BWW Previews: Tyne Daly Illuminates Passion for Women's Theater

Tyne Daly devotees united in Milwaukee on Wednesday, November 12 when the incomparable and irrepressible actress performed her 90 minute show titled Tyne Daly Does Anything She Wants. Close ties to the Midwestern city inspired the multiple Emmy and Tony Award winning actress to lend her incredible talent for funding Renaissance Theaterworks, a company supporting women's voices in every area of the theater for more than 20 years.

An audience of approximately 75 seated in the Historic Third Ward's Broadway Theatre Centre's small cabaret were enthralled and smitten with Daly's indomitable spirit, as she claimed she made her London debut at the age of 65 In a production of Master Class, a tale of opera singer Maria Callas. Recently nominated for another Tony Award for her performance in Mothers & Sons, Daly dazzled the intimate audience with a program merging poetry and play scripts in a tribute to women in theater. For this very special performance, an avid and determined London barrister traveled to Milwaukee especially for the one night only event to experience Tyne Daly in person, in the present.

Channeling great women presented in scripts or stories such as Agamemnon (525-425 BCE) through contmeporary playwrights such as Terrance McNally's 2014 Mothers & Sons, Daly invoked the sisterhood of mothers, daughters, wives and lovers, in her sweeping overview of women portrayed in literature or theater--which with little surprise, remains emotionally consistent throughout the centuries. Mothers love children, lose children in any era, as they do family, friends and romantic partners. and seek to support each other in their endeavors to create a better world, in and outside their personal homes or spaces.

Daly joined forces with Milwaukee's Renaissance Theaterworks currently under the leadership of Artistic Director and Co-Founder Suzan Fete and Producing Director Julie Swenson in a company that has evolved over the past two decades. Enlisting the up and coming talent of Artistic Associate Mallory Metoxen, the company initiated a program they named BRINK! to encourage women playwrights, especially in the Midwest, to write and then have their work produced. This August, the first two women from BRINK! presented stage readings selected from over 40 entires reviewed over an entire year. While the program desires to increase the statistics that women who write plays will eventually see them produced on stage across America, this goal has evolved into.a critical mission because in the last 100 years, the 12 percent of women who write plays and actually have them performed, has proved to be despairingly consistent

Honored with the distinction of the first BRINK! productions, Gwendolyn Rice's The Griots and Janice Burrowoy's Parts of Speech were performed in August 2014, as the new playwrighting program has been accepting applications and scripts for their 2015 plays. Then in a great beginning to the 2014-2015 season, two staged readings of the Civil War drams Amelia, the company's first play selection offered in October, was directed for and performed by Milwaukee veterans. This was a community program initiated after also raising the funds and traveling to South Africa to collaborate on a production of Charlayne Woodard's NEAT, to spread drama to women through all the continents. In every aspect relating to the theater, the RTW company seeks to hire women actors, directors, designers and technicians each season to increase the vital statistic that a mere 20 percent of women fill these positions on a national basis.

Over the past 20 years, Renaissance Theaterworks helped pave a career path for national director Laura Gordon, actor, choreographer and director Molly Rhode and Tony nominated actoress Carrie Coon, who made several appearances at Renaissance Theaterworks, especially in their former production of Neil LaBute's Reasons to Be Pretty. Perhaps the company's perseverance to showcase women in theater encouraged The Milwaukee Repertory Theater to present 50 percent of their plays in their 2014-2015 season to be directed by women, which includes May Andrales, KJ Sanchez and Leda Hoffman. While In the tiny town of Spring Green, Wisconsin's American Players Theatre, named "the best classic theater in America" by the Wall Sreet Journal, appointed Brenda DeVita Artistic Director and Carrie Van Hollgren Managing Director.

Because of these theatrical pioneers and the artistic excellence of actresses such as Tyne Daly, who prove women's voices in the theater resonate their entire lives, women may eventually transcend and transform several of these disheartening professional statistics. More importantly. on this enthralling November evening in the unseasonal cold, Daly illuminated the illustrious history to women's voices through her passion for her profession and theater companies who strive to release these stories to the world. Over 5000 dollars was raised in one evening to warm the audience's hearts, and their inner souls. for all women in the arts. Marvelous women. and also men. who tirelessly work behind and infront of the stage with entusiasm for producing great art.

Thank you, Tyne Daly, for sharing your wondrous presence and professionalism with Milwaukee and the dedicated women of Renaissance Theaterworks! Your unique voice brightened the objective for each person in the audience to do more, give more, for theater, and more significantly, women in theater, to equally represent the stories of audiences across America, and eventually the world.

For further information on Renaissance Theaterworks, BRINK!, statistics on women working in theater or donating to the company, please visit www.r-t-w.com. In the picture for the posting, from left to right, Marketing Director Kat Tow, Producing Director Julie Swenson, Co-Founder, Dramaturg, and Playwright Marie Kohler, Artistic Director and Co-Founder, Suzan Fete (behind Marie Kohler), Board Member Jill Heavenrich, Artistic Associate Mallorey Metoxen (behind Jill Heavenrich) Award Winning Actress Tyne Daly, and Development Director Lisa Rasmussen.

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