Green Bay Press-Gazette (WI)
September 15, 2005
Warren Gerds, wgerds@greenbaypressgazette.com
Venture Theatre is venturing back as it moves forward.
Here’s how the time warp works:
Co-owner Mike Eserkaln and Laura Riddle of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay theater program wrote the comedy “Get Down(sized)!” It was performed in the summer of 2001 in Studio Two, a 100-seat space now called the Jean Weidner Theatre of the Weidner Center.
“It drew some people, but not as many as we wanted to draw,” Eserkaln says.
Since then, Eskerkaln and his wife, Peggy, relocated their ComedyCity theater from downtown Green Bay to downtown De Pere and added a straight theater space to their improv comedy house, calling it Venture Theatre.
The facility runs ComedyCity improv side-by-side with a season of plays. “Get Down(sized)!” is on the Venture Theatre season bill. Its six-weekend run opens Friday.
“Now we’re going to do it in a prime theater spot,” Mike Eserkaln says.
Venture Theatre recently took “Get Down(sized)!” to the Indianapolis Theatre Fringe Festival.
“That was awesome,” Eserkaln says. “That was a lot of fun. There were 30 different plays going on over two weekends. We had never done a fringe festival before. I had never been to one before.”
Fringe festivals encourage new productions. The idea is anything goes. “Stomp” is one of the shows that blossomed out of a fringe festival. The most famous festival takes place every year in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The actors in “Get Down-(sized)!” do not speak. They play people in an office. Signs, voice-over and Muzak do the talking.
“People catch on pretty quickly what’s going on, even without words,” Eserkaln says. “You’d be surprised what you can communicate without talking to each other.”
The play caught attention in Indianapolis. Among reviews, Cincinnati CityBeat said, “The corporate culture and office politics have been flayed, belayed and thoroughly lampooned. Mike Eserkaln’s losing struggle to resist the temptation of a glazed donut was a bit of absolutely inspired lunacy.”
By the second weekend in Indianapolis, “Get Down(sized)!” played to sold-out houses, Eserkaln says.
While “Get Down(sized)!” is the first adult-minded, homegrown production in the recently opened facility in the former De Pere Public Library building, it’s a tried play with a little history. And it’s different from 2001 because some of the cast has changed.
“Because there are no lines, a lot of the show has changed just because we have different actors doing different parts,” Eserkaln says. “Everyone brings their own flair to it.”
Along with Eserkaln, the cast is made up of Matt Worzala, Katie Guzak, Justina Cegelski and Peter Blavat.
If you go
* What: “Get Down(sized)!”
* Who: Venture Theatre
* When: 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday through Oct. 22
* Where: Venture Theatre/ComedyCity, 380 Main Ave., De Pere
* Tickets: $12 adults, $10 students; (920) 983-0966
* Note: Rated PG-13 for suggestive situations
