Dale Gutzman: Kiss, kiss, bang, bang

Dale Gutzman has been spelunking the caverns of Milwaukee’s subconscious for years. Off The Wall Theatre—which sits defiantly one block away from the massive Marcus Center For The Performing Arts—has attracted a devoted band of unpaid actors and an audience with a taste for the artistic director’s stylish gazes into the void. Whether scandalizing staid Milwaukeeans with violence, homoeroticism, and full-frontal nudity, or entertaining them with schlocky musical revues, Gutzman’s low-budget, high-concept shows often display brilliant use of space, movement, and musicality. Decider visited the Off The Wall during rehearsals for its latest production, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (which opens Thursday and runs through Aug. 8) to talk to Gutzman about the show and his career.

Decider: Sweeney Todd seems like an ideal show for you—it’s got blood, corruption, lust, and regret. What keeps you coming back to these themes?

Dale Gutzman: It’s very funny that I’ve developed a reputation in this city of being controversial and corrupt in some way. The bottom line is that any subjects I attack, any kind of experimental stuff that I do, any kind of sexual things I’ve done, are nothing compared to a lot of theater in a lot of cities. So what is it that makes people think that I love shows with blood and this and that? One part is that I’ve always been fascinated by is the connection of eroticism to most of the major ideas and goals and things that we do in our lives. The same with violence, in a sense—I’m interested in the nature of violence in the things we think and the way that we act.

The second part of that is that I’m very interested, and always have been, in pushing buttons, to force people to take off the masks that we all wear. And a lot of people in Milwaukee—and in a lot of theater—don’t want to deal with that. They don’t want to face the truth that maybe life is useless and that we select religion or politics or teaching history or getting drunk every night or whatever it is that we choose, that we objectify the meaninglessness and then in order to survive, we take this object that we have chosen and put it outside of ourselves and pretend it’s the truth outside of ourselves.

D: You’ve staged a same-sex production of Dracula, adapted a classic Japanese love tragedy and made one of the lovers a male prostitute, and written Sherlock Holmes And The Purple Prince. Do you intentionally try to appeal to a gay audience?

DG: Probably because of my being gay, people think that a lot of my plays are gay. But if you look at the posters on the walls of my theater you have about 80 percent that are not. So is 20 percent an outrageous number considering the amount of gays and gay subject matter that’s in the news and stuff lately? For a while I did a series of gay plays, trying to get a gay audience, but when I found out they were more interested in going out to the bars and watching drag shows than coming to real theater, I stopped trying. Now I choose a show because it’s a good show. I think that the themes of a play will relate to you whether you’re gay or straight. Romeo And Juliet can appeal to every human being who’s ever fallen in love or felt lust.

D: Even if you have disturbing elements in your shows, there’s a sweetness and genuine feeling to them as well. Are you giving the darkness a twist?

DG: I’ve always felt it important for us to look—it’s almost Buddhist—at something truthfully rather than trying to sugarcoat it. But when you look at things truthfully, including the darkness, that can create in you a sense of compassion and love for the struggle that humanity goes through just to try to survive, and the process of life.

D: Any advice to people starting out in theater in Milwaukee?

DG: Don’t expect to make a cent for 12 years. Find people who love art like you love it. Who will suffer the struggles with you for the fun of it, for the love of it. Because then, even if you don’t get the monetary success or the audience, you still have the love.