💛 Congratulations, UWM PSOA graduates! 💛
This weekend marks the beginning of new chapters for an INCREDIBLE group of artists and creative entrepreneurs. You are all making the world a better place, and the Peck School of the Arts is #pantherproud of each and every one of you.
#uwmgrad @uwmilwaukee
It’s Senior Screenings time! 🎬
From inspiration and casting calls to yearlong production collaborations with classmates, seniors are bringing their thesis films to the big screen during 2026 Senior Screenings.
We talked with three student filmmakers to see how they turned their ideas into completed productions ahead of this year’s showcase at the Union Cinema.
Read the full story at News & Stories link in bio.
Senior Screenings run May 14-16 at the Union Cinema.
Featured:
1-4 | Mel Ulate, “Flawless”
5-7 | Mayrin Santos-Aguilar, “Thumbs Up”
8-10 | Cameron Wise, ““The End of the Bug Guy Cinematic Universe”
✏️ Story by Payton Murphy ’27 (BFA Film)
📸 Stills and BTS photos courtesy of the filmmakers
@uwmfilm@uwmilwaukee@uwmunioncinema
DVC capstone work is 🔥
“Unbound,” the Design & Visual Communication BFA Capstone Exhibition, is on view through May 16 at Kenilworth Square East 3rd Floor Gallery.
Plus, catch the Art & Design BA/BFA Exhibition on the first floor while you’re there.
uwm.edu/arts/events (link in bio!)
POSSIBLY IN MILWAUKEE: UWM Graduate Films
Wednesday, May 13th at 8pm
The Oriental Theatre (2230 N Farwell Ave)
Free and open to the public
Please join us is celebrating recent films from the Cinematic Arts MFA Program. This program represents the culmination of years of rigorous creative exploration, critical discourse, and the careful cultivation of aesthetic practice. What emerges from this collective effort is nothing short of extraordinary.
The artists presenting works this year are Aidan Collins, Matt Feldman, Katte Lubega, Gabi Rudin, Harper Stone, and Will VanKoughnett.
(Stills presented in order by artist!)
Inside the New Dramaworks Short Play Festival 👀
Ten world premiere works written, directed, and produced by UWM students and alumni. On stage May 6-10!
🎫 uwm.edu/arts/events (link in bio)
Presented as part of World Premiere Wisconsin, a state-wide festival celebrating new plays and musicals. @worldpremierewi
Josh Schmidt ’99 is a 2026 Tony Award Nominee! 🎉
BIG congratulations to BFA Music Composition & Technology alum Josh Schmidt on your Tony Award nomination for Best Sound Design of a Play.
Schmidt earned the nomination for his sound design of “Bug” by Tracy Letts. The Manhattan Theatre Club production transferred from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre and made its Broadway premiere at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.
The 70th @thetonyawards will be held at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City on Sunday, June 7 and will broadcast live on the CBS Television Network and on Paramount+.
We’ll be watching, Josh! #pantherproud 💛
@uwmilwaukee@uwmcomptech@uwmalumni@mtc_nyc
@uwmpsoa professor Alvaro Saar Rios helps students find their voice on stage while bringing Latino stories to life in theaters nationwide. Read more at our link in bio! #UWMMakeWaves
Rios also founded the New Dramaworks Short Play Festival, allowing undergraduate students with any major to submit plays to be considered for full production by the Theatre Department. Explore the festival from May 6-10!
A full-circle return fuels this year’s Springdances.
“Springdances: We Also Bloom” features new works by Dance faculty alongside guest artist and alum Karlies Kelley.
As she returns to her alma mater, Kelley reflects on building community with students and creating work that embraces individuality, shared experience, and evolving artistic practice.
“Coming back as a choreographer and teacher to the same studios where my younger self learned many of the very foundations I share now has been incredibly moving and a true life-circle moment.”
🌻 Read the full story at the News & Stories link in bio.
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Photos from promotional shoot by Christal Wagner @c.w.mke.photography
3 more chances to catch this captivating concert. @uwmdance@uwmpsoa
Springdances 2026: We Also Bloom presents world premiere works that explore what it means to grow, persist, and flourish — even in the face of erasure, displacement, and silence. The dances in this program honor the enduring human impulse to take up space, put down roots, and rise. This evening features new works by guest artist Karlies Kelley, and dance faculty Daniel Burkholder, Tiffany Kadani, Dan Schuchart, and Christal Wagner.
The works spanning this evening move between the personal and the political, the historical and the deeply felt. Choreographers draw on stories of marginalized communities celebrating their right to exist, of neighborhoods razed and rebuilt through resistance, of generational trauma transformed in the body, and of individual journeys shaped by what we choose to carry — and what we leave behind. Across every work, a common pulse beats: the insistence on blooming, even in unlikely soil.
Thursday–Sunday, April 30–May 3, 2026 (7:30–9:30 p.m.)
