By Andrea Waxman
Milwaukee native Douglas Love is “an idea guy.” An award-winning author, playwright and television producer, he recently reached a point in his career when he could work anywhere, and he decided to move back to his hometown.
Actually, it was his partner Alexander Ramos’ decision, Love said, as it was his turn to choose their city of residence. They had lived in New York for about a decade, with shorter stints in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Denver, and had spent many Thanksgivings with Love’s parents in Mequon.
Ramos chose Milwaukee because he loves the city’s art and culture, its proximity to the lake and “the great big city of Chicago,” and the fact that Wisconsin has two progressive senators. And he has a close relationship with Love’s parents. Love welcomed the opportunity to live near his parents and older sisters, who are located in Madison and Chicago.
“We are a close family; we talk to each other several times a week,” he said in an interview last week at The Chronicle’s offices.
Love thought the home that he and Ramos purchased in Mequon a year and a half ago would serve as a home base for work he was doing mainly on the coasts. “I did not expect to be doing any [work] here.”
With his experience — his first big break came when Marlo Thomas selected him to adapt “Free To Be…You and Me” for the stage — he can “cast out 15 to 20 ideas and see how many come back,” he said.
“And with the Internet, I can work anywhere I want to be.”
But Love has reconnected with the city of his birth and its Jewish community in ways that have surprised him.
“What is so interesting about this re-entry into Milwaukee is that I find I have history with people,” Love said. “There are people who knew me as a kid and who have not seen me for a long time, but they have never stopped being interested in me.”
Among those people are Tybie Taglin and Barbara Stein. Through them, Marianne Lubar learned of Love’s work and asked him to create a film for the Jewish Museum Milwaukee, which is slated to open this spring. Lubar is its president.
Making the film, which will serve as an orientation for visitors to the museum, drew Love back into the heart of the community.
“I grew up going to schools and living in neighborhoods [on Milwaukee’s West Side] where there were very few Jews. We clung to each other,” said Love, a Rufus King High School graduate.
As a young man, he worked as assistant family program director at the Jewish Community Center on Prospect Ave., “That was the first time I was surrounded by Jews.”
Points of connection
Now, almost 20 years later, Love has found himself on a journey back to his roots. “Coming back and being embraced by the Jewish community” and asked to explore it for the museum has made Love think about his origins.
“It makes me realize I belong to this community that I’ve never really connected with before. It informs the movie and it enriches me,” he said.
The film’s goal is to assist Jewish and non-Jewish museum visitors in finding points of connection between themselves and the Jewish community of Milwaukee, Love said.
“Family, tradition, tikkun olam [repairing the world] are concepts that [also] exist in other communities and the movie’s purpose is to prime visitors so they can walk into the museum and make other connections.”
Love, who says he is “education and creativity-driven,” needs to feel that there is integrity to what he does, he said.
“Any project that I do has to make sense that it is me doing it.
Usually, I come up with an idea and I figure out how to do it. Then I find the right publisher.”
As he has built his career, the right kinds of projects have increasingly found Love. He turned down an opportunity to make a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie, but reinvented the encyclopedia genre for World Book Kids.
He created a “revolutionary online environment,” new standards-based content, activities and an entire resource archive for teachers. It resulted in 15 million new subscribers in its first year.
Love also created “Out of the Box” for the Disney Channel and “Jammin’ Animals” for HBO, two interactive television shows that encourage self-expression and self-esteem in children. “Out of the Box” won three Parent’s Choice Awards and was nominated for an Emmy. In addition, he served as executive vice president of television and live entertainment for Walden Media.
Love created a different kind of product for Organic Valley, the largest organic cooperative farmer-owned dairy in the U.S.
“I was asked to create a new meal tradition for Earth Day,” he said. The idea is to have one meal a year where you know where everything on the table came from. This resulted in a deck of “creativity cards” designed to “spark hours of laughter, stories and inspiration.”
Having spent years studying what resonates with children, and developing his understanding of learning styles, Love is now developing a new project called “History in Motion.”
“It re-invigorates the museum genre to engage kids in a new way of learning about the world,” Love said.
“Whether you like it or not, kids are exposed to high tech; and we have to think of new ways to reach them,” he said.
Love said he is looking for many venues for “History in Motion.” He hopes it will become a resource for teachers, for whom he feels a special respect.
“It’s a great privilege to spend my life thinking creatively and helping to make kids’ lives better and the world a better place. And now I can do it and be near my family,” Love said.
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