Bringing Them Out of the Shadows
Jenni Reinke’05 leaped, whirled, 在靠近春绿的弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特(Frank Lloyd Wright)的塔里埃森(Taliesin)的希尔赛德剧院(Hillside Theater)的舞台上扭动身体, Wis., morphing from character to character in the premiere of Mrs. Wrights, her one-woman show. 这部舞台剧讲述了这位传奇建筑师一生中最重要的女人:他的母亲, three wives, and a mistress, with a focus on Olgivanna, his business partner for 30 years and the widow who carried on his legacy.
“Growing up in Wisconsin, I’d heard much about Frank Lloyd Wright and his buildings, but nothing of the women who influenced his work and were influential in their own right,” Reinke explains. “Out of this void, Mrs. Wrights was born. 我用我的身体让那些历史被男性天才之塔所掩盖的女性展现出来.’”
After the 2018 premiere, 塔利耶森建筑学院的一名毕业生告诉赖因克:“这很聪明，也很勇敢. No one talks about these stories here. It’s like we’re living with ghosts.”
Reinke的演出由密尔沃基的quimondo体育剧院制作，并在全国巡回演出, attracting critical acclaim before the pandemic forced it to pause.
Exploring new forms
Credit: Dominic PanicoReinke is a dancer, choreographer, actress, writer, violinist, arts educator, and nonprofit professional—although not necessarily in that order. She embraces that fluidity.
“My work is very interdisciplinary,” says Reinke, who is also the company manager for Milwaukee-based Wild Space Dance Company. “I don’t want to limit myself in terms of my ability to research and articulate stories, problems, or ideas. I’ve always been more of a generalist than a specialist. It’s the way my brain works. I can find connections between disparate things.”
She honed those connections at Beloit College. A violinist since age 8, Reinke set out to major in music. But after starting her studies at another college, she craved more intellectual rigor. She found it at Beloit. 对文科的关注充实了她的思想，她在研读哲学课程的同时继续攻读音乐专业, religious studies, and more.
“I was very curious and intellectually driven. 我花了很多时间阅读和写论文，坐在图书馆的桌子前和课堂上,” says Reinke, who minored in philosophy. “But I felt like something was missing.”
She decided she needed to get out of her head for a while. On a whim, she enrolled in a dance class, despite having no previous dance experience, and she was hooked. She’ll never forget her choreography class with Chris Johnson, professor and chair of Beloit’s dance department. 她说:“这是我大学生涯中最具挑战性、最开阔眼界的课程之一。. “它优先考虑来自身体的知识……我真的很重视扎根于我的身体和身体的智慧。.” Reinke would later tap into that knowledge to bring the characters of Mrs. Wrights to life.
Finding her way back to the stage
Dance initially remained a side passion. After graduating from Beloit, 作为伯洛伊特与岭南大学合作的一部分，赖因克搬到香港教了10个月的英语. After returning home to Milwaukee, she eventually became the first full-time, year-round market manager for the Fondy Farmers Market, which serves a large, diverse population on Milwaukee’s north side. 当她在2012年被解雇时，她抓住了探索新事物的机会.
One day after class at a local dance studio, she spotted a poster announcing the formation of Quasimondo Physical Theatre. Intrigued, 她很快成为quimondo的创始成员之一，并一直担任董事会主席. Quasimondo creates original works through physical theatre, which it defines as “a performance language created by the breadth of our bodies, minds, experience, and imagination that communicates through the senses.”
“It’s still related to the theater tradition,” she explains, “but we’ve pulled in dance and world theater traditions, so it’s very eclectic. We experiment with forms and try to make work that is timely and topical.”
The performances can border on the surreal. A few years ago, the ensemble performed Buboes, a play about the bubonic plague, 在密尔沃基市中心购物中心的前Linens ' N Things店面，圣诞主题音乐作为背景音乐播放.
她指出:“我们过去的一些工作在很大程度上反映了我们现在的情况，这是非常了不起的。. “Buboes bears the most direct resemblance. Performed in the style of bouffon这是一种怪诞的小丑形式，该剧以黑死病为背景，剖析了传染病和社会混乱.”
Developing Mrs. Wrights
Mrs. Wrights 源于赖因克在威斯康辛大学密尔沃基分校派克艺术学院的论文项目, where she earned her Master of Fine Arts with a focus on contemporary dance choreography.
While brainstorming thesis ideas, 她回忆起自己在当地一家香料店兼职的岁月——这是威廉·彭泽的“退休商店”, Sr., and Ruth Penzey, progenitors of the Penzeys Spices chain founded by their son. Reinke describes the late William Penzey as “an artist disguised as a spice merchant.”
