Wisconsin theater: Best designers of 2017

By Mike Fischer, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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. 

Continue reading