ABSTRACT
In the 1980s, local critics declared that theatrical output in Milwaukee, Wisconsin had “reached a level of quality and quantity that favorably compares with any city in the country.” Milwaukee’s “golden age” of live theater partly resulted from the emergence of new companies like Clavis Theatre and Theatre Tesseract that expanded the city’s available theatrical repertoire. In the decades after World War II, ambitious people seeking to break Broadway’s hold on American theater culture began founding professional theater companies across the country. Because it was widely understood that these theaters were valuable community assets capable of boosting a city’s cultural reputation and spurring growth in the business and industrial sectors, the number of regional theaters rose rapidly through the 1960s. Sharon McQueen was working as an actress and producer in New York City when William Finn’s one-act musical March of the Falsettos opened Off-Broadway in April 1981.
