From Wisconsin’s Stage to Nollywood Fame (Hour 3)

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Broadcasting live from the Civic Media Studios in Green Bay, this is Night Light with Peach Wabba.

Your inside source on everything entertainment from Wisconsin to Hollywood.

A guy who does his own stunts, Pete Schwabba.

Hey, welcome back.

We are kicking off act three here right now, folks.

We've had a lot of fun here tonight over the course of the first two hours.

If you missed our number one.

Check it out at civicmedia.us.

Ty Williams was here.

He is one of the programmers of Milwaukee Film, and they have a whole lot of really cool events to celebrate Black History Month at Milwaukee Film all month long, as you know from the top of the show.

February is Black History Month.

One of the few good things about February, I think we established, Conn.

Yeah, and especially this February, where we're getting more.

Groundhog Day,

Black History Month,

Valentine's Day, okay.

And Super Bowl.

It's only 28 days this year.

February blows.

Yeah, the shorter the better.

Yeah,

in

my

opinion.

That is the voice of Dan Davies.

He is my current guest here in studio.

We will be back with Dan in just a moment.

But we talked with Dan in the second hour as well.

That is also available at civicmedia.us.

You can download the podcast there.

Our question of the night is if you had to share a name with a cartoon character like actor Linus Roach does,

Linus Roach was in Batman Law and Order and I'm gonna go out on a limb and say he was named after Linus the Peanuts character

because you

don't just name your name

kid Linus, right?

Yeah,

so that's

a Catholic saint Linus is yeah.

Oh, well,

maybe

I don't know how deep his parents were Either way join the fun folks.

Let us know which cartoon character you'd like to share a name with if you had to

We also talked about, we talked about Catherine O'Hara a little bit.

Groundhog Day, the great movie.

We're having a lot of fun here tonight.

Coming up at 7.20 here in Act 3 will be Thomas Campbell.

He is a playwright and a professor at UWGB.

They've got some great stuff going on at UWGB this spring and Thomas will keep us informed as to what some of those great events are.

He'll be along shortly.

And right now, let's get back to my pal, Dan Davies, who is in the studio here.

As I mentioned, he is a Northeast Wisconsin based actor.

And I, you know, Dan, I'm kind of fascinated when, like I always thought when I was a kid, you know, I want to be a comedian.

So I moved back to where I was born in Chicago when I started my standup career.

Then I moved to LA and I came back.

You've managed to carve out an acting career from Northeast Wisconsin.

There was a comedian I had in Marinette this past weekend, Mike Merrifield.

who a hilariously funny comedian.

He was there with Rob Bracken, they're both great.

But Rob spent 23 years in LA.

Mike told me he's never left Appleton.

And he's

done it, and he's a national headliner.

And

so

you can do this gig, right?

Be

it comedy, music,

acting,

whatever, and not go to the coast.

You bet.

It's just going to take you longer.

Yeah.

You

probably have to work a little harder.

And work a little harder.

Yeah.

But I always wanted to own the product or have some ownership to it.

And if I was going to be a creative, I wanted to, I think you could pigeon hold in Hollywood.

You're just an actor.

You're not a writer or director or producer.

You know, now Tom Cruise could do just whatever

he

wants.

But I really wanted to write and produce and act and do all those things.

And I was able, fortunate.

enough to do it through the independent film scene in the Midwest without having to move.

And I just, you know, put my own, you know, money where my mouth was with Ed Geene the musical.

And that kind of shot me into this other strata when it became a cult classic.

And I've been able to do this and kind of eke out a living.

Yeah.

And that's more important than if you do what you love.

I mean, you know, sure, we could have gone into other fields.

But yeah, I always equate it to like the fabulous Baker boys.

Remember that

movie

with Bo and Jeff Bridges?

And their whole goal in life was just not to work in an office.

Yeah.

And they're like, if we can get by, we

are

living, man.

And that's kind of how

a lot of people in show business feel.

You know, and that's a thing too.

If you do what you love, you never work a day.

Exactly.

All right.

So we talked about The Giant Spider Invasion, folks.

This is a movie that came out 50 years ago.

Director Bill Rabain shot it in the Northwoods of Wisconsin.

