Virtual production of ‘Gruesome Playground Injuries’ features Fort actor

By Kim McDarison  

Love. Finding it, defining it, embracing it, these are all components of the typical love story, but “Gruesome Playground Injuries,” a play written by Rajiv Joseph, is a love story that’s anything but typical. 

The one-act, eight-scene play runs about 75 minutes long and tells the story of two people who are traveling a bumpy, if not heartbreaking, path together.

Characters in the two-person play are brought to life by Fort Atkinson resident Alyssa Hannam, who plays “Kayleen,” and Appleton-area native Johnathon Krautkramer, who plays “Doug.” 

“This story is about two people over the course of 30 years, when they are between 8 and 38 years old, and how that relationship can change,” said play director and Whitewater Arts Alliance Theatre Outreach Coordinator Matt Denney. 

The play is being produced by the Whitewater Arts Alliance and will be available for viewing online over a 24-hour period between 5 p.m. April 24 and 5 p.m. April 25. 

Denney described the presentation as “like a stream that is constantly available.” Ticket holders can watch the show as many times as they like during the 24-hour period, after which it will no longer be available for viewing. That, he said, is a matter of copyright provisions, as the Whitewater Arts Alliance has purchased the rights to present the play for a limited showing. 

Tickets for the play are available online, and those purchasing tickets are invited to “pay what you can,” Denney said. Proceeds will be used to support the Whitewater Arts Alliance and its programming. Tickets may be purchased at: http://bit.ly/WAAGPI0421. 

A former theater teacher working on a master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Denney said the concept of allowing ticket purchasers to name their own price was developed as part of a community outreach initiative. As a youngster growing up in Las Vegas, he said, he wanted to attend shows, but often could not afford them. 

In his role as community outreach coordinator, he said: “My job is to integrate theater into the community. Theater and community are very intertwined with each other, and my role is to explore that further.

“For me, my overall goal is to make theater as accessible as I can to a wide audience. So I let anyone pay whatever they want. It doesn’t matter to me as long as they can view the art I’ve put forward.” 

While the Whitewater Arts Alliance caters to a broad array of artists, he said, it also has access to what he described as “a beautiful stage,” which, he said, “was not being utilized.” 

The play, which was recently performed without an audience on the Whitewater Arts Alliance stage, was filmed for virtual viewing.

The play was filmed by UW-Whitewater graduate Ashley McDarison, who holds a bachelor’s degree in communication, with an emphasis in electronic media, and a minor in film studies, earned in 2018. Today McDarison, 25, a town of Richmond resident, operates McDarison Productions. 

Exploring ‘experimental theater’

As the artistic director and founder of MD Virtual Ensemble, a Las Vegas-based production company exploring “experimental theater,” Denney said, he has experience with producing virtual performances, and also had some familiarity with this particular play. 

“I love doing weird theater,” Denney said. MD Virtual Ensemble has been producing at least one virtual production monthly since September of last year. 

“We utilize actors from all over North America for our shows. Because it’s done virtually, actors don’t have to be where we are,” he said. 

While actors, as in the case of Hannam and Krautkramer, might not know each other, Denney said, “there’s a shared experience and art form.” 

With the arrival of COVID-19, he said, Zoom and live-streaming have become useful tools. 

“We acknowledge that COVID-19 almost becomes a character … There is a sense of fear when people get close and we play around with that. It’s very different now when people get close,” he added. 

Casting Hannam and Krautkramer

To cast this play, Denney said, he found local talent through Facebook on pages made specifically for local actors looking for work. He chose Hannam and Krautkramer for their roles after auditioning about a dozen candidates, he said, noting that the two immediately were standouts as the right fit for the two roles.  

For Denney, the process started in February. 

“It was a very traditional theater audition. They came prepared with one monologue and then they each did a cold read, which is where I give them a script that they haven’t seen before. They just knocked it out of the park. What I am looking for is: can an actor make a choice? Can they act with no preparation? They could very early on,” Denney said. 

Describing her acting career and role in the play, Hannam said her interest in performing began to take form in middle school when she was encouraged by her friends to join the choir. 

At Fort Atkinson High School, she said, she was a member of the Lexington Street Treble Choir in her sophomore and junior years, and became a member of the South High Street Singers her senior year.

She next attended UW-Green Bay, graduating in December of 2020 with a double major in musical theater and English, and has since been involved with virtual productions, including a summer production of “The Taming of the Shrew,” created by Play-by-Play Theater in Green Bay. 

The show had a cast of about 10 characters and rehearsals were conducted through Zoom, Hannam recalled.

When she saw the audition notice placed by Denney on Facebook, she said, she was drawn to the role of Kayleen. 

“I read the play a couple of years ago,” Hannam said, adding that playing Kayleen was a “dream role.”  

“She is a really complex character. On the surface, she pushes people away, but she is very nuanced and has a soft side to her, and I always wanted a chance to play around with that,” Hannam said.  

She also found some of herself in the character, she said, especially when looking at Kayleen’s defense mechanisms. 

Krautkramer, too, found common ground between himself and his character. 

