"Make Milwaukee": The Milwaukee Rep | Brian Vaughn and Torrey Hanson

Listen: When I see a stage performance, whether it's music or dance or theater, by the end of the show I usually feel like I have a connection with the performers. It's something like a personal connection. So when it's a theater performance, who am I feeling a connection with? Is it the actor or the character?

In these pieces, we get a little window into the lives of the actors behind the characters, and in this case you may have seen these performers as many different characters throughout the years. A few weeks back, I went down to the wonderful Repertory Theater ( you can hear the tour we did last year here) and chatted with a few of their resident actors. Below is the first of two installments.

First, we meet Resident Actor Brian Vaughn. In this first piece, Brian answers the intentionally vague question "What's it like to be an actor in Milwaukee?" -Live theater -- Brian loves it so much, he's made it his life. But what is it about theater that's captured him?

So Torrey calls Chicago home, but because of his residency with the Milwaukee Rep, but he regularly spends as many as 40 weeks of the year in Milwaukee, living at the Plaza hotel. Torrey on that hotel room he certainly knows and hopefully loves: Torrey first came to Milwaukee in 1981 to enter the theater program at UWM. In this piece, Torrey gives some of his early impressions of Milwaukee: Having been around Milwaukee for quite some time now, Torrey discusses how he's seen the city change: When somebody introduces themselves as "an actor," you might get an idea of what kind of person they are. Torrey talks about what kind of people become actors: Over the course of this campaign, I've had a chance to see a few shows at the Rep and their quality consistently bowls me over. And they're right here in Milwaukee, all the time! Learn more about the Rep here.

P r o d u ced by: Adam Carr

Music by: The xx and Bonobo