Dan and some other filmmakers here from Northeast Wisconsin befriended Bill years ago.

work together with him on this.

You're not calling it a remake.

It's a reboot.

You've added 20 minutes.

tell us again where they can see it then.

Yeah, so March 13, 14 at the Hartford Cineplex or Hartford Schubert's Theater in Hartford, Wisconsin.

And that's going to be a big event with Bill Rabain there.

We're going to have the four foot spider, photo ops, Q&As, meet and greets, autographed posters that originally from 1975 he's got some still.

It's pretty crazy stuff.

So that's going to be a real fun event.

And we're looking at a limited theatrical

For it after that with the state theaters and then Roger cinemas and then hopefully Marcus cinemas is as well in the Swick theaters up north as well so Midwest limited theatrical and just have a lot of fun with it and get people out there It's a film that put Wisconsin on the cinematic map.

Yeah over 50 years ago in 1975

came out the same year Jaws came out finished It was one of the top 50 highest earning films in 1975.

All right, Dan now we got to get to a

topic that I've been waiting to talk to you about for a while.

And for whatever reason, it flew under the radar the last couple of times you were here, but I always see your posts about Nollywood and how huge you are in Africa.

That's unbelievable.

Tell us what Nollywood is and how

did

that

happen?

So Nollywood's the second largest film market in the world, second only to Bollywood of India.

And not only what is actually out of Nigeria, Nigeria is a country about 250 million people in Ghana, which is about 40, 50 million people, West Africa specifically, but it's kind of the unofficial film market of the continent of Africa and the diaspora of West Africans living in like...

Germany and London and Toronto and Atlanta.

It's a massive, massive, massive market.

And I did a film that was at the Toronto International Film Festival and these Nigerian people came up to me and said, hey, we're doing this film and we loved your character.

Can you play a bad guy?

I said, of course I can.

And they met me.

Yeah.

And they said, can you play a Russian?

I said, of course I can.

And but I couldn't.

So I would do my Russian and I'd sound like Yakov Smirnov.

So I had them change my character in Eastern European, a mobster, and that was called Tempting Fate.

It did really well in Africa.

It opened in LA.

And then while it was in Africa, it opened on the IMAX, and these people came up and said, now we want you in this film, A Trip to Jamaica, which was shot in Nigeria, Ghana, Atlanta, and Jamaica with Eric Roberts and myself for the only American actors.

And that became the number one Nollywood film of all time.

in 2017.

It got into the Guinness Book of World Record.

It's been since broken.

But yeah, I'm considered a top 100 Nollywood box office actor of all time.

Just some dummy.

And like the top five or something of people from.

Well, in the United States, I'm number one.

So I'm number one.

Danny Glover is number two.

Eric Roberts is number three.

Vivica Fox is number four.

So wow, which is really weird in Hollywood everyone.

It's just it's absolutely crazy in Nigeria Millions of people know who I am which is odd in America.

Yeah,

you know seven bartenders and my You know my bartender, you know, my my therapist know who I am.

That's about it So what was it like filming over there?

It's really weird because you have bodyguards all the time

When you're even walking the streets, going to the bathroom, we went to a soccer match.

And that was very strange to have bodyguards

all the

time with AK-47s, the whole works.

And it's pretty nuts.

But it's neat.

I'm doing a film that I just attached to top 10 Nollywood director called The Forest Dark.

His name is Robert Peters.

He's top 10 of all time.

And I had called him.

He lives in Atlanta, originally from Lagos, Nigeria.

He's excited about it.

So I talked to Pete.

Pete has a role in it.

And I guess I just got hired.

So I'll take it, man.

You never know with this business.

You gotta pounce.

So how long ago was that?

And will you go back over there again to do more movies?

So yeah, so that was 2016, 2017.

Their political climate isn't safe.

They've had like 100,000 people murdered.

in Nigeria, it's a religious war almost,

Muslims and

Christians, and it's a huge country, 125 million Christians, 125 million Muslims, and it's terrible,

and

it's been like that for about six, seven years, so it's very...

dangerous to be, you know, somebody from the West coming over from America or England, you know.

That is

crazy.

So your films have been seen by over 50 million people theatrically in Africa and Europe and worldwide on Netflix and Hulu.

