BLOG: We're Building Stuff!

Brick and Mortar On June 14, Minneapolis will host the third annual "stay awake all night for art's sake" festival known as Northern Spark. This city-wide festival of spectacle's theme this year is "Projecting the City," which will no doubt mean many of the installations and performances will involve people blasting digital projectors at buildings. Northern Spark's idea is about more than putting pictures up on warehouses and half-finished condos by the riverfront. The idea is to engage people in the infrastructure of their city and have them view the buildings and bridges as living parts of the landscape whose development they can help direct. Not coincidentally, the new light rail Green Line will commence operations on the same day (that is, if people making U-turns on University can stop running into the damn trains). Over in St. Paul, the city is throwing money at every project they can think of near the terminus of the line in Lowertown. The new stadium for the Saints and a revitalized Union Depot have the biggest budgets in this project, but St. Paul's stated goal is to make Lowertown an arts district. They managed to entice Bedlam Theatre across the river to open a new space right outside one of the light rail stops. The difficulties in putting together a new space, wrangling licensing and dealing with building codes has been daunting, and the company has had a number of soft launches, but I am pleased to see that Bedlam's Lowertown space will finally have a grand opening on May 31. Perhaps St. Paul really can shed its "asleep after 6pm" image, and maybe the city can reverse the flow of theatre-goers and arts-seekers who normally head west across the river in search of excitement. Maybe the Green Line will be the pipeline that funnels them back east and injects them right into the soon-to-be-swinging night life of Lowertown. Then again, the Green Line is currently running at least 27 minutes slower than promised, so there's still some kinks to work out. But don't worry. St. Paul's not just betting on Lowertown. The city is placing its chips all over the table. Most recently, St. Paul managed to get $5 million out of the state's recent billion-dollar bonding bill to renovate the Palace Theater, so the building and rebuilding will continue boldly into the future. … But Not Too Bold A quick aside for a cautionary tale from Philadelphia. (I'm fond of those.) In 2007, the Philadelphia Theatre Company, with, coincidentally, $5 million in funding from the state, built a new space for itself, the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, named after one the company's biggest and wealthiest patrons (and wife of Comcast founder Ralph Roberts). Unfortunately, the rush to build and the one-time injections of money from the city and state left them with a theatre that now cost $5 million every year just to run and a dearth of sustainable fundraising. The result is that the theatre's mortgage holder called the building into foreclosure. The Robertses have continued to support the theater, with the caveat that PTC continue to pay the mortgage and take steps to create an endowment for long-term sustainability; but, as you can guess, those two things haven't really happened. Now, Ralph and Suzanne are ready to use their millions to pull the theater out of the hole it dug itself into, but only if the company can prove that it is viable. They have hired outgoing Kennedy Center president Michael Kaiser to step in to review PTC's books to see if the operation is worth saving. There is a very real possibility he could say that it's not worth it. Kaiser did, after all, pen an op-ed criticizing the very practice that got PTC into this mess. This is the nonprofit theater company's ultimate nightmare, and it starts with wanting to build big. Where Are They Now?: Miss Saigon Edition I was reading a nice piece in the Star Tribune on the changes in leadership at Penumbra and Mu when I was reminded of that time that we were all outraged by the Ordway's production of Miss Saigon. (You might remember that I Don't Buy Miss Saigon coalition is still going strong, and this certainly isn't the first time the musical has been targeted (for some interesting insight, I found an article from David Henry Hwang reflecting on his part in that controversy 25 years later). I'm sorry to tell you that the 25th anniversary revival of MIss Saigon is shattering ticket sales records. So much so, in fact, that Cameron Mackintosh, the producer who brought us the original production and the revival, is now a billionaire. Instead of controversy, the media is serving up puff pieces on the show, and speculating on how soon Mackintosh will land his production on American shores again. (By the way, don't fall for his coy routine. With ticket sales like this, he most certainly will bring it to Broadway.) Honoring the Unseen Last month, Ken Davenport, a Broadway producer with a well-read website, tossed out the idea of making an awards ceremony for all the backstage people that are important to running a Broadway show, but who will never get to walk down the red carpet at the Tonys or be thanked by a teary-eyed actor in a speech, much less get an award. Davenport had no idea that so many people would write in their votes for Best Box Office Staff Member or Best Dance Captain, but he now has a full slate of nominees for the first Ghostlight Awards. As with the Tonys themselves, I will not have seen any of these shows or have the faintest idea of who these people are, but I like the idea of recognizing someone else besides the pretty people on stage, so I am sure I will check back in on this to see who won what. (And I guess I might have to say something about the Tonys, too. Blech…)