Five years in the making, and Theatre Lila’s 2025-26 season gets underway this weekend with the immersive theater, poetry and spoken word performance, Planets as Stars, written and performed by Milwaukee native Gina Cornejo.
“This is not a play,” Cornejo said in an interview for the 365 Amplified podcast, which will be released Friday. “This is not that. The genre is a little bit of everything. There’s poetry here. There’s prose. Sometimes it feels like spoken word, but it’s not going to be a linear show either.”
At its core, the performance is storytelling – and it’s Cornejo’s own story, she said.
“These are all stories from my life. I do not make myself the hero. I’m usually not the hero. I’m a kind, wide-eyed observer,” she said. “We have a nucleus of love, relationship, the complexity of it, the comical and the cataclysmic ripples of love.”
Cornejo will perform the show eight times over the next two weekends at Art House 360, the new multicultural art space in downtown Verona. Tickets are $28, but the matinee on Saturday, November 15, is a “pay what you wish” performance. Tickets are available at https://www.theatrelila.com/tickets.
Planets as Stars is not a traditional theater piece, but Cornejo hopes that doesn’t scare anyone off.
“No one will have to do anything,” she said. “You can relax when you’re there and have a good time and still feel like I’m talking directly to you, like we’re having these moments together … it’s just another way in to performance and creativity.”
The opening Friday will mark the first performance for Theatre Lila since the COVID-19 pandemic shut down most in-person performing arts. Shortly thereafter, Theatre LILA founder Jessica Lanius and other collaborators focused on creating Art House 360 as “a new home for us.” Now, though, with the space up and running, it’s time for Theatre LILA to once again take the stage.
“This is the first opportunity that we get to stage something and really breathe life into that community room … I feel like a kid who gets to finally open their Christmas presents,” Lanius said. “I know we’re in tech (rehearsals), and it’s really stressful, but also, this is what it was all about, right? Finally getting to say we have a home, and make this piece in the home, and invite people … it’s pretty special.”
Cornejo also had a part in the creation of Art House 360 – her poetry adorns the walls of the bathrooms, rendered as graffiti by artist Spits Mullins.
She’s been involved with Theatre LILA for only a couple of years, since American Players Theater actor and director Gavin Lawrence urged Lanius to meet Cornejo, who’s worked on several productions at APT.
Lanius attended a reading Cornejo gave in Milwaukee.
“I just was mesmerized,” she said. “She’s just so quirky and interesting and an incredible writer. And I was like, we have to do something together.”
And over the next 18 months or so, Planets as Stars took shape.
“I felt like this could be an interesting theatrical piece if we just kind of lift it up a little bit from a poetry reading into somewhat of a theatrical experience,” said Lanius, who directed the production.
Cornejo claimed Chicago as her artistic home for 17 years, and also spent time in Asheville, North Carolina. She’s performed on festival and theater stages across the country, including the Asheville Fringe Festival, Green Bay Fringe Festival, as well as for Bottlecap Press, Audible and Blue Ridge Public Radio.
The next production in Theatre LILA’s season, “A Love Letter,” is set for February, a collaboration with Barrio Dance/Theatre.