He was also a Frank Lloyd Wright fan. The store’s price tags were printed in Eaglefeather, a Wright font, and architecture was a favorite topic as the staff hand-mixed spice blends. “你知道，弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特对他的女人不太好，”一位顾客一天说. That planted a seed that would sprout in Reinke’s mind years later.
The project kicked off in earnest in 2017, when Reinke developed a dance piece about Wright’s first wife, Kitty, as part of a choreography class. Then she sketched out possibilities for other characters. 她花了一年的时间筛选历史文献，把事情拼凑起来.
Reinke is passionate about the potential of dance as an ethnographic tool. “When I couldn’t find information about the women, I went into the studio and used my physical imagination and my kinesthetic empathy,” she explains. “What would it be like to experience this extreme lust for someone physically? Miriam [Wright’s second wife] was a morphine addict, so I researched those symptoms and tried to filter them through my body. At some point I started writing a script, but it was late in the process.”
In 2019, 该剧在密尔沃基的查尔斯·艾利斯艺术博物馆(Charles Allis Art Museum)进行了为期三周的演出，座无人席，并在全国各地巡回演出. In addition to the Taliesin premiere, 赖因克还在赖特的另外两座建筑里演出过:拉辛的庄臣金朗德尔剧院和弗雷德里克C. Bogk House in Milwaukee.
Although Covid has shuttered the performing arts world, Reinke is planning to present the show to new audiences nationwide. She feels an obligation to bring the women’s voices out of the shadows.
“I will continue to tour Mrs. Wrights to new audiences, but I am patiently navigating Covid restrictions,” she says. While she waits to return to in-person shows, Reinke is booking virtual performances. “我期待着拥抱这场秀的演变，因为我将它设置在一个更年长但更聪明的身体的新空间里. After all, 我相信正是这种对当下做出反应的能力使现场表演真正鲜活起来.”
Nicole Sweeney Etter is a Milwaukee-based writer and editor.
An artist living through the time of Covid
On March 14, 2020, 表演艺术家Jenni Reinke ' 05在密尔沃基与Wild Space Dance Company结束了一场重要的演出. “We knew that a safer-at-home order was on the horizon, 感觉就像我们刚刚在这个城市举行了最后一场现场演出，而且时间还不确定,” she says.
And so it was. Soon, performing arts companies worldwide canceled performance after performance. Among the cancellations were other shows Reinke was part of, 舞蹈工作室关闭后，她失去了在Danceworks担任舞蹈和社区外展教师的稳定收入. A couple of her other gigs were able to transition to remote work, and she was hired as company manager for Wild Space a few months later.
“我最希望的是，新冠病毒提供了机会，可以进行根本性的社会变革，使艺术家和其他低薪工人受益,” she says. “Although highly respected, artists are not valued in a monetary sense in America. People love art, but they don’t want to pay for it—at least not a living wage. … I cannot speak for all artists, but many are like me, 通过在教育领域做各种兼职工作挣来的收入来养活自己, nonprofits, and the service industry.”
While Covid has reduced Reinke’s income, she believes her artistic training has fortified her resilience.
“我作为一名艺术家的经历支持我在当前的环境中应对人类的挑战,” she says. “不确定性是艺术家和非艺术家都面临的生存挑战, loneliness, grief, fear, anxiety, expectations, and self-judgment. 我感到幸运的是，我的艺术训练和社区帮助我处理这一刻.”
During the first quiet months at home, she reflected on how the arts might change in the pandemic’s aftermath. Reinke认为，像她自己的Quasimondo物理剧院这样的小型艺术组织将处于最佳位置，因为他们已经习惯了在有限的预算下运作.
“我很高兴与过去决裂，支持独立和实验艺术家的工作,” she says. “I believe that lean, agile, 创新的小公司和独立艺术家将因他们的足智多谋和应对能力而获得奖励.”
By May of last year, Reinke was working with Quasimondo to unveil QuasimondoTV, 通过观看派对和国际知名合奏作品的现场表演来吸引观众.
In June, 她又开始为Wild Space在密尔沃基的三个停车场举行的一系列远离社会的现场表演排练.
Reinke is continuing to work with both companies to produce work safely.
“2019冠状病毒病为艺术组织提供了机会，让他们重新思考自己履行使命和吸引观众的方式,” she adds. “For an emerging company like Quasimondo, 对我们来说，这是一个发展和展示我们一直在做的事情的机会——呈现与当代问题有关的原创作品.”
See a trailer of Mrs. Wrights and learn more on Jenni Reinke’s artist website.
