SAGE awards, young documentarians, workshops, and more!

Hello and welcome to another news and such! -------- The Minnesota SAGE award nominees for 2012 were recently announced. Among the nominees are Uri Sands, Tamara Ober, Wynn Fricke, Andrew Lester, and Black Label Movement. The SAGE awards event will take place on October 17th at the Cowles Center. Did you see any award worthy dance in the past year? -------- The Line magazine recently ran a story on a youth-focused filmmaking project involving young people of Native American heritage. The project centers around young people making documentaries and public service announcement videos about past and present Native American communities and organizations. Give it a read: “Young filmmakers focus on ‘Indian Country,’ Indian Heritage” -------- Kirsten Stephens is a brilliant physical performer. You’ve likely seen her doing mime shows alone or along with her frequent collaborator Dean Hatton all around Minnesota in the past several years. She’s well versed in numerous forms of mime and physical theater and has been working hard to show how diverse styles of performance that fall under the mime umbrella can be. On October 20th Stephens is offering a 4 hour workshop in the technique of Etienne Decroux that will “expand your physical vocabulary, give you a greater range of expression, and give you tools to make precise choices about your movement.” For the ridiculously low price of just $25 for the entire 4 hour workshop you can bolster your toolkit as an actor by working with an artist who is truly an expert in her field. “Physical Actor’s Workshop: The Articulate Body” -------- The volunteer run online magazine L’etoile is looking for an arts columnist to write a weekly column about local Minnesota art. If you’re already taking in a lot of art on a regular basis why not share the experiences with readers of L’etoile? Check out the job posting on the Springboard for the Arts job book: Arts Columnist – l’etoile magazine -------- Are you familiar with Ze Frank? If not he’s somewhat difficult to capture in words. Ze Frank has made an art practice out of being Ze Frank. He’s a performance artist, composer, writer, speaker, video maker, and world-wide internet collaborator. There are literally countless interesting projects available for watching, reading, or engaging with on his website, zefrank.com, but I want to point you towards one specific project he calls “The Question: Audiences.” Ze Frank sent a fairly elaborate question to a group of artists and creative about their relationship with audiences. Here’s the question: "When you make things with an audience in mind, do you have internal representations of that audience to help guide you in the process? Are you in dialogue with a cast of proto-audience members that somehow represent different facets of your perceived audience? Are there little homunculi that provide editorial voices different from your own? Do you interact with them verbally or do you bounce things off of some sort of an emotional surface? Did some sort of averaging form them or were they inspired by particular moments of feedback? Do they have a shape? How would you describe their points of view? What do they look like? Do they have names? Are there ones you trust more than others? Are there ones you avoid?" Aside from the impressive volume and diversity of responses there’s a lot of informative and wonderful information available in the responses Ze Frank has elicited with this question. I encourage you to go take a look. Ze Frank’s The Question: Audiences How would you answer the question? -------- A few days ago the Wall Street Journal ran an interesting piece written by Terry Teachout about the tendency when a performer writes that he or she will write about himself. Teachout makes the argument that while the focus tends to be narrow when we read the writing of a performer we’re more interested in what they think of themselves than what they think of the rest of the world. You can read the article here: “Performers’ Credo: Write What You Know” Maybe this is why I prefer biographies to autobiographies. -------- New Play Last weekend the Guthrie theater opened a new work from Christopher Hampton, British playwright most well known his adaptation of the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses. Based upon an earlier collaboration with composer Phillip Glass, Appomattox links events from 1865 and 1965 looking at connections between the Civil War and the 1960s Civil Rights movement. The Appomattox premiere is part of a larger three-play celebration of Hampton’s work the Guthrie has put together as part of their 50th anniversary season. In addition to Appomattox, running September 29th through November 11th, you can also catch Hampton’s Tales from Hollywood, running September 15th through October 27th, and Embers, running October 9th through October 27th. -------- Have you got something coming up we should know about? Leave a comment or drop us a line. -Levi