Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

2 days ago | jsonline.com | JR Radcliffe

The education website Niche released its 2025 Best School Districts for Athletes in America, naming three Wisconsin schools — one from three different metro areas — in its top 25 and three more in the top 50. That included No. 8 Waunakee in the Madison area, No. 11 Kimberly in the Fox Valley and No. 20 Muskego-Norway just outside the Milwaukee metro. The top three on the list were Bedford, New Hampshire; North Allegeny, Pittsburgh; and Glastonbury, Connecticut.

2 days ago | jsonline.com | Jim Higgins

Milwaukee audiences and Wisconsin state park visitors can see dozens of free outdoor Shakespeare performances this summer, thanks to Optimist Theatre, also known as Shakespeare in the Park, and Summit Players Theatre. Both groups stage productions tailored to newbies and younger audiences, with small casts of actors (or puppets) performing shortened versions of the Bard's plays. Both groups also present related educational and entertainment activities with their performances.

2 days ago | jsonline.com | Chris Foran

Assassins and Wes Anderson should keep you on your, well, toes at the movies this weekend. Here’s what’s new in Milwaukee-area theaters starting June 6, as well as some of the new movies available on streaming and on demand this week. ‘Ballerina’Short version: Ana de Armas plays a dancer who sets out to become a master assassin to get revenge for her father’s death in this violent “John Wick” spinoff, set between the third and fourth movies in the franchise.

2 days ago | jsonline.com | Chris Foran

The real-life exorcism at the heart of "The Ritual," a new horror thriller opening in movie theaters June 6, has a Wisconsin prologue. The movie recounts a 1928 exorcism in Earling, Iowa. The woman possessed by the devil, Emma Schmidt, and the priest who conducted the exorcism, Father Theophilus Riesinger, had Wisconsin ties. Riesinger, who was born in Bavaria, was ordained at a monastery in Milwaukee. In 1926, he came back to Milwaukee's St. Joseph's Hospital to perform an exorcism on Schmidt.

2 days ago | jsonline.com | Jim Higgins

In 'A Theology of Fiction,' Cassandra Nelson explores the legacy of Sr. Mariella Gable, who argued that fiction could be both Catholic and quality literature. Gable's advocacy for literature sometimes got her in trouble with authorities within her own church. Wisconsin Book of the Month highlights a book — new, newish or neglected — by a state writer or on a Milwaukee or Wisconsin subject that Journal Sentinel book editor Jim Higgins recommends you read this month.