It's not past yet

Here's the good news

I'll be honest. I had a lot more planned to talk about this week, but then, as it often does, a troubling news story dropped just as I was sitting down to write this article (which, I assure my editor, was definitely not at the last minute and definitely not under a haze of alcohol). I won't mince words. There's some pretty bad stuff later on this week's edition of News and Notes. And it's not the usual sort of bad that I normally talk about, where we can all chuckle at the foibles of our industry and then go about our merry way not letting female playwrights get to the stage and creating the conditions for terrible journalistic ethics. You know, the usual stuff.

So, to soften the ugliness that's about to come up, here's some good stuff that you can read about that will make you happy about being a Minnesota theater person.

Good Thing #1
Congratulations to Penumbra Theatre! The company just received a $7,500 grant from Theatere Communications Group to work with the Southern Poverty Law Center on social justice engagement.

Good Thing #2
More congratulations, this time to Bob Stromberg. The writer, performer, co-creator of a show about coffee that ran for over a decade in Minneapolis and Minnesota resident just picked up a string of awards from the United Solo Theatre Festival in New York.

Good Thing #3
We here in Minnesota have long known about the great work of Michelle Hensley and Ten Thousand Things. I guess the rest of the world does now, too. The New York Times just ran an article about how Hensley's vision is spreading to regional theaters across the country.

Good Thing #4
The National Assembly of Arts Agencies has released a nifty little interactive map showing the amount that each state in the nation will allocate per capita for the arts. Guess who's the top state? Yep! It's Minnesota, with a projected appropriation of $6.29 per capita! We were only beaten out by Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, who I will say don't count, because they're not states. They're just two large populations unfairly and arbitrarily denied voting representation in Congress, so they don't count.

If you want to see what a strong commitment to the arts can do for a region, MinnPost has provided for us this week with a case study on Winona, Minnesota.

The past didn't go anywhere

There are some troubled times ahead for Children's Theatre Company. As I write this, it's been about one hour since a Star Tribune article dropped on their website announcing that the respected, half-century-old Minneapolis institution will be the subject of a lawsuit over sex abuse of minors. Attorney Jeff Anderson (who you might know from other sex abuse lawsuits concerning the St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese and the Boy Scouts) sent out a press release this afternoon naming Children's Theatre, the company's founder and former Artistic Director John Clark Donahue, and another unnamed former employee as subjects of a lawsuit over abuses alleged to have occurred in 1977 and 1983.

If you are currently saying, "Wha?!", then I it's my duty to tell you a terrible story about CTC's history that I'm sure was glossed over in their big recent 50th anniversary party at Target Field.

In 1984, John Clark Donahue was arrested and charged with six counts of criminal sexual conduct with teenage boys who attended classes at CTC. At the time, the company operated as an accredited school with over 120 enrolled students. Police had actually notified CTC in 1982 that they suspected Donahue of molestation, but Children's Theatre declined to investigate further or alert parents.

In the ensuing investigation of Donahue, other members of the company were arrested for having sex with minors from the school, hinting at a wider culture of abuse that existed under Donahue's tenure at CTC. Donahue eventually signed a plea agreement that netted him 10 months in prison. Of the five other CTC employees who stood accused, one other struck a plea deal, two were acquitted and two had their charges dismissed. A seventh person who was not connected with Children's Theatre was also convicted of having sex with an underaged student during the same time.

The fallout from this sad period in CTC's history was huge. The company went through major restructuring and soon after stopped functioning as an accredited school, focusing instead on its productions. In the following years, it would regain its esteem, go on to win a regional Tony award and become an internationally-recognized theater company.

But, it seems the past wasn't entirely settled. In depositions before his plea deal, it appears that Donahue admitted to sexual relationships with more than 16 children, far fewer than what he was tried for. There have long been whispers that only a small amount of what went on at CTC under his tenure was ever brought to light and that children were coached to lie to investigators at the time.

In 2013 Minnesota passed a temporary extension to its statute of limitations for sex abuse cases, which runs out in May 2016. Before that window closes, we may see more people stepping forward in support of this pending case. Attorney Jeff Anderson has scheduled a press conference in which he promises that one of the plaintiffs in this latest lawsuit will speak on the matter publicly for the first time.

If you're a longtime fan of Children's Theatre Company work on stage, I'm sorry to say that you're in for a rough time. This whole affair was ugly enough the first time around, and we're all bound to learn about more ugliness before it's all said and done. I'm sure we'll be talking about this more in the future, so I'll leave it there for now.

Maybe we need a little Christmas cheer

Well, that was all around awful. And now that it's past Thanksgiving, we're barreling straight into the Christmas theater season, which I would also normally describe as all around awful. But, you know what? After that oily unpleasantness, maybe a syrupy sweet dose of Christmas cheer from the plethora of Christmas-themed shows in the Twin Cities this holiday season will cure what ails you. If it's an especially bad case you might get prescribed ten different versions of The Nutcracker

And if that's not enough to cheer you up a little, please enjoy this video of thirteen dogs and one cat eating Christmas dinner with human hands. It's the most I can do right now.