Because of this number, have you ever thought about like parlaying that and leaving Northeast Wisconsin?

Not necessarily to Nigeria, but to another film hub somewhere.

Yeah, you know, I've worked with other people that are part of different branches that, you know, were Jamaica and Ghana and there was an

Indian

actor from India who wanted me to do a Bollywood thing.

And so there's a little bit of, you know, inklings of that, you know.

stretching out for me to be able to do those things.

I do want to get a bunch of films, though, out, one of them very quickly, that Daniel Wheeler is putting together.

It was just a genius.

My brother in Bigfoot.

And it's a, and I'm super excited for it.

I play kind of this, a journalist who, you know, has his own ideas, but it's very, very funny.

It's a mockumentary about a brother who kind of lost his younger brother who went out looking for Bigfoot.

And it's, it's funny and it's warm and it's touching.

So I'm very excited about that.

And obviously, Giant Spider Invasion and Forest Ark and Deer McGinn, the musical.

So I'm very fortunate with all these projects.

Yeah, you're a busy guy.

Let's talk about real real quick.

If people have not heard of or seen Ed Gein, the musical, you made a film about Ed Gein.

It's been, you know, you've been quoted and they've taken snippets from it and national publications primarily because of the Netflix series.

Yeah.

But Ryan Murphy.

What when did your fixation with Ed Gein start and where can people see that film?

So I'm from that area.

So my grandfather knew Ed Gein Wow, and he was worked for the DNR Washera County knew Ed Gein knew his best friend my grandfather's best friend was the arresting sheriff in 1957 of Ed Gein, so I grew up just you know ten miles from Plainfield

hearing all these stories from day one, all these horror stories.

So it was always fascinating.

So I thought, I was drinking with a buddy in Wapaka and he said, wouldn't it be cool to do a documentary on Ed Gein?

I said, no, because I was drunk.

I said, wouldn't it be fun to do a musical, a comedic musical?

He looked at me like I had three heads and I knew I was onto something and that's when I created it.

And it's been called classic.

And the Netflix people stole some of our stuff from our films.

So yeah.

So I'm not supposed to talk about that because our music director might want to sue them.

Two

words,

pal.

Lawsuit.

I know it's one word.

Dan Davies, this has been fun.

We've got some more texts.

Kurt Kraus says, enjoying the show, I want to grab a coffee with both of you at the Dora County Film Festival, if not before.

Dora County Film Festival, by the way, February 13th.

15th in beautiful Door County.

Kurt is very active in that.

I will be there giving a speech on night one, or night two actually, maybe night one, I don't know.

It's gonna be a lot of fun, folks.

So if you haven't been to a film festival, check it out, especially the Door County Film Festival.

Daniel Wheeler, Danny Wheeler says Nolly Wood, and JB Thompson says Daniel needs to leave, is showing at the Door County Film Festival.

So no shortage of great films.

Dan Davies, thank you as always, pal.

Thank you.

Thank you, Pete.

Thank you Conrad.

It is always a pleasure.

Pete, you're a Northeast Wisconsin gem, and I absolutely love you.

So thank you for everything.

You don't have to sweet talk me.

You've already been on the show.

He's going to slap me in the face and his way out.

All right, we're coming right back, folks.

Thomas Campbell will be here to talk about UWGB and their theater program, and he is also a very successful playwright.

We will talk to him about his work that is coming up next on Nightlight with Pete Schwabba on the Civic Media Radio Network.

You're listening to Civic Media.

Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.

Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.

Fred playing his favorite musical artist.

We haven't heard from her.

Did I tell you not to play her for a while?

Is that why she went away?

No, I think you just, you said something about it, so I got, you know, self-conscious.

Well, that was enough time went by.

It was

nice to hear Carol King

again.

All right, so folks, you still have time to get in on the phone.

Our question of the night is if you had to share a name with a cartoon character like actor Linus Roach does,

Although Dan Davies just told me that could be related to Catholicism somehow.

St.

Linus or Pope Linus or something like that.

Yeah, I think that's more... In my limited simple brain, I assumed he was named after Linus from Charlie Brown.

But let us know.

We've had some great answers.

I said Bugs.

Half of Bugs Bunny, because I like gangsters named Bugs.

Bugs Schwabba, I think that could go.

