State of the Arts

State of the Arts: November 11, 2011 Archive

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3 ways to improve your weekend

Posted at 5:17 PM on November 11, 2011 by Marianne Combs
Filed under: Events

Looking to make your cultural life just a little richer? These events promise to leave an impression in your mind, but not your wallet.

After Miss Julie
An August Strindberg novel gets a re-vamping in the real-life setting of the James J. Hill House kitchen. On the eve of Labour's 1945 historic victory over Churchill and the Conservatives, Miss Julie descends into the servants' kitchen of her father's country mansion in search of the chauffeur John. Over one long midsummer's night, Miss Julie's world is turned head over heels. Performances run through November 20. Tickets are $20, or half your age if you're under 30.

The Center of the Margins
Mixed Blood Theatre presents a trio of plays that explore the world of disability. Whether deaf, or autistic, or caring for a child with cerebral palsy, these characters examine what it means to be different and yet whole. Tickets are free, on a first come, first served basis.

Katha Dance Theatre presents EKAM - The Supreme Oneness, set to the gospel songs of Robert Robinson and his company of musicians. Performances run tonight and tomorrow at the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts. Tickets run $15 - $25.

Video break: Bon Iver's 'Holocene'

Posted at 9:28 AM on November 11, 2011 by Marianne Combs
Filed under: Music, Video

For today's video break, an escape from the urban jungle:

Bon Iver's frontman Justin Vernon was born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. In an interview with NPR he said this of his song Holocene:

Holocene is a bar in Portland, Ore., but it's also the name of a geologic era, an epoch if you will. It's a good example of how all the songs are all meant to come together as this idea that places are times and people are places and times are... people? [Laughs.] They can all be different and the same at the same time. Most of our lives feel like these epochs. That's kind of what that song's about. "Once I knew I was not magnificent." Our lives feel like these epochs, but really we are dust in the wind. But I think there's a significance in that insignificance that I was trying to look at in that song.

Did you get that?

Regardless, the music is beautiful and the Icelandic scenery is haunting. Enjoy... and check out Justin Vernon's in-studio performance for 89.3 The Current here.


New Midwest poetry prize offers $10,000

Posted at 12:20 PM on November 11, 2011 by Marianne Combs (1 Comments)
Filed under: Funding, Poetry

Twin Cities publisher Milkweed Editions has joined forces with a Minneapolis legal firm to create the the Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry.

The annual prize - open to poets currently residing in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, or Wisconsin - will award the author $10,000 as well as a contract for publication of the winning manuscript.

Daniel Slager, Publisher & CEO of Milkweed Editions says the prize will help bring the work of outstanding regional poets to an international stage:

We wanted to establish a prize that encourages and rewards poets substantially, for their important but often neglected contribution to our culture. And as we looked carefully at the numerous poetry prizes already in existence, we saw a number of wonderful national and international prizes, but not as many--certainly not at this financial level--regional prizes.

Finalists for the prize will be selected by the editors of Milkweed Editions, with the winner to be selected by an independent judge. This year, the judge will be Minneapolis poet Peter Campion. The first annual prize-winning collection of poems will be announced in April 2012 and published in November 2012.


(1 Comments)

Students rally for their theater education

Posted at 3:49 PM on November 11, 2011 by Marianne Combs
Filed under: Education, Theater

Now these students are committed to their art form.

MPR's Euan Kerr recently visited a rehearsal of the University of Minnesota's production of The War Within/All's Fair.

There he found out that a couple of years ago the students actually went to Dominique Serrand (former artistic director of Theatre de la Jeune Lune, co-founder of The Moving Company) and offered to pay him out of their pockets to coach them in physical comedy.

WarWithin.jpg

Since then the arrangement has become much more formalized. The university hired The Moving Company artistic team (Serrand, Steve Epp and Nathan Keepers) to develop a show -- alongside the students -- through improvisation. And thus came to be "The War Within/All's Fair.

"There's not a big agenda, or political didactic statement we are looking to make," said Steve Epp. "We are in a sense trying to celebrate the humanity and stupidity and ridiculous qualities that come out of that."

The students are engrossed in what they are doing, but they also admit to being a little mystified.

"People keep on asking what the show is all about," said one actor.

"How long is it? What's it going to be? You've just got to be, 'I don't know,'" said another.

Yet they have confidence in what they are doing, and in the guidance they're receiving from Serrand, Epp and Keepers.

"They are geniuses," said one student. "They know exactly what they are doing. This is their craft."

"Except you don't understand what they are doing," another said with a laugh.

Find out what their improvisation evolved into by listening to the story below:

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