The Kitchen Theatre Company’s Wi-Fi password, “intimate46,” is an apropos easter egg for the nonprofit’s approach to providing this community with professional theater, especially with its world premiere of the play “Milkweed.” 

“Milkweed” is an introspective exploration of the commonalities between physics and theater, both as educational disciplines and bases for existential thought about mortality, purpose and human legacy. Evaluating the “charged space between students and teachers,” the plot follows two parallel dynamics: a renowned physicist receiving acting lessons from his graduate acting student, who is taking his class as an elective, and a theater professor mentoring a physics student with a growing passion for acting. As the boundaries between intellectual and personal connection blur, both pairs grapple with the ethics of their attractions alongside a longing to be known and remembered. Although boundaries are not completely broken, they are definitely tested. Emily Jackson, director of “Milkweed” and producing artistic director at the Kitchen, said during the talkback Feb. 25 that this play “asks you to wonder at the universe.” 

Aside from its daring exploration of academia, “Milkweed” also breaks new ground with its lighting and sound design. Because the plot delves into scientific theory in great detail, the Kitchen focused on clarifying visual elements, including four new projectors and new speakers. These efforts pay off as spectacular projected images, which range from the starry night sky to a whiteboard, corresponding with dialogue and choreography. This visual interplay extends the bounds of the stage and story into the expansiveness of the universe, and the audience’s imagination. 

Performances for “Milkweed” began with previews and talkbacks Feb. 25-26 and opening night Feb. 27, with additional performances running March 1-15. Student tickets are $20, with additional discount categories available. 

Wendy Dann ’93, a professor of directing in the School of Music, Theatre and Dance, is the playwright of “Milkweed.” She came from a family of college professors and has taught at the college for 16 years. During her time as a student on South Hill, she was an intern with the Kitchen. 

The Kitchen was founded in 1991 by two Ithaca College alumni, Matt Tauber ’94 and Tim O’Brien ’92. 

Dann went on to work in theaters across the country, received the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Playwriting and Screenwriting and was invited to join The Writers Lab, a screenwriting program sponsored by Meryl Streep, geared toward voices of women and non-binary writers. Still, Dann found her way back to Ithaca and the Kitchen, where she said she feels like she grew up as an artist. 

“A lot of theaters like this and other cities are attached officially to a university where they’re on the payroll,” Dann said. “That’s not true here. You get college kids who are interning, but the Kitchen is floating on its own budget. They are doing the hard work of raising all the money. Coming here feels like all hands on deck, in a way that you feel like this is the really hard work.”

In the Kitchen’s lobby, an LED sign reads: “Important conversations happen in the Kitchen.” 

Dann said the Kitchen is attached to its mission of having important conversations directly and intimately with community members, asking the harder questions other plays may not pose. 

The idea for “Milkweed” came to Dann after a friend who, like her, is very interested in nature told Dann about the monarch butterfly migration. The lifespan of a monarch butterfly does not allow a single generation to complete the entire milkweed pollination journey. Dann and her friend questioned how the younger generations know where they are going. 

“All of a sudden, the play clicked in my brain,” Dann said. “I looked at that question, and I was like, that’s what I’ve been thinking about as a teacher.” 

Through The Professor and The Physicist (played by David McElwee), Dann demonstrates the phenomenon of time that those working in academia are subject to: as teachers get older each year, their students never age as they are given a new class. Instructors are left to accept their warped reality while being responsible for instilling as much knowledge as possible into their students.

“Milkweed” articulates educational environments as innately intimate. In the titular scene, the Physicist even references Plato’s philosophy of Eros: “Education is an erotic creation: a dialectic motion between ‘becoming’ and ‘being’.” Just like the monarchs have a responsibility to their successors, professors determine what gets passed on to the eager next generations. 

Although Jackson does not have a formal background in academia, she works closely with eager college students and assumes an educator role in her directing and creative leadership. She pointed to a description The Professor uses to narrate this eagerness: hunger. 

“[College students] want to lean in and they want to suck up all the knowledge in your brain,” Jackson said. “There’s a huge responsibility to that, and I think in a field like science and theater, where there are creative juices that are so much more personal [and] are founded on asking that question that you might not know the answer to.” 