Conrad said Casper, but with a K.

and let us know what you think.

855-752-4842-855-757.

You can also text us on the app, or if you're watching the radio on Facebook, YouTube, or X, drop us a stream comment right now.

And it's my pleasure to welcome our next guest.

He is the chair of the theater and dance at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay and also an accomplished playwright.

And he joins us here in studio tonight, Mr. Thomas Campbell.

Hi, Thomas.

Hi, Pete.

Thanks for having me.

My pleasure, dude.

Did you go by Thomas or Tom?

Tom, please.

OK.

Yeah.

Because I thought normally I would think that someone goes by Tom, but, you know, you're a playwright.

You're very distinguished.

You've got all these crazy degrees in your field.

And Thomas sounds a little more distinguished.

It does sound distinguished, but I'm also incredibly awkward and insecure.

I gotta humanize myself and break it down to Tom.

That's great, I love it.

If you had to share a name with a cartoon character, can you think of one that

sticks out?

Yeah, you just mentioned that.

I've always thought Shaggy was kind of a cool name.

Oh, yes.

That's our

first

Shaggy.

We got Velma,

and what was the other one, the other girl?

Daphne.

Thelma Velma was the one with the glass.

Yeah, she couldn't see

without him.

She couldn't see without him.

All right, that's great before we jump in to some of your upcoming work and you got a lot going on Yeah, tell us a little bit about you and your background and how you ended up here in Green Bay.

Oh gosh, how I ended up here in Green Bay Well, I I started doing theater when I when I was young I think I was in my first show when I was like six, you know It

was

like a community show of Peter Pan and I was a lost boy and

really started to get into it in high school like I think a lot of kids do and I was lucky enough to go to a high school that had a really advanced theater program.

It was right on the cusp of being like a performing arts high school.

It was a really strong high school theater program.

and started off in performance and choir and show choirs and musicals and doing all that.

And then my senior year of high school, I started to turn my attention to writing and the theater teacher there at the time encouraged me to pursue that and eventually went to the University of Wyoming, got my Bachelor of Fine Arts in playwriting and directing.

And this is from where?

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Denver.

Oh, definitely.

Yeah.

So I went from Denver up to Laramie, Wyoming, got my degree there, and eventually went on to my master's program at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

Wow.

And then I went back to Denver for a couple years and tried to do the professional playwriting thing.

And I started teaching in grad school.

Okay.

And I really loved it.

And so I wanted to go back to teach at the university level.

And so eventually I went back to...

Carbondale got my PhD.

I got it in dramaturgical studies, performance studies with an emphasis in dramaturgy.

And that got me a job at UW-Cheboygan.

And I was the director of the theater program there.

And then in 2018, the UW colleges merged with the regional comprehensives.

And that linked me up to Green Bay.

And so it's just been sort of this sort of jump from one thing to the next to the next to the next.

And now I'm...

Now I'm in Green Bay.

So how long have you lived in Wisconsin?

Wisconsin 2013.

So you're one of us now.

13 years-ish.

You know, I feel like I'm getting there.

I'm always going to be Colorado.

It's in my heart.

It's in my blood.

Colorado

is a great place to be from.

I will say you just...

I got a pain in my stomach when you said University of Wyoming.

I was a stand-up comic in the 90s.

These

two were all over and I went to Denver.

There's a club I worked called Whitsend.

The guy named John Cooney.

He was great and the club was great.

And then they tacked a college gig on and I went and did a college gig at the University of Wyoming in the gymnasium.

It's not a stage.

They had a

spotlight and they had a podium and the mic was attached.

I couldn't take the mic and walk around.

I

literally did

45 minutes of material.

not being able to see anybody because the gym was dark and the spotlight, it was maybe one of the worst gigs I've ever had.

Hey Matt, atmosphere

matters.

I'm not only responsible, I'm just saying.

No, you know, atmosphere matters.

I mean, that's the, you know, like, gosh, that space is as a performer, like the space you are.

Engaging in is so critical to what it is that you're doing.

Lighting the space,

all of

it.

Do you

have a good space?

We're gonna break for the news in about a minute.

We come back, we'll tell you about a great play that's gonna happen at UWGB.

It's coming up.

But how is the space there in terms

of atmosphere?

