Items of some note from 1/3 - 1/8

Twin Cities playwright Katie Ka Vang was diagnosed with lymphoma on January 4th. Her diagnosis has since been updated to stage 4, the most serious and difficult to treat form of lymphoma. For those not familiar Katie is a well respected playwright and mentor in the Twin Cities. She works frequently with Mu Performing Arts and the Center for Hmong Arts and Talent (CHAT). Katie has maintained a wordpress blog about her work and life since 2009 that you can find here- Read Katie's blog The Star Tribune ran an article on their Artcetera blog about Katie's work and her cancer diagnosis. Read the article There is a Caring Bridge site where you can track Katie's progress: Read Caring Bridge site Katie would certainly benefit from support both emotional and monetary. Donations can be sent directly to Katie's sister, Soua: Soua Vang 6615 Bluestream Lane S. Cottage Grove, MN 55016 ---- Artistic directors of Ragamala Dance, Ranee Ramaswamy and Aparna Ramaswamy, were listed among the Star Tribunes 2011 artists of the year. Ramamala has been important and influential since it's founding in 1992. They've brought a high level of visibility to Minnesota's diverse dance community, hopefully driving dance talent to the state. From the Star Tribune article: Among highlights of 2011 was Ragamala's selection as one of only two companies from the United States to perform at the Kennedy Center's Maximum India Festival in March. "They definitely brought their A-game to Washington, D.C.," said Alicia Adams, the center's vice president of international programming and dance. She called Ragamala an "exceptional" troupe: "If it were a competition, they could compete with the best of them. We had all of the top companies from south India." While there, Ragamala earned praise for its performance of "Yathra" from the notoriously hard-to-please New York Times critic Alastair Macaulay. He singled out Aparna as an "enchantingly beautiful dancer" for her solo work. "Yathra," a lush journey through the life cycle, had its Twin Cities premiere later that month at the O'Shaughnessy. Read the full article here here ---- The Loring Theater on Nicollet ceased operations at the end of December 2011. Stating only that they decided not to renew their lease on the theater the organization running the Loring, The Directors, led by Steve Barberio left a lot of questions on the minds of many in the performing arts community. An elaborate conversation broke out on the Facebook wall of Marianne Combs' from MPR's State of the Arts when in the comments of a post about the announcement of the Loring's closure. The closing of this space clearly brings up issues regarding leadership and management of organizations in the Twin Cities theater community. As well as highlighting concerns about how the sagging economy impacts theater artists and theater artists. Marianne followed up later in the week asking "Do the Twin Cities need more small theater spaces? I'm talking about 100-200 seats..." In my humble opinion the real question is whether or not the Twin Cities can support more 100-200 seat performance spaces. Artists of any stripe, whether writer, painter, actor, or wig-maker, do not have inherent value. Everyone should have the right and probably encouragement to make cool things and do their art but that doesn't mean they're entitled to an audience interested in consuming their art. By that same token, if theater spaces aren't being created and thriving perhaps at times it's an indication of management issues but most of the time the indication is that audiences aren't spending their money to see shows in those spaces. If a venue can't support itself with audiences & revenue, or find a behemoth corporate sponsor than what makes the space worth keeping open? ---- Something great! Local actor, writer, and occasional anarchist Sam Landman has a tumblr called Regret-A-Day. It is what the name implies, a daily listing of regret from Sam, but it's often much more. Last June Sam wrote an article for Minnesota Playlist asking Twin Cities theater artists to describe fundamental elements that actors have no business employing in their trade called "What Acting Isn't" One of Sam's contributors was the late Tom Poole. For Regret-A-Day #366 Sam listed not posting Tom's full answer to the question of "what acting isn't" and remedied his regret by posting Tom's full answer. Go read it if you haven't already - Regret #366 ---- In an attempt to learn more about the Minnesota Playlist readers as well as these performing arts we all know and love I'm going to be posting a question on each weeks news and notes. Please feel free to respond on the comments section here or on Facebook or Twitter Question of the week- Many painter and dancers maintain a consistent practice of working on their art outside performances or shows. Do actors work their acting muscles and skills outside of rehearsals and the stage?