At the Kitchen, there is no such thing as too many cooks, and the theater would not be able to fulfill its mission of exploring the unknown without its academic neighbor on South Hill. Dann said the connection between the college and the theater is visible on stage, especially with “Milkweed.” 

The list of Ithaca College creatives involved in “Milkweed” speaks for itself. Bella Woody ’25 plays The Grad Student. Erica Steinhagen ’99 plays The Professor opposite junior Jeremiah Jobe, who plays The Undergrad. On the creative team, there is David Arsenault ’10, who is the scenic designer, and Tyler Perry ’12, the lighting and projection designer. Once upon a time, in Dann’s classes, Arsenault and Perry were real undergrads. Rachel Lampert, the former artistic director of 20 years, hired Arsenault directly out of college. 

Ariana Cardoza ’22, the sound designer for “Milkweed,” is someone whom Dann said she wished she would have had in her class. 

Dann said the Kitchen breeds a real tradition of mentorship. When she looks at Gwenyth Cole ’24, the arts administration associate and the assistant director of “Milkweed,” she said she sees herself 25 years ago. 

Dann consulted Kelley Sullivan, an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, to extend the scientific quality of “Milkweed” beyond what Dann described as her “pop science book reader” basis of understanding. Priscilla Hummel, assistant professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance Performance, is the Intimacy Director for the show.

Jackson said the cross-pollination between the Kitchen and the college allows students to enter the industry in a beautiful way. 

“You can’t replicate making professional theater and academic theater, it’s not the same,” Jackson said. “So there’s amazing training that happens up on the hill, and then those students have to get out into the real world and figure out what technique and work has worked for them up in their academic setting and apply it to a professional setting.” 

As Dann and Jackson already look ahead to where “Milkweed” could grow, Jackson said they are pitching the play to similar academia-oriented cities like Cambridge, Massachusetts; Princeton, New Jersey; and Berkeley, California.

Ben Domenick-Urbansky, a junior theatre studies major, came to the world premiere Feb. 25 to support Dann, who is one of his professors. 

Domenick-Urbansky, who also came to support Jobe, said it was really strange seeing the other side of things in this regard. 

“It feels like, not to be ironic, a flip of the script,” Domenick-Urbansky said. “I’m getting this point of view, like, ‘Whoa, my professor is human.’” 

Because of “Milkweed”’s self-referential nature to the Ithaca academic community, the play presents students and faculty audience members with an interesting question: how does it feel to run into your professor at the grocery store? This question is explored both situationally on stage and, possibly, by virtue of the chances that a student will be seated near their professor during a performance.

Jackson, who was introduced to the community as a post-grad intern from Texas, partly attributes the start of her career to the peer group of college kids that she learned with. Jackson said Ithaca’s local theater community is built in a unique way, with people from both Ithaca and New York City, or other places around the country, coming together to make work that is meaningful and creatively fulfilling. 

“We think it is so much of a dialogue between artists and audience, not only because you’re so close to people, but because we’re literally in the middle of downtown, and we want to make work that is stimulating and exciting to this audience,” Jackson said. “‘Milkweed,’ of course, is so for an Ithaca audience.”  

The Kitchen is determined to nurture this bold relationship between audience and performance. There are numerous upcoming events that allow people to get a closer look at the inner–workings of this story and its inspirations. On March 1, Anurag Agrawal, a professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University, spoke with Dann on his expertise in the monarch’s treacherous milkweed journey. This session will be held again March 7, along with other types of conversations March 6-12. All are free and open to the public, even to those who may not be able to attend a performance. 

The closeness of the cast and crew is important, but another kind of closeness also cultivates the Kitchen’s intimate nature: close proximity in the theater itself. The Kitchen has one 99-seat performance space.

Jackson said she discovered that her favorite kind of theater is where audiences feel like the show is in their laps. At the Kitchen, she said — as she sipped a hot cup of black tea that she brewed at the theater lobby bar — that it feels like going to a cafe, having a warm cup of coffee and having a conversation with a best friend. 

“You can’t hide anything in there, which is also so hard for the actors,” Jackson said. “It’s hard for the creative team. You can’t fake it, and you have to make it magical and theatrical.”