We have great spaces.

So we're lucky to be doing this one in the Gene Weidner space, which is our smaller flexible space.

It's actually in the Weidner, which is it's it's a fantastic facility.

Yeah,

that's excellent.

All right.

My guest is Thomas Campbell.

He is a playwright and the chair of theater and dance at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay, a great school right here in our own backyard.

I heard it was like the fastest growing school.

of all the UW schools?

Is this all right?

I think we, I believe we are the only UW school to have seen enrollment increases for 10

years.

Wow, that's incredible.

And you can take some of the credit.

I don't

care.

All right, we are going to come back after the news and talk with Thomas some more about writing and really cool stuff happening at UWGB.

Kurt Krauss on the stream says, 2013 is one of us.

All right, so that's from an efficient, he's even more Wisconsin than me.

And if you're accepted by Kurt, you're accepted by everybody and Conrad.

We're coming right back.

This is Nightlight with Peach Waba on the Civic Media Radio Network.

Welcome back.

I'm Pete Schwab, and this is Nightlight.

Great to have you with me.

Janet from Madison, folks, in response to our question says, well, I'm already honored to share a name of a cartoon character, Interplanet Janet, from Schoolhouse Rock.

That's a great show, by the way, Thomas.

And Conrad, sorry.

If you had to pick it, it would be that 70s rocker, Josie.

Josie and the Pussycats.

That's a great one, too.

John Murray in Madison says, OK, guys, just lost a bet to my better half.

I felt positive that no one would pick Shaggy.

Bravo, my good sir.

Thank you, Thomas Campbell.

John says, personally, I'm keen to captain.

No army biz attached.

Just captain.

OK.

I'm not going to argue with John Murray.

And then he expands and says caveman underpants America crunch lots of captains and a lot of military royalty out there and John says no kits Good God.

I don't know what that means John John will explain it.

He never leaves us hanging.

All right

Back to the show here, folks.

My guest is Thomas Campbell.

He is the chair of Theater and Dance at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay and an accomplished playwright as well.

He comes to us from Colorado by way of Wyoming, by way of Southern Illinois, and he joins us here tonight in the studio, a proud Wisconsinite since 2013.

He is definitely one of us now.

All right, so you got a big show coming up, Thomas.

Tell

us what's, tell us about Doctor, I don't want to get it wrong, Dr. Bellboy and the Energy Vampire.

Dr. Bellboy and the Energy Vampire.

Yeah, it's a new musical that I wrote the book and the lyrics on and the composer is Ben Benjamin Olnicek who is a

He has his own music studio, so a local musician, and has been our vocal music director on the past couple of musicals that we've done.

He's just a great guy, really accomplished musical theorist, and his knowledge of musical theater is just vast, so we've been working on it for about a year.

in its infancy.

And so what we're doing over at the university is a workshop production.

And so we have sort of our initial draft of the play in the script and the initial draft of the musical score and the beginnings of the orchestration.

And we cast it and we're working through some of the nuances and ironing out some of our mistakes, both with the script and with the

with the music and yeah so it gives us an opportunity to show our students the process of developing a new musical and all of the heavy lifting that that goes with that.

So when you do that you call it a workshop will it be

performed school wide?

Will

everybody be able to see it?

So the performance dates are February 20th and 21st and it is open to the public.

It's free.

It's in our Gene Weiner theater, so their seating is limited.

But one of the one of the critical things for Ben and I in this process is to get audience feedback.

You know, and so we're going to be holding some talk backs after each of the performances to see what works, what resonated with the audience, what needs some tweaking.

And, you know, of course, we're going to be probably watching the audience more than we are watching the performance at that point in time.

So, you know, we'll be able to see where they where they connect, where they laugh, where they disconnect, all of that, all of that good stuff.

So it's like a focus group kind of.

A little bit.

Yeah, yeah.

It's our first opportunity to actually get this thing that we've been living with for a year in front of some other people.

And, you know, theater is a collaborative art.

It needs audiences to really thrive and to resonate in order to do that.

we need to see in this experimentation phase, what's working.

So what happens then?

Let's say it goes swimmingly and things are, you're thrilled.

What do you do then?

We go back to the drawing board, to be honest.

Yeah, we go back.

