Fringe File, #12: Ariel Leaf on Her Mermaid Travel Life Arts Theatre by Basil Considine - August 1, 2017August 2, 2017 A promotional image for A Mermaid Abroad & A Fish Out of Water. First came Died in a Trailer Park/Woke Up a Mermaid. Then A Mermaid in Narnia (on LSD). Now "Mermaid Beauty is the New Aboveground Punk" and mermaid Ariel Leaf is back for the 2017 Minnesota Fringe Festival. This time around,
REVIEW: Comic Camp Delights in Ka-Baam!! (Huge Theatre) Arts Theatre by Basil Considine - July 23, 2017July 23, 2017 A partly colorized crop of Doug Kalberg's pencil-and-ink cover art for the July 15, 2017 performance of Ka-BaaM!! at Huge Theatre. This image has been altered for publication. In a June 22 piece on Minnesota Playlist, Huge Theatre's executive director Butch Roy called for media outlets to spend more time reviewing long-form theatrical
Fringe File 2017, #5: The Money Arts Dance Music Opera Theatre by Basil Considine - July 18, 2017July 21, 2017 Our popular Fringe File series on the Minnesota Fringe Festival returns. Pictured: Max Wojtanowicz in a promotional photo for MN Fringe 2016's Ball: A Tribute to My Lost Testicle. A Fringe show may begin with the first glimmer of an idea or the drawing of its number, but its first incarnation ends with the money.
REVIEW: Farce the Thing in Red Herring (Theatre in the Round) Arts Theatre by Basil Considine - July 14, 2017July 14, 2017 Michael Hollinger's Red Herring, now playing at Theatre in the Round, is a bedroom farce whose mistaken identities and misunderstandings quickly spiral outside of the bedroom into potential nuclear war. That's a slight exaggeration – but it does run very quickly , at least, into Cold War spycraft and nuclear
PREVIEW: Steamy Accordion Tango in María de Buenos Aires (Mill City Summer Opera) Arts Dance Music Opera Theatre Visual Arts by Basil Considine - July 13, 2017July 13, 2017 Catalina Cuervo as María in a 2014 Syracuse Opera production of María de Buenos Aires. Photo by Douglas Lee Wonders. Mill City Summer Opera's upcoming María de Buenos Aires was written by Astor Piazzola, one of the most renown tango composers of the 20th Century. If that seems an odd pedigree for
Fringe File 2017, #4: Joseph Fletcher and Willi Carlisle on There Ain’t No More: Death of a Folk Singer (MN Fringe) Arts Music Theatre by Basil Considine - July 12, 2017July 21, 2017 Willi Carlisle in There Ain't No More: Death of a Folksinger. Photo by Robin Farrin. One of the hottest out-of-town acts coming to the 2017 Minnesota Fringe Festival is a solo show out of Arkansas. Willi Carlisle's folk operetta There Ain't No More: Death of a Folksinger gives a slice-of-life view of Americana,
FEATURE: Ed Jenkins on Lalo’s Lunchbox, Cooking, and Food Education Arts Lifestyle by Basil Considine - July 11, 2017July 12, 2017 Lalo (Ed Jenkins) and Daisy (Boo Segersin) on the set of Lalo's Lunchbox. The Slow Food movement is now 30 years old. In 1986, Carlo Petrini rallied the citizens of Rome against a proposed McDonalds near the Spanish steps, promoting traditional cuisine, local sourcing, and enjoying the art of preparing and sedately
REVIEW: Glensheen is Murderously Good (History Theatre) Arts Dance Music Theatre by Basil Considine - July 10, 2017July 11, 2017 Sandra Strughers, Gary Briggle, Jen Maren, Ruthie Baker, and Adam Qualls re-enact an iconic photo moment in the Glensheen murders scandal. Photo by Scott Pakudaitis. A year and a half ago, I heard that a murder mystery of a musical set in Duluth was making a killing at the History Theatre.
INTERVIEW: Venessa Fuentes and Dameun Strange on Mother King Arts Music Opera Theatre by Basil Considine - July 10, 2017July 10, 2017 The cast of Mother King in rehearsal. On the 1st of July 1974, an organist at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, was shot and killed by a deranged man who burst into the sanctuary. The victim, Alberta Christine Williams King, was an active church leader and NAACP member, the founder of
THE CURMUDGEON: Vol. 3 – Photos and the Visual Arts Arts Dance Music Opera The Curmudgeon Theatre Visual Arts by Basil Considine - July 7, 2017July 8, 2017 The above blank image is like a student copying Kandinsky's white canvas for a class assignment: it says nothing. This is usually not what is desired. Dear Visual Artist PR Person, Thank you for your recent email. While you certainly used a great number of words to describe art created in an