The cell phone throw heard 'round the world

The next Minnesota Fringe fundraiser was announced yesterday, Five Fifths of the Sorcerer's Stone, and despite me being Umbridgey on Twitter about Sorcerer's Stone vs. Philosopher's Stone, a Harry Potter-themed evening with Wild Intention Teen Troupe, Main Street School of Performing Arts, Winding Sheet Outfit, Lingo & Friends, and Comedy Suitcase gets me in the old Number 12, Grimmauld Place. The fundraiser is designed to be a kid-friendly evening, so if you want your magic with adult themes, you'll be waiting for Five Fifths of The Magicians. Expecto Patronum! Local I've missed Bedlam Theatre. Namely, I've missed having a restaurant/bar/performance/theatre-gathering place. I don't have much longer to wait, thankfully--Bedlam Lowertown in St. Paul will be opening later this summer and will have all that I came to expect from their West Bank location (except they're not quite as close to my house). And it seems as though Bedlam Lowertown could become the St. Paul anchor the Twin Cities theatre scene needs. This will no doubt be helped along by ArtPlace America's $350,000 (!!!) grant for Bedlam Lowertown: Arrivals and Departures. The grant "will fund Bedlam adventures in and around Lowertown St. Paul through the next year and a half which will include the openings of Bedlam Lowertown, the Central Corridor Light Rail line, and Amtrak service at the St. Paul Union Depot." That is amazing, and I'm really excited to see what will happen over the course of the summer and into next year. Congratulations, Bedlam! National The National Review's Kevin Williamson, while seeing Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, was bothered by an obnoxious, googling patron seated to his right (and many others all around him, from his description of events) and after he asked her to shut down her cell phone and she refused, he grabbed and tossed it across the theatre. As The New Yorker points out, don't expect anyone to follow Williamson's example and become the guide for theatre etiquette, but oh does it feel good to live vicariously through him. In the face of bad behavior by audience members, I think many of us fantasize about making a stand against it. That's all I recommend doing, anyway. From FlavorWire: "if [rude people] are going to carelessly distract those around them during a film or play, odds are they will not be easy to reason with." And though I get a thrill from Williamson putting a rude patron in her place, he met rudeness with rudeness and opened himself up to a suit if the woman decides to be litigious. Ultimately, she probably won't learn one thing from the experience. Bravo, Mr. Williamson. I hope you're not sued. (If you'd like further reading on audience phone usage, check out Mo Perry's News & Notes blog from earlier this year.) International Lyn Gardner highlights bullying in the arts in her blog this week. Until this article, I hadn't thought too deeply about bullying in an arts context--which is surprising, considering Gardner links to an article that found that it was more prevalent in the British arts then in the armed forces or the health services. Read some of the examples she lists and think about your own life in the arts--do you know a producer who threw their weight around? A director who thought of their theatre as a "personal fiefdom"? If we're talking about the situation above, I think the googling patron might be seen as a bully who pushed her victim too far. That I never thought about it until now shows how insidious bullying of any sort can be--instead of calling out the behavior for what it is, an artistic bully might be seen instead as "complex" or "misunderstood", and the behavior tolerated for the sake of art. But a bully is a bully, and if you encounter one, do what you can to stand up to them, and if you can't, you can at least vow to never work with them again. Using an App to Tell a Story I want a Twin Cities theatre company to develop an app like what is described by Kneehigh Theatre. Storyteller Anna Maria Murphy had an idea to collect stories from around Cornwall, and Kneehigh was able to create an app after the development and performance period: "By placing Anna's stories on a map and allowing people to listen to them exactly where they were first collected, we potentially had a new and artistically exciting way of presenting the stories to a wider audience. We imagined that using this app would be like going on a walk with Anna herself." Nimbus Theatre recently did a production concerning the late 1800s and early 1900s area now covered by the Bohemian Flats park in Minneapolis. Liz Neerland created a narrative out of historical records and the words of her own family. A history heavy stage production seems fit for a project like this; stories written about the Bohemian Flats can go into an app that plays audio dramatizations from former residents, creating this layer of digital history over the physical world. It's not a new idea, certainly. But it is a cool one. The School of Producing is Producing I've done 200+ podcasts surrounding theatre, but I can't think of one where I've participated in an in-depth conversation on producing, with a producer, about all that goes into it. It is often touched upon or referenced, and there are multiple people in the arts community who have dabbled--whether it be their own work or helping produce the work of others. And if you wanted to become a producer, where would you even begin? Stage One in the UK is set up for the very purpose of giving new producers a chance to "turn your entrepreneurial ideas and ambitions into reality." I don't think my theatre program at Hamline University touched on producing for the theatre, though if a class was ever offered in it, I feel Me From the Past missed out. Guess I'll have to learn from ehow.com. More and More Bests! The City Pages has already released their 2013 "Best of" list, and now the Star Tribune has released their Best of MN for 2013. But which has the best "Best of" list? Congratulations to all the theatre-folk mentions! --- If you have feedback or comments on any of the articles above, or suggestions for future blog and news items, please leave them in the comments or e-mail me at [email protected].