A graduate of Fox Valley College where he earned an associate’s degree in criminal justice, he said he was impressionable as a youth, often announcing to his mother, after becoming influenced by whatever he had most recently seen on TV, that he wanted to be a fireman or an astronaut. 

He developed an interest in acting during his childhood, he said, but put that on hold, thinking instead to develop a career in something society deemed as more likely and lucrative work. 

At the age of 32, he said, over the last 10 years, he became active in acting again, picking up work with independent projects that were being produced in Milwaukee and Chicago. 

Most of his projects have been in film rather than theater, but, he said, he viewed the Gruesome Playground Injuries production as sort of a hybrid, using both techniques. 

“This play was definitely a hybrid. We used camera angles and did only two takes per scene to keep an authentic theater feel. Working with both concepts was a good transition back into theater for me. It was comfortable,” Krautkramer said. 

Krautkramer said he did not have familiarity with the play or his character until he was invited to audition for the play. 

The father of three children, one night, while he rocked his six-month-old baby to sleep, he said, he read the play, twice, and found himself relating to the role. 

Of his character, Doug, Krautkramer said: “He’s more relatable to me than I would like to admit. He is a daredevil and he likes being the center of attention. He is very unafraid, outspoken and sometimes unfiltered. Sometimes, I could relate to him too much. 

“He was a fun character. Even with (the play’s) melancholy side.” 

Of the play, he said: “It is not your typical love story, so you avoid some of those clichés. The characters are complex and that makes them very real. 

“This is the largest amount of work I’ve put into a project. Typically the projects I’ve worked on have bigger casts than this. When you have a big collaborating team, the weight of the show is spread across many hands. This one relies so heavily on you and the other person. It is more intimate because it’s a small team.”   

‘Art should make you feel something’

“The relationship between these characters is so relatable. Art should make you feel something by the end of the show. They go through so much trauma and so many things,” Denney said. 

Denney said he began working with professional productions on the Las Vegas strip when he was 17. 

He was cast in a production called “Awesome 80s Prom.” 

“It was a production from New York called immersive theater where the audience comes and enjoys a prom from the 80s every single night. It’s interactive theater.”

Denney said he was a senior in high school when he found his love of theater education. He earned a bachelor’s degree in secondary education with emphasis in theater from the University of Nevada-Reno in 2018. 

He described MD Virtual Ensemble as “my little brain child from college,” noting that there were only two other students pursuing his major and the program did not have a directing requirement. 

“As a teacher, you need that step,” Denney said. He and a classmate began the endeavor by producing a two-man show. That “kickstarted” the production company in 2017, he said. 

After graduating, he served for a year as a theater teacher at Damonte Ranch High School, which emphasized a curriculum in performing arts.

Denney worked while in college as a resident assistant, which, he said, helped mold his career path.   

After college, he was looking for an adventure — something different, he said — and that’s when he found his graduate program at UW-Whitewater. 

Today, he works as a residential learning advisor at UW-Whitewater, guiding and advising student leadership in the resident hall and working with the resident hall associate. 

He will graduate in May with a master’s degree in higher education leadership. 

On with the show 

For most involved with the production of Gruesome Playground Injuries, change is in the air. 

The experience drew the cast and their director together, the three said. But like the play itself, this is but a moment in time. 

For Denney, 25, after graduating from UW-Whitewater, he will seek out new adventures, leaving the area in search of work within the field of college administration and student affairs. 

“My ambitions are to help students on a college campus. I don’t want to be a professor right away, but one day I want to be a professor of theater,” he said, adding: “I just really believe I’m here on this Earth to help students and help people become who they want to be.”  

Of Denney, Krautkramer said: “Matt is so compassionate and caring. He is so worth knowing. I hope I work with him again.” 

Of Hannam, Krautkramer said: “Alyssa, too, is just amazing and extremely talented, and she made it so easy to work opposite of her. She was an amazing scene partner.” 

In viewing the play, Krautkramer said, he hopes audiences come to see that life can take people in all kinds of directions. 

“When you first see it, it is fun and lighthearted and it ends on such a heavy note. You see the full spectrum of life in these characters,” he said.  

As for his future, he added, he and his family, wife, Luella, and children, ages 5, 3 and 6 months, are making plans to move to Los Angeles where Krautkramer can pursue his acting goals.  

“I guess I’ve learned from this experience that you only have one shot at this,” he said, adding that his wife has always wanted to live in California.  

Hannam also described her experience with the play. To develop Kayleen as a character, she said, she used a journal, writing diary entries as though she were Kayleen. She is 22, but her character developed in the play to the age of 38. To help her determine what her character might be like at 38, she worked with written personality tests. 

“I also wrote letters to Doug at different ages,” she said. 

While she, Krautkramer and Denney were strangers when they came together to make this play, they have since become friends. 

Looking to the future, she said: “My college roommate and I are planning to move to Chicago in a couple of months. I will be looking at trying to do more acting as a full time career as I can.” 

For audiences, she said: “I don’t want them to feel sad, but I do want them to feel some kind of melancholy for these people who can’t seem to make their relationship work. There is always something getting in the way.”