Tonight at 6 p.m. and tomorrow at 1 p.m., Open Spaces Theatre Company presents its final two performances of Shakespeare’s comedy The Taming of the Shrew, in Stoughton’s Veteran’s Park. Last year’s Othello was set in Newport, Rhode Island in the 1950s, and this production is set on a golf course and country club in the 1960s. It’s a decent match for a society with aristocratic and servant classes and the group’s done some fun things with the setting, including making use of a golf cart.

As an avid mustard connoisseur it is often surprising to me just how few people I meet in Madison who know that Mount Horeb, just 20 minutes to the west of downtown, is home to the nation's only Mustard Museum. It was one of the first things I learned when I moved to the city more than four years ago and has become a common side trip whenever a friend comes to visit. The museum showcases more than 500 mustard jars from all 50 states and more than 60 countries. It is the quintessential roadside America attraction.

Every year the Mustard Museum opens its doors and spills out onto Mount Horeb's Trollway for an annual National Mustard Day Festival.

The Epic campus in Verona got a whole lot artsier last night with a production of The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon performed by the company’s own theatre group. Remaining performances are Saturday and 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. on the second floor of Epic’s training center, and are free and open to the public.

The script is a family-friendly, Reduced Shakespeare Company-style romp through Grimms’ fairy tales and the performance was a lot of fun, featuring sly humor, broad humor, meta-theatrical humor, physical humor, and anachronistic humor (even including a scene featuring one of South Park’s fictional species). The play demands and gets energetic performances from the actors, and the activities are distributed so that everyone in the eight-person cast gets something interesting to do.

Madison has a pair of significant theater premiers this weekend, with Blitz VIII and Carousel. Meanwhile, in Stoughton’s Veteran’s Park, Open Spaces Theatre Company had the opening night of its production of Othello on Wednesday, three days after a demolition derby in nearby Mandt Park. This is the sixth year the company has produced an outdoor Shakespeare play in Stoughton. Remaining performances are Saturday and Sunday at 6:30, plus a 1 p.m. show on Sunday. Tickets are $5 and the performance is about three hours, with minimal cuts to the script as far as I can tell. It’s bring your own seating but you can bring food as well.

Photos of Thursday evening’s performance are below. The setting is Newport, Rhode Island in the 1950s, and this plus the outdoor staging made it possible to introduce what may be the first pink bicycle ridden onstage in a production of Othello since Shakespeare’s time.

On a brisk and rainy Saturday morning, a group of Madison and Cambridge residents — including a pair of EMTs — were on the latter town’s Main Street to record the opening scene of Morte di Amore, a short supernatural romantic comedy written and directed by Cambridge resident Rick Stemm. The extras ranged in age from teen to senior. Cambridge’s Serendipity restaurant will also be a featured location in the movie. Pictures of Saturday’s shoot follow.

Saying the company has left no option, workers represented by the United Steelworkers of America initiated a strike starting at 1 p.m. (EDT). In a press release the USW says the strike will "impact 15,000 USW members and operations at 16 plants in the United States and Canada." That includes the plant in Sun Priarie, Wis. which has roughly 250 employees. The press release follows (update: Goodyear's press release follows the union's release):

Come all who crave corn, to Cornfest! Tonight, Thursday August 17 through Sunday, August 20, 2006 to the Sweet Corn Festival. Located at Angell Park, near the intersections of Highway 19 and Highway N. The ost is a single dollar at the gate to enjoy great entertainment and purchase delicious corn! Children age 6 and under are free and if you park on the grounds admission is included in the price. Steamed sweetcorn is available on Saturday and Sunday from 12 noon until 7 p.m. and bags of fresh raw corn are also available for purchase! For more information visit the Sun Prairie website. Don't miss out on the chance to bring some great Wisconsin corn home to your kitchen. Also, check back here after the weekend for a full report and delicious recipes!

Verona Area Community Theater (VACT) acquits itself well in its staging of a challenging production, one that few other community groups have put on: Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Director Ryan Klug, costume designers Missy Holcomb & Mary Quade and the twenty-three costume assistants, set construction manager Dick Vock, and the other members of the large production team take on eighty cast and chorus members, extensive costuming, movable castle walls and a twenty-five piece orchestra and create a respectable performance. The story, scenes, songs, characters and human costumes from the movie are also in the stage version, and the book is padded with some extra songs. The “Be Our Guest” showstopper is there, featuring about forty “enchanted objects,” and so is an entertaining climactic battle scene.

The primary characters are played by skilled vocalists and actors, and Belle Liz Holtan had a lot of young fans requesting autographs at the conclusion of the Sunday performance. The show’s final performances are Thursday through Saturday, 7:30 p.m. at the Verona Area High School Performing Arts Center. (Directions and ticket info available here)

Wow, what a disturbingly sad turnout. This is what democracy looks like?

Madison School Board Seat 1
Arlene Silveira 3,155
Maya Cole 2,303
Michael Kelly 984

Dane County Supervisor District 5
Ashok Kumar 307
Daivd Lapidus 155
Adam Korn 69
Sean Cornelius 27

Dane County Supervisor District 24
Dale Suslick 574
Robin Schmidt 335
Mary Hoehn 27

Dane County Supervisor District 30
Patrick Downing 637
Bob Ruth 574
Mike Badger 178

It's official, the rivalry between Sun Prairie's very own Jimmy the Prognosticator and Punxsutawney Phil has erupted. Thursday morning, Jimmy ushered in the prospect of an early spring by not seeing his shadow at the Sun Prairie Groundhog Day Prognostication at Cannery Square Plaza, in the heart of Sun Prairie. The event was well attended, with one "human groundhog" coming all the way from West Allis just for the celebration. This was a direct smack in the face of Phil's prediction of 6 more weeks of cold.

This feud is nothing new. Sun Prairie has been fighting to get their proper recognition as the groundhog captial of the world, even claiming congressional recognition as such(albeit the photo is next to impossible to read). NOT FOUND: 3 This rivalry doesn't seem like it will end any time soon. groundhogs.com puts this year's celebration at 120, while Sun Prairie's tops that by at least one. with a diary entry by Colonal William H. Angell on February 2nd, 1886:

Since the inception of Dane101 we have always intended to include the rest of Dane County. We first wanted to spend a year building a base by focusing on Madison, where the majority of our writers currently reside. Now that we approach our one-year birthday, we are ready to take that plunge into the communities surrounding Madison. If you live or work in one of these areas, have a desire to write, and think you have a finger on the pulse, please feel free to drop us a line at: editor - at - dane101 -dot- com. We are especially interested in identifying one or two individuals who wish to write about Verona as soon as possible. The communities section of Dane101 is just one of many new exciting features we will be launching in the coming weeks as we ramp up for our birthday. Stay tuned...