while tightening the narrative screw with the eerie sounds of this play’s hungry ghosts.

Jason Fassl (lighting design, “Great Expectations,” Milwaukee Chamber Theatre): Fassl poignantly illuminated a darkening world of lonely characters, reaching for the light despite dashed expectations. It wasn’t flashy. But it was spot-on.

Thomas C. Hase and Philip Witcomb (lighting and set design, “The Glass Menagerie,” Milwaukee Repertory Theater): Lighted by Hase, Witcomb’s smoky glass box smudged boundaries between an entrapping past and a consequently claustrophobic present.

Brian Hemesath (costume design, “Hot Mikado,” Skylight Music Theatre): True to this genre-bending piece, Hemesath’s lavish costume design mixed kimonos and zoot suits in a fusion of Japan and Harlem with a dash of Sailor Moon.

Murell Horton (costume design, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” American Players Theatre): Thematically capturing what’s unique in each of the play’s four subgroups, Horton’s brilliant costuming is my pick for best design in any medium in Wisconsin theater this year.

Ameenah Kaplan and Josh Schmidt (composition and sound design, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” American Players Theatre): Kaplan (who also choreographed) took us around the world and Schmidt took us to the Summer of Love, sounding our mind-expanding dreamscape.

Brandon Kirkham (puppet design, “Lovabye Dragon,” First Stage): Kirkham’s huge and versatile dragon could fly, curl up and, best of all, express heartfelt emotion. I finally grasp why Hagrid wanted to keep Norbert(a).

Matthew J. LeFebvre (costume design, “Cyrano de Bergerac,” American Players Theatre): Some of LeFebvre’s costumes hilariously sent up frilly and romping productions of this play; more naturalistic pieces reminded us that Rostand’s romantic classic is grounded in realism.

Stephen Mear (choreography, “Guys and Dolls,” Milwaukee Repertory Theater): Mear took us from New York’s sewers to a Havana nightclub in a design reflecting his unabashed love for MGM musicals.

Pamela Miles and Noele Stollmack (props and set design, “I and You,” Forward Theater Company): Miles’ props filled Stollmack’s set with all the many ways a lonely teen hungered for connection with the wider world.

Karl Miller (choreography, “Carnival,” In Tandem Theatre): Even after watching a rehearsal as well as the show, I’m still trying to fathom how Miller accommodated such big production numbers in such a small space.

Jason Orlenko (costume design, “The Violet Hour,” Renaissance Theaterworks): The prolific Orlenko had several standout costume designs in 2017; this evocative recreation of a world poised between an Edwardian past and the roaring 1920s was my favorite.

Andrew Parchman (puppet design, “The Depths,” Quasimondo Physical Theatre): Parchman gave us creatures large and small, populating depths in the ocean and suggesting the monsters buried in our minds.

Michael A. Peterson (lighting design, “Cyrano de Bergerac,” American Players Theatre): Peterson showcased all that the new APT lighting grid can do, while heightening the unabashed romance and the underlying darkness in this great play.

Lisa Schlenker and Madelyn Yee (set and props design, “Great Expectations,” Milwaukee Chamber Theatre): Schlenker shrunk the Cabot stage and brought it closer to us; Yee filled it with thematically relevant objects, including an ingenious, multipurpose desk linking Dickens’ imagination to the world he populated.

Jane Shaw (composition and sound design, “Jane Eyre,” Milwaukee Repertory Theater): While covering the waterfront from traditional spirituals to jagged Modernism, Shaw made the set a percussive instrument and utilized some strong cast voices in channeling Jane’s tension, between duty and desire as well as tradition and freedom.

Alexander B. Tecoma (costume design, “Guys and Dolls,” Milwaukee Repertory Theater): Tecoma’s period but slightly heightened costumes both recalled the Depression and allowed us to travel to Runyonland. He had me at the vintage ties.