Milwaukee Total Theater
Mentor 1
Antonio Furgiuele
Location
Union 260
Start Date
29-4-2016 1:00 PM
Description
As one of America’s most segregated cities, Milwaukee finds itself with a unique opportunity. Activating the city’s waterways, its most underutilized public space, will allow for increase social exchange through the experience of performance. Milwaukee Total Theater, a mobile performance space on water, aims to allow various neighborhoods to connect by utilizing Milwaukee’s active performing arts community as a medium to create a dialogue for positive change. Milwaukee Total Theater will accomplish this by converting a 40 foot shipping container into a mobile performance space that will travel along Milwaukee’s river system and lakefront by way of barge to engage various communities. To better understand the city and the importance of the river as a social barrier, research was conducted to map data collected from the 2010 census including racial demographics, income levels, property values, density, vacancies, and their geographic relationships with each other and Milwaukee’s waterways and parks. Logistical research was done through communication with the Port of Milwaukee, City of Milwaukee, and the US Coast Guard as to the legalities and physical limitations of navigating the rivers and lake with additional research being done on the potential land-based mobility of the space. Extensive design work determined how the container would ultimately be transformed into its final form. This was done through precedent research, investigating the most important water-based performance spaces, both past and present. This was then applied to a series of iterative studies into potential forms that the Milwaukee Total Theater could take. Through the research, it was found that Milwaukee’s waterways act not as a space of cultural engagement but instead as a boundary. Milwaukee Total Theater seeks to change this condition by bringing the public together through performance, reimagining the waterways as a place for civic engagement.
Milwaukee Total Theater
Union 260
As one of America’s most segregated cities, Milwaukee finds itself with a unique opportunity. Activating the city’s waterways, its most underutilized public space, will allow for increase social exchange through the experience of performance. Milwaukee Total Theater, a mobile performance space on water, aims to allow various neighborhoods to connect by utilizing Milwaukee’s active performing arts community as a medium to create a dialogue for positive change. Milwaukee Total Theater will accomplish this by converting a 40 foot shipping container into a mobile performance space that will travel along Milwaukee’s river system and lakefront by way of barge to engage various communities. To better understand the city and the importance of the river as a social barrier, research was conducted to map data collected from the 2010 census including racial demographics, income levels, property values, density, vacancies, and their geographic relationships with each other and Milwaukee’s waterways and parks. Logistical research was done through communication with the Port of Milwaukee, City of Milwaukee, and the US Coast Guard as to the legalities and physical limitations of navigating the rivers and lake with additional research being done on the potential land-based mobility of the space. Extensive design work determined how the container would ultimately be transformed into its final form. This was done through precedent research, investigating the most important water-based performance spaces, both past and present. This was then applied to a series of iterative studies into potential forms that the Milwaukee Total Theater could take. Through the research, it was found that Milwaukee’s waterways act not as a space of cultural engagement but instead as a boundary. Milwaukee Total Theater seeks to change this condition by bringing the public together through performance, reimagining the waterways as a place for civic engagement.
