What's Going On Here?
Everything's changed on Minnesota Playlist. I just logged in to discover that the website is expanded and upgraded, and now you, the Minnesota theater people, are going to have a more robust and user-friendly platform from which to connect to the rest of your community. What the hell? I thought this whole "fundraiser to build a new website" was just an elaborate scam. Weren't we supposed to be in Cabo San Lucas by now, sipping margaritas on the beach and laughing at the gullibility of those poor saps back in Minnesota? Damn it, Alan, I thought we had a plan! I thought your
big speech on what's so exciting about the new site was grade A material for suckering the rubes, and I thought the
quick list of what's new on the site and
helpful instructions were a great smokescreen.
Bernie Madoff couldn't have done better.
But then you went and actually built the damn thing?! Alan, this isn't how the con was supposed to go down! I was counting very heavily on crossing the Mexican border with a wad of newly-laundered cash in the hidden compartment in my dashboard. Instead, I now have to sit here in the frozen north and take part in an exciting rebirth of the website into a fantastic new sounding board for the local theater scene. You broke my heart, Alan.
Now that this dream is dead, it's time to move on to a new one. Anyone wanna invest in some real estate?
Out With the Old
People of Minnesota, I bring you good news! At long last, the year 2014 is vanquished! We have named
its biggest arts stories. We have
analyzed its arts trends. We have puzzled over why
playwrights bounce back and forth to the TV world now. We have watched as
Broadway put record holiday sales on the board again.
Long have we struggled, my friends, but today we can stand tall and know that we are rid of 2014 forever! As proof, I lay before you the source of all its power: all of the "best of 2014 theater" lists published in the Twin Cities (that I could find).
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Cherry and Spoon
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City Pages, Ed Huyck (part 1)
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City Pages, Ed Huyck (part 2, with bonus "worst of" list)
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City Pages, Sheila Regan (dance & performance art)
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Lavender, John Townsend
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l'etoile magazine
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Minnesota Monthly
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MPR Art Hounds
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Pioneer Press, Dominic Papatola
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Star Tribune, Caroline Palmer (dance)
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Star Tribune, Rohan Preston
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Star Tribune, Graydon Royce
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Star Tribune "Heroes of the Arts Scene"
May your theater careers be ever blessed by the praise of a critic!
In With the New
Did you make a New Year's resolution? I did. It's going well. I've got a Wood Elf in at level 45 in Skyrim, well ahead of schedule. I know, "resolutions" are usually reserved for some kind of self-improvement, but, damn, it's too cold for self-improvement right now.
However, don't let that dissuade you from your arts resolutions for the year.
In what is now an annual tradition, I guess, the Star Tribune has once again put one of its writers to the task of making proposals for what the Twin Cities theater scene should do in the year to come. Last year, Graydon Royce
dared someone, anyone, to do an entire season of Chekhov, and I guess we called his bluff by not doing that.
He also called for some company here to get a Minnesota-made show over to New York:
"For all the firepower and creativity in this town, doesn’t it seem odd that we haven’t been able to get stuff into the big city? Scottsboro Boys and Beyond the Rainbow were imports that landed here for a buff-up before their Broadway debuts. How about a real, honest-to-goodness Twin Cities production getting on the truck?"
For 2015,
Rohan Preston got to make the demands, and he proposed pretty much the opposite of that. Instead of worrying about getting Minnesota's contributions out into the world, we should be worrying about getting the rest of the world into Minnesota.
Sure, making some big, grand international festival would be fun (even though
Legacy Amendment funds couldn't be used to help any of those artists travel here anymore); but, I would rather point you all to the much more practical (and very real) problem that Preston's article hints at right at the end:
"For the most part, our philanthropic and corporate support is aimed at institutions, which are vital to our arts ecology. But more of that support could go to individual artists.
"This is not an either/or proposal, but a both/and. There should be a concerted effort to support the creation of work, and the artists doing that creation. There should be more ways for the Legacy Amendment funds, for example, to go to composers, playwrights, painters and multimedia artists doing genre-bridging, hard-to-classify works."
To that end, if you have an idea of how Legacy Amendment funds should work, or if you just want to show support/opposition to whatever Minnesota legislator you happen to think of most (I think of
Paul Thissen; he's dreamy), then you should probably attend Minnesota Citizens for the Arts'
Arts Advocacy Day. Get your butts over to the capital and show them what you're made of! It's the best way I know of to get 2015 into high gear.
Or if you want to work from your own base, maybe those of you who run nonprofits out there can join in on Nonprofit With Balls'
Ten Resolutions for the nonprofit sector for 2015. Let the improvement begin from within.
Maybe you want to focus even narrower than that in your self-improvement. Then you might want to brush up on your technical theater skills with
Technical Tools of the Trade program, led by Woo Chen Khoo.
You want to focus even more narrowly than that? Then maybe you can think a little bit about the value of
good design in your publicity materials.
Look, I can't tell you what to do with your New Year's resolution. Make something up. Make something happen. Just make something.
You Can Help
Many of you in the theater community probably know Elise Langer (one of City Pages' 2012 Artists of the Year) and Jason Ballweber (artistic director of
Four Humors Theater). The couple recently had their first child, but, unfortunately, it has turned into a heartbreaking situation:
"Olive June Ballweber was born in the early morning of December 13th, 2014. There were complications with her birth and we learned that she suffered brain damage. On December 20th, her ventilator was taken out and on December 22nd, Elise and Jason brought Olive home under hospice care. The three, along with all four grandparents have been with Olive every day as she prepares to leave us."
The above comes from a
YouCaring fundraiser set up to help Elise and Jason pay for all the unexpected medical expenses. Any and all help at this time would be greatly appreciated.
