The story behind the name Penumbra

Posted at 8:35 AM on June 3, 2011 by Marianne Combs
Filed under: Television, Theater

Penumbra Theater is getting ready to stage its latest show "I Wish You Love" at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. next week, followed by an engagement in Hartford, Connecticut in July.

Meanwhile, MNOriginal profiled the show last night.

What caught me off-guard was the realization that in all my years of covering the theater, I had never bothered to ask Artistic Director Lou Bellamy how he came up with the name. Last night, he explained it this way:

The name "Penumbra" began when we began the company in 1976. I knew that I wanted our program to be professional. We were a program of the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center; you've got to remember at this time, we weren't able to get State Arts Board funding because they said we were doing social service, not art.

Penumbra is a Latin term that means "partial shadow" - it's that place than an artist needs to go to create that world that is neither light nor dark. It also sort of symbolized the marginalization of the culture, and all that sort of stuff.

These are all afterthoughts; it was fun to say Penumbra - it's a fun word to say!

There you have it.

Diversity, then and now

Posted at 4:00 PM on June 3, 2011 by Marianne Combs
Filed under: Culture, Music, Theater

Editor's Note: Eric Ringham oversees the commentary section of MPR News. He's also active in the Twin Cities theater scene. While in conversation he mentioned to me his experience seeing "Steerage Song" last night, to which I said, 'hey, you should write that up.' Kindly, he obliged.

*****


Sometimes, in journalism, the simple selection of a topic constitutes an expression of commentary. That's the case in "Steerage Song," a journalistic piece of musical theater - or is it a theatrical piece of musical journalism? - that opened Thursday night at the Fitzgerald.

The point of the commentary is this: The immigrant experience is an abiding piece of the American character, passed down from one generation to the next. Those who dislike newcomers today come from people who once were disliked newcomers themselves. And so it goes, until you reach back as far as the people who were here first.

"Steerage Song," a production of Theater Latte Da, concerns itself with a brief period that saw an explosion in immigration, roughly 1845 to 1920. A cast of singers and versatile instrumentalists roams through a list of 40 songs and assorted spoken texts, cobbled together by co-creators Dan Chouinard and Peter Rothstein. The show does an effective job of rendering the hopes and fears of that time in the words and songs of the people who lived it.

It's also effective at getting across the message that a country founded upon immigrants has no business looking down its nose at further immigrants.

For me, the point had a particularly sharp edge. Midway through the first act I thought back to an evening last February, when I watched 250 immigrants from 59 countries take their oaths of citizenship in the same theater. I was there because I knew one of the newcomers, but would have found it moving even if I hadn't known a soul.

The message of that night last February was the same as the message of "Steerage Song." We didn't get here all together, and some of us not by our own will, but we're a better country because we came from a bunch of different places. Though we seem destined to keep forgetting it, diversity is a strength.

Hennepin Theatre Trust to open new performance space

Posted at 4:42 PM on June 3, 2011 by Marianne Combs
Filed under: Theater

How many theaters can one street have?

Evidently, if it's Hennepin Avenue, a lot.

The old Century Theatre, ca. 1937
Image courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society

Hennepin Theatre Trust, swift on the heels of handing over its Hennepin Stages to the Brave New Workshop, has announced its opening a new space on Hennepin Avenue - the "New Century Theatre."

This is addition to the three venues it currently programs: the Orpheum, the Pantages and the State.

According to the HTT, the New Century Theatre will be a 300 seat, flexible use performance space on the street level of City Center in downtown Minneapolis.

The New Century Theatre's programming will complement that of the other three main stages, with shows similar to those it scheduled at Hennepin Stages, in addition to more local performances and student cabarets.

The New Century Theatre gets its name from Century Theatre, one of four historic theatres that used to operate near the site of what is now City Center. The original theater opened in 1908 as a 2,000-seat vaudeville house called the Miles.