Original Student Show Explores Inequality

Against the dark landscape of Milwaukee’s East Side, which was illuminated by streetlights and dimly lit apartment windows, an African American nurse, dressed in a red blouse adorned with white flowers and vines, voiced her displeasure about her workplace environment. 

She talked about her white coworkers and their disapproving looks before singing a cover of Sam Cooke’s a Change is Gonna Come, a song synonymous with the civil rights movement and considered one of the most important works of the 20th century.    

“We got to pick what narrative we wanted to tell, and I feel like it was my duty, as a person of color, to be able to say that,” said Ellie Mungo, a UWM sophomore who portrayed the character. “My nurse was never really given a name; I chose to not give my character a name because I felt like there are so many women of color back then who had to deal with so much that I can’t put a name on one person.”  

Songs of Work and Protest is a UWM theatrical production that explores race, gender, classism and inequality. The goal of the show was to tell stories for those who cannot. Students wrote and performed their own monologues and picked songs that reflected the ethos of the show.  The director, Sheri Williams Pannell, asked the students to research historical events and find personal connections that drew them to those events.   

Mason Jon Shefchik, a UWM sophomore, used the direction to create a factory worker down on his luck. His parents were also factory workers who worked long hours, resulting in less time spent with Shefchik and his sister. 

“During my research, I found that this happened at a very large scale because people would be working and working these insane amount of hours for not a lot of pay, and that drew them away from their family,” said Shefchik. “So, I dug into that: What character can I create? What was the staple character that can represent that theme? “

Like all current Peck theatre productions and other UWM-related ventures, the show adhered to COVID-19 safety regulations. The production held their rehearsals over the first two weeks on Zoom as actors performed monologues in small squares on a screen and performed group numbers with muted microphones. It was not until the last few weeks when rehearsals began in-person, and even then, performers had to use specialized singer masks that strongly resembled duckbills.

“After a year of wearing them, I’ve definitely gotten used to them, but I can say with certainty that I’m looking forward to being able to perform without a mask. Singing with a mask is challenging, but not impossible,” said Jacqueline Ann Siedenburg-Sis, a UWM sophomore who portrayed a suffragist, exploring one of the catalysts to the labor rights and women’s suffrage movements. 

One of the other concessions that the production made was the move to online performances. Songs of Work and Protest was pre-recorded in one day and is currently being live streamed to audiences on a theater streaming platform. “It was definitely nice to not have to do a show every night, as messed up as that is to say (laughs) because that is really fun to do,” said Mungo.

While the pre-recorded show enabled the actors to perform multiple takes, they still felt the lack of audience members. For a medium that leans on the energy of live audiences, that missing link did have a negative effect. “I think I won’t miss it because, you know, performing, you do get that high off of being with an audience and knowing that they understand what you are putting out,” said Mungo. “So, to be able to have that interaction with an audience is not like anything ever, so if I have to do stuff over and over every night at least, I can actually see people and get that interaction back.”