We're already talking about, we're in the process where we don't want to make too many changes because we don't want to create a domino effect right now.

And so we're sort of marking things in the script that once the workshop production is over,

what is the next phase?

Where are the more substantive changes that we need to make?

Maybe we eliminate an entire song or a scene needs to be completely rewritten.

How does that going to affect the composition of the score or the lyrical changes that might need to be shifted?

And so we're already looking at what...

what comes next after this component is finished.

So when I

say we go back to the drawing board, we go back and we really do a deep dive in what works.

Not just tweaking, but it's not just tweaking.

It's really going back and it's going to be a heavy revision.

Nice.

Yeah.

So tell us about the story.

Dr. Bellboy

and

the Energy Vampire.

Love

the title.

conjures up what it might be about to me, but

good.

Tell

us.

Good.

Yeah.

No, I think a title should be evocative.

And so our story is about a university professor who abandons his previous life and he goes to New York City and becomes a Bella attendant at a hotel.

kind of throws his hands up at the university world and just wants something mundane.

He wants to be left alone.

He's dealing with some trauma and some loss and he just kind of disconnects from society, his life and just wants something to just keep his head down and go through it.

But the hotel that he

is working at is actually haunted.

And so he has some some ghostly compatriots from Harpal Marks, Dorothy Parker and George S. Kaufman.

Wow.

And so they have sort of their like shenanigans and then they realize one of the thing is this malevolent energy vampire has infested the hotel.

And so they have to battle this fantastical energy vampire.

So, what is it about hotels and theaters that ghosts just feel at home there, apparently?

Is that a

haunted theater?

Yeah, so I was doing, I had sort of this idea of sort of Dr. Bell Boy, rolling around in my head for a while and I didn't really know what to do with it and then I was reading an article about...

the Algonquin Hotel in New York City, which was home of the Algonquin Round Table.

Right.

And famously haunted, right?

Yeah.

Famously haunted, considered one of the one of the famous, one of the most haunted hotels in New York City.

And saw that some of the spiritual sightings are Dorothy Parker and Heartbone Marx and George S. Kaufman.

And I was kind of like, that is a trio.

You know, that is a heck of a trio.

And so what if our Dr. Bellboy was in this hotel?

you know what what sort of what what kind of shenanigans would they get into what would that look like and then I was developing the story and I kind of it kind of hit me one day I said

Oh, shoot, I think this is a musical and I've never done a musical before.

I was going to ask you about that

because I didn't see

that.

This is my first musical.

I've done all kinds of different genres and styles of different plays.

So you wrote the play.

This is not a

licensed.

OK.

Yeah, I wrote the play and conceptualized the story, wrote the lyrics and the play component.

And Ben is composing and doing the music.

That's outstanding.

Dr. Bellboy and the Energy Vampire written by my guest, Thomas Campbell, can be seen February 20th and 21st for free at the, you called it the Widener extension?

It's the Gene Widener Theater in the Widener

on the UWGB campus.

Okay,

that's exciting.

So who are your, you know, first, I want to ask you about this because I was reading about you and it said your research.

As a playwright focuses on depictions portrayals of alcohol abuse dependency on the American stage and how plays can be how plays can subvert stigmas and stereotypes associated with alcoholism This two-part question.

What is it?

That you or who you're writing who are you writing influences?

Okay,

did you grow up reading these guys like?

Eugene O'Neill who used alcohol or Hemingway or Dylan Thomas.

Yeah, so the first time where I was really impacted by a play was reading Tennessee Williams' Glass Menagerie.

And I think the narrative style of that, the mix of...

narrative reflection with live-action scenes just really captivated me and I was a senior in high school and so I did a report on Tennessee Williams and you know his battles with addiction were pretty prevalent throughout his life and as I went through my schooling you know it's sort of this pattern where playwrights

writers, artists, and addiction.

It's pretty prevalent.

And whether that is by choice or not, I can't think of anybody who chooses to live a life of addiction.

Unless they're

trying to pose in a way.

I do think that there's something romantic about this idea of being a tortured artist.

And I know in my youth, I definitely sort of reveled in that.

party hard play hard right hard mentality and as I got into my PhD program I started to realize that theater the theater can do more with that it's not just about you know depictions of the drunkard as comedic relief it's not just about you know the violent alcoholic there there's yeah

you know, substance abuse is a serious issue.

