Latest news with #PabloCenter
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Despite a fire at the Pablo Center, the show must go on!
EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (WLAX/WEUX) – No matter what, the show must go on! Monica Frederick, Director of the Pablo Center, reports that a fire broke out while actors and crew were preparing for the final performance of UW-EAU Claire production of Guys and Dolls in the RCU Theatre. An electrified piece of scenery broke and started a minor fire. Frederick says UWEC students and faculty worked to extinguish the fire before it spread and there were no injuries. Then, crew members worked to make things right and were able to get the theater ready. The performance went on as planned. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX2548 & WIProud.
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Pablo Center's 'Odyssey of the Mind' team prepares for upcoming world competition
EAU CLAIRE — Students at the Pablo Center at the Confluence are celebrating a great achievement for their Odyssey of the Mind team, as a recent win for the team qualifies them for the world competition in May. This accomplishment is coupled with the team also celebrating their first year participating through the Pablo Center. As a creative international problem-solving program created for students ranging from kindergarten to the college level, teams work together to solve problems to present and work around spontaneous challenges. Grades are divided up by age ranges and divisions, with the fourth, fifth and sixth grade girls in the Pablo Center's team competing in Division Two. Tammy Schmitz, the team's coach, said problems which teams can select are typically announced around October. For this year's competition, their team competed in the 'classics' category, where they had to create an original chef character inspired by literary characters and events, design a gourmet meal based on classic literature, design a team-built cooking gadget and stage a performance. 'Right now, we are doing a play,' said Moxie B., a member of the team. 'We make our own play based on a piece of literature, and we have to do all of the sets, the costumes and the scripts — literally everything,' said Clara B., a fellow member of the team. Anya L., another member, said along with them coordinating everything, they also cannot have any adults helping during the competition which helps the students to solve solutions on their own. Odyssey of the Mind started back in 1979. While local institutions and organizations have participated in prior years, Schultz wanted to bring back the opportunity for kids to participate. 'The unique thing about the Pablo team is most of the time it is done through a school,' she said. 'With this, we have kids from four different schools and some homeschool kids as well. It has been a really neat thing to watch them come together, learn about each other and learn how to work as a team. 'The school districts have been doing it for a long time, but with COVID a lot of them pulled back from some of that stuff. I have been involved for 23 years and I just couldn't let it go. I approached the Pablo and asked if they would be willing to sponsor a team.' After winning first place at their regional competition in Bangor, Wis., the members of their team are eligible to compete at the Odyssey of the Mind World Finals in Michigan, taking place from May 21 to the 24. 'It was a very exciting thing to happen, but it was definitely not expected,' said Schmitz. 'So, we are moving forward.' With four of their seven members planning to attend, the team is now trying to fundraise approximately $8,000 to get the students there. Community members are able to donate through the Pablo Center's donation page at Additionally, plans to host events for fundraising the group are also in the works, with the discussion of a garage sale on April 12 as one of these future events. Team members are now preparing themselves to compete ahead of the competition, with Clara B. saying, 'We need to make some changes to the scripts. I don't think we need to do too much with the setting, but we do need to fix the table — that broke.' As the team's success is bringing them to the world competition where they will have the opportunity to participate alongside 25,000 other students, many of the parents, coaches and students themselves are excited about the results. 'I feel really proud of my team and I,' said Penelope S., a member of the team. 'I am so proud of them,' said Schmitz. 'I am just amazed with the young child's mind, and how they can get from completely not focused on anything to be able to get this, and just what they can accomplish when given the opportunity. 'There were many things that didn't work out the way they thought they were going to at first, and to watch those light bulbs go on when they were able to solve it and be able to figure out 'We can do this' and 'We can do that,' it is the neatest thing in the world.'
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
UW-Eau Claire theatre department presents 'A Doll's House'
EAU CLAIRE— The UW-Eau Claire theatre department will soon perform their rendition of Henrik Ibsen's classic play 'A Doll's House' at the Pablo Center at the Confluence in Eau Claire. It is the third of four shows the department will put on this academic year to give students high level experience acting in and producing theater productions. Written in the late 19th century Norway, Ibsen's 'A Doll's House' is often considered a seminal work for both realism and feminist theater pieces. The show focuses on a housewife, Nora, as she deals with the fallout from illegally acquiring a loan to procure medical treatment for her husband. She soon realizes she is often perceived as incompetent, even by her husband, and how discontent she is with her lack of agency over her own life. 'Even though [the show] was written in the late 1800s, it still rings pretty true today in the struggles Nora faces in trying to find her own sense of self and trying to find how she can exist in a world that seems to put a different set of rules on her,' the director of the show Arthur Grothe said. The feminist themes of the play, which Ibsen said were unintentional, made for a bit of a scandal at the time. In fact, the play's original ending was so controversial that Ibsen was forced to write an alternate ending for the show's German premiere. Although UW-Eau Claire's production will stick to Ibsen's original ending, there will be some differences from the original play, Grothe said. Most notably this production will be set in the 1950s, rather than in the late 1800s. This will be reflected in the costuming and set design which will have a very mid-century modern feel. Additionally, they are using the 2012 script translated by Simon Stevens, which helps update the language and make it more conversational, because the original translation from Norwegian can come across as stilted, according to Grothe. 'This modern version of the play infuses the language with a lot of energy and excitement so it is not just a museum piece that is supposed to be appreciated purely because it exists, but instead it is a live, vibrant work of theater,' Grothe said. All of the actors in the play are UW-Eau Claire students and — although faculty members help design and oversee some of the production work, such as lighting, set making and costumes — the work itself is done by students. This gives students professional-level experience in a pre-professional environment. Interestingly, this play represents a real coming of full circle for the theatre department since the COVID-19 pandemic. The department had planned to perform 'A Doll's House' back in 2020, and had fully prepared the set, costumes and script before they were forced to shut down. Now after waiting five years, the department has the opportunity to tell this over a century old story which includes relevant, poignant themes to the modern day.
