The Milwaukee Rep has established a reputation for presenting outstanding original theatrical shows. Next week, the rock musical Run Bambi Run has its world premiere. WTMJ’s Libby Collins sat down with The Rep’s Artistic Director Mark Clements to discuss his history with Milwaukee Rep and the reason they chose to tell the story of Bambi Bembenick. Listen in the player above.
A partial transcript is provided below, courtesy of eCourt Reporters.
LIBBY COLLINS: I don’t think there’s anybody who’s lived in Wisconsin for any amount of time who is not familiar with the story of Bambi Bambenek, but when did it get on your radar, and why did you say, “This could be something”?
MARK CLEMENTS: We were doing Lombardi by Eric Simonson, and it was just after the Packers won the Super Bowl, and at the time, we had people like Paul Hornung and Bart Starr around the joint and kind of being involved in Vince’s daughter. And so, it was just really interesting to be part of that.
And watching Eric Simonson who had a history with the Rep prior to me being here in Joe Hanreddy’s tenure, and I was like, “What’s on your radar? You know, it would be good to do something new.” Because he was a writer as well as a director, and I was interested in another story.
And he said, “Well, there is this story about this person, Lawrencia Bembenek.”
And I went, “Run Bambi Run.”
And he was like, “How do you know that?”
And I was like, “I don’t know, actually.”
But I do remember the basic part of the story, that this woman was accused of killing the wife of her cop husband who was the ex, Christine Schultz who was murdered tragically in front of her children.
And there was stuff going on like how she was invited onto Dr. Phil and then ended up jumping off the balcony and having her leg amputated. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