It's a detrimental medical condition that affects everybody.

And I don't think anybody, I think anybody that you talk to can point to at least one or two people that they know that has been either suffering or has been impacted by AOD issues.

So it's pretty prevalent.

And I know that theater can be cathartic and it can talk about those issues in ways that aren't

That allow people the catharticus experience to purge it and it becomes that subversive act of therapy in a certain

way

Do you have a favorite playwright or an influence, someone you looked up to or wanted to emulate?

Oh, I mean, when I was younger, it was definitely those modernists.

It was the Tennessee Williams, the Eugene O'Neill's.

As I got older, I really started to fall in love with the more avant-garde, edgier ones.

For a while, it was David Mamet, and then I just started to discover like Paula Vogel.

And, you know, Susan Laurie Parks and these language based playwrights that were just being so creative and so artistic with their use of language and sort of like kicking down the door of expectations and creating things that were really artistically captivating.

It's interesting like that you mentioned David, ma'am.

I have a funny David, ma'am.

I have his old car.

Oh, really?

Okay.

It

was a Toyota Land Cruiser that we bought in LA from his nanny was getting rid of it.

I was like,

it was

a great deal.

And I was like, it's David Mamet.

This is going to rub off on me as a writer.

It didn't.

And now we're trying to unload it.

It's kind of getting old.

Anyway, he is a guy who also has written for the big screen as well.

I think done his own adaptations, if I'm not mistaken.

Do you have any aspirations of that?

Do you hope to write movies?

Are you firmly entrenched in plays?

I really feel secure in my identity as a playwright.

sort of dip my toe in screenwriting and it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't intrigue me the way that playwriting I think playwriting the liveness the working with other people to actually be in a physical space and see it actualized and the fact that it's different from night to night there's just something really Vibrant and exciting about that that form

is there are there like you have your benchmarks and screenwriting I get that the first

first plot point by page 25

or so,

and then third action start 80, 90, whatever.

Do you have those same benchmarks in playwriting or is it more

freeform?

I think there's probably a little bit more flexibility.

I mean, there's definitely formulas to playwriting structures, but I think, especially with musicals, they've become a little bit more formulaic.

But theater is a little bit more artistic.

You get to play with form.

and formula in different ways.

And

the audiences seem like they're more open

to it.

They're not

like movies, you know what they expect.

Whereas a play,

you can

find something really cool that's not as formulaic.

All right, Thomas Campbell is my guest.

We are going to do a quick break and then we'll be back to wrap things up and enjoy a few more minutes with our guest, Thomas Campbell from UWGB.

He is the chair of the theater and dance and

Is it the department?

Am I saying the right chair of theater

and dance?

It's a program, yeah.

The program is

theater and dance.

And he's a playwright, so we're jamming.

We're coming right back.

This is Pete Schwabba

in Nightlight on the Civic Media Radio Network.

All right, welcome back.

Hey, tomorrow night on Nightlight, folks, from Sturgeon Spirits, our pal Carl Lohenstein will be here, producer, director of A Road at Night, which premieres next week in Madison.

John Roach will be here.

That is a fantastic film about Howard Moore, the former UW basketballer and coach.

Coming up on Wednesday from Wisconsin Foodie, Arthur Ersink will be here, my pal Steve Segrin, and Sherry Shepard will be here Wednesday night.

That'll be fun.

Hudson Hensley, I think from Song Song Blue.

We're solidifying that for Thursday.

We're going to talk ice cream with Cedar Crest, all kinds of fun stuff going on here at Nightlight this week.

But right now we have a few more minutes with my current guest, Mr. Thomas Campbell.

He is the chair of the theater and dance department at UWGB and an accomplished playwright himself.

You've got, here's what you teach at UWGB, Thomas.

Playwriting, script analysis, dramaturgy, intro to theater, world theater and performance.

Of all those classes, what gets you out of bed the fastest in the morning, where you can't wait to start talking about

it?

Oh, gosh.

I mean, I'd be lying if I didn't say it was playwriting.

That really is the, of all the hats that I wear, you know, that's my identity marker.

But...

