By Lindsey Redenbaugh
For the CVPost
With the move of the University of Wisconsin-Stout’s annual spring musical off campus to Menomonie’s Mabel Tainter Center for the Arts, the show figures to have a different feel about it.
Typically, the university’s theater productions are staged on campus in the theater in Harvey Hall. But as that 99-year-old building is undergoing major renovations, a new home was needed for this spring’s production of “A Year With Frog and Toad,” a musical based on the children’s book series “The Adventures of Frog and Toad” by Arnold Lobel.
The Mable Tainter Center for the Arts is a well-lit theater with opulent design. Its walls are gold with detailed architecture. As such, it’s an ideal place for staging a show about the misadventures of “Frog and Toad” and their woodland animal friends, including mice, birds, turtles and more.
“When you’re picking a show, you have to think of the environment you’re in,” says Britta Sicora a UW-Stout junior from St. Louis Park, MN, who will play a bird and a tree in the musical.
Light, fun shows seem to fit the personality of the Mable Tainter, Sicora says, describing the theater as having a fairy-type feeling and looking like a jewelry box.
The Harvey Hall Theater is a more intense environment, which fits well with more adult, darker-themed shows, such as recent campus productions of “Spring Awakening” and “Chicago.”
While renovations of the theater are complete, it remains unavailable as work continues on others aspects of the $28 million Harvey Hall renovation project.
Sicora is excited about the change of pace provided by the chance to perform at the Mabel Tainter and by the tone of “A Year With Frog and Toad.” After being involved in darker, more intense shows at UW-Stout, “to be in a show that’s bright and happy, I haven’t been able to be in a show like that in a long time,” she says.
Sicora and fellow UW-Stout junior Maggie Creel, of Oakdale, MN, already have significant theater experience.
Sicora has been performing in operettas since the fifth grade. And Creel, who will play Mrs. Mouse and a squirrel in “A Year With Frog and Toad,” will be making her fifth appearance in a UW-Stout production.
The actresses say they’re especially looking forward to this show.
“It’s really heartwarming and family oriented,” Creel says. “There are a lot of laughs and stupid puns. It’s a very lighthearted show.”
Creel and Sicora admit that “A Year With Frog and Toad” is a children’s show, but say that the play has something for everyone.
“It’s hilarious. I haven’t really done much comedy stuff, but out of all kinds of humor, children’s humor is my favorite,” Sicora says. “It’s not just for kids. It’s for everyone.”
“We like it because there’s a lot of stupid humor,” Creel adds. “It’s really fun, and we get to be like children because we’re singing songs about cookies and making fun of toad in his bathing suit. It’s a change in pace from the heavy dense plot shows we’ve been doing.”
Paul Calenberg, a professor of theater at UW-Stout, will direct “A Year With Frog and Toad.”
The show will run on April 10-11 and April 16-18 at the Mable Tainter Center for the Arts.
Lindsey Redenbaugh is a senior in the Professional Communications and Emerging Media program at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. She has a concentration in applied journalism.