WISCONSIN CLASSIC STAGE ELECTRIFIES HALLOWEEN WITH THE MILWAUKEE PREMIERE OF GERTRUDE STEIN'S DOCTOR FAUSTUS LIGHTS THE LIGHTS

The First Professional staging of Stein’s experimental operetta in Milwaukee

Halloween Weekend & Beyond · October 30 – November 8, 2026
Calvary Presbyterian Church, Sanctuary Hall · 935 W. Wisconsin Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53207

ONE HOUR. AN OPERETTA. AN ART INSTALLATION.

Wisconsin Classic Stage will illuminate Milwaukee's Halloween season with the city's professional premiere of Gertrude Stein's Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, an immersive operetta running October 30 through November 8, 2026, in the Sanctuary Hall of Calvary Presbyterian Church and immerses its audience in 360 degrees of spectral light, live monophonic score, and Stein's incantatory language, transforming a 1938 opera libretto that was never officially scored into a ritual built entirely from scratch.

Composer Lincoln Donner has developed a haunting score threaded with spectral choral textures in close collaboration with Cole Castine who directs, designs and illuminates the production.

The production arrives at the midpoint of Wisconsin Classic Stage's inaugural season, following its impressive runs of Henry V, The Persians and the company's recent acclaimed staging of Ibsen's Ghosts (in a parking lot). WCS is seizing works the modern stage has left behind and re-inventing them back into urgent, embodied life for Wisconsin audiences.

THE STORY

In Stein's fractured, electric text, Faustus has traded his soul for the power of artificial light and lives suspended in a world of endless illumination, attended only by a dog and a boy. A woman, Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel, is born in the forest, bitten by a viper, and comes to him seeking to be healed. Tormented by his own soullessness, Faustus bargains for hell; the Devil names the price as murder, then dangles a further temptation: eternal youth, if Faustus can persuade the woman to follow him into damnation. She refuses, firmly, choosing to reside in the living world.

What emerges is an absurd, tragicomic, and startlingly modern meditation on knowledge, identity, and the hunger to illuminate every last darkness. Written 87 years ago, Stein's Faustus lands today with unnerving precision: in an era racing to build machines that can know more than any human mind, what remains of the soul once knowledge no longer needs us?

FROM ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, COLE CASTINE

“Stein’s Faustus hands you a world and asks what happens when you get inside the material? With our current production of Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights we look to offer audiences an experience they will not get anywhere else. Something real, something immediate and immersive, a living breathing world that the audience can step right into. The detailed stained glass lining the walls of the Sanctuary will be the bounding boxes of five distinct lighting installations spread throughout the church. Light as a primary story teller, as sculpture, as installation and as an inescapable prison of Faust's own creation.”

FROM EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, JOSH POHJA

“In 1938, Gertrude Stein wrote about a man consumed by the hunger for infinite light and infinite knowledge, without ever stopping to ask how that hunger for intelligence might cost his soul,” said Josh Pohja, Executive Producer of Wisconsin Classic Stage. “Ninety years later, we are watching that same appetite play out around us. We are building machines designed to know more, process more, scale more, move faster and faster. What happens to the human being when we build something that can know everything but cannot feel, suffer, wonder, or love? Is there a soul inside a machine? Cole’s production explores that question through text, music, movement, and spectacle.”

CREATIVE TEAM

Playwright: Gertrude Stein
Composer: Lincoln Donner
Direction, Production Design & Illumination: Cole Castine
Movement Director: Josh Pohja
Costume Designer: Katherine Ziemann
Company Manager: Deborah Stencel
Associate Producer: Marvin Hannah Jr.
Executive Producer: Josh Pohja

PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE

Friday, October 30: 8:00 pm
Saturday, October 31: 8:00 pm & 10:00 pm
Sunday, November 1: 8:00 pm
Friday, November 6: 8:00 pm
Saturday, November 7: 8:00 pm & 10:00 pm
Sunday, November 8: 8:00 pm
Running time: Approx. 1 hour, performed without intermission.

ACCESSIBILITY & AGE GUIDANCE

Reserved seating is recommended for patrons who require accessible seating; the standing-room section is not accessible. Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights is recommended for audiences ages 13 and older. Children under 13 will not be admitted. The production features continuous, unbroken "perpetual light" staging throughout its 60-minute run, with no blackout and no intermission. Patrons with accessibility needs are encouraged to contact the box office in advance at 414.375.5127

TICKETS

Tickets on sale now at www.wisconsinclassicstage.com

This immersive event is limited to 25 reserved seats ($25) and 50 standing-room places ($10) are available per performance: a hard cap of 75 people a night that holds across all eight performances, meaning fewer than 600 seats exist for the entire Milwaukee run of Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights.

Phone: 414.375.5127 · Online: wisconsinclassicstage.com