I really enjoy all the classes that I teach, and I know that some days are better than others.

Sure.

You know, some days I have a really good script analysis class, and some days I have a really good directing class, and some days it's, you know, I swing and a miss on all the days sometimes.

So, you know, but I think as long as the students are engaged and they enjoy being in the rooms, then I know I'm making a difference.

That's a great answer.

What is the...

climate right now.

It seems like there's a shift in America for a lot of reasons, but like people, you know, the pandemic affected people going to the theater.

Netflix might buy Warner Brothers.

ideally or not ideally, but suspiciously might not put as many films in theaters.

So that landscape is changing a little.

I think there will always be a market for it.

Where is theater?

Where are we at with theater in America right now?

It's such a great art form and it's definitely got a place in cities like Chicago and

New York

and LA

and

lesser in LA, but like Milwaukee, but what's the climate like?

As a playwright, do you say theater is thriving in America?

It needs a comeback?

Or where are we

at?

I think from my perspective, I think we're at kind of a critical moment.

Theater programs at the higher education level are under threat right now.

They're being cut nationally.

Largely for financial reasons.

Theater programs are in general expensive and low enrolled.

And in the current higher education environment, that is potentially detrimental to a lot of theater programs.

Theater programs being eliminated at the higher ed level.

Has a ripple effect,

you

know, we are upriver of the professional Industries right we are also the incentive for K through 12 people studying theater To go in major in theater and if you don't have that opportunity then students are going to stop doing it in the K through 12 so

It's potentially really hazardous.

I will say at the same time theater theater is innate to who we are As human beings, you know, we are innate storytellers.

We are innate communal gatherers and You combine community and community gathering with storytelling you get theater and so I don't think theater is ever gonna go away, but I think

People in positions of authority need to make a choice to invest in that

as

a discipline and they need to recognize it as a discipline that's worthy of deep study It's not just entertainment.

It's not just the show the fancy, you know musical that entertains us It's it's something deeper and it's something much more powerful

And people in positions of power and authority need to need to recognize that and they need to invest in it Knowing that it's worth it without a financial return.

I agree And I you know if you haven't if you're listening and you haven't really embraced theater or going to a live show whether it's a musical or a drama something original or a big show like Hamilton You got to go folks and you got to support live theater because there's nothing like it.

It is truly everything Thomas just said

Kurt Krause on the stream says, Thomas Campbell and P. Schwabba both have great hair going on.

Thomas, give my very best to Alan

K. Oh, Alan.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, Kurt knows Alan.

That's awesome.

Everybody knows Alan.

Everybody knows

Alan.

He's been on the show.

He'll be back again.

He's a great guy.

All right, so we've got, oh, I have to ask you, I ask almost everybody who's on the show, are you binge watching anything?

I know theater's your first love, but you know, when you put the typewriter away at night, what are you binging?

So I have a six.

and a nine-year-old, so a lot of what I watch is geared around them on a good day.

That's not wrong with that.

Yeah, you know, on a good day, we watch a lot of Bluey, which I think is a great, great show.

Personally, if I can carve it a little bit of time, I'm trying to finish watching Stranger Things.

Okay.

You know, so that was, I have Bluey on one hand and Stranger Things on the other.

Two very

different shows.

Very.

We had...

Stuart waddles who it does news here in Southeast Wisconsin Pacific media and he came out of the show one night And he was talking incessantly about bluey

and I he sent

me a couple links and I made the joke Is it too weird that I want to divorce my wife and find another wife so I can have kids again So I can watch bluey with them.

It's that might be extreme.

I have never show

Cried so consistently at a cartoon a kid's cartoon.

It is it's that good.

It's really powerful

Hey, best of luck with dr. Bellboy

and

is it vampire energy?

I've already energy Dr. Bellboy and the energy vampire

February 20th and 21st for free on the UWGB campus at the Weidner Center

Weiner Center

Gene Weiner theater

Gene Weiner theater.

That's it.

All right Thomas Campbell.

Thank you so

much.

Thank you Pete Thank you

to Dan Davies and Ty Williams.

Thank you for all your calls and texts folks just phenomenal fun tonight and on behalf of a lovable producer Conrad I'm Pete Schwabba saying good night,

Wisconsin

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