Arts Orbit's blog

The intention in creating Everything Must Go was to make work (hopefully worthy work) and put it out there. I intended to present a story about two people who help each other through a rough patch in their lives: using imagination and compassion, they show our resilient capabilities as people. And I intended to present this story with honesty and humanity. There have been a lot of questions about my approach to creating this and other shows I've made. I am schooled in collaborative physical theatre which has a strong emphasis on performer as creator. Creation is done collaboratively and organically by the performers in the rehearsal room.MORE »

Some years ago, I had a student (or what we at Concordia Language Villages call "a villager") who came to the Norwegian village with plans to build a Norwegian skigard as his service project for our high school language credit program. Atle submitted, as part of his proposal, a diagram with instructions for the Norwegian fence written in specialized "construction language." I was, frankly, a little skeptical that he would be able to pull it off, but he got the go-ahead to do it. Despite a full schedule on his hands, he set about the work of re-creating this old-style fence and enlisted the help of other high school credit villagers to complete the task. Years later, this fence is a natural part of the landscape at the Norwegian village. Every time I look at this solid structure, I think of Atle and the people on his team who worked so hard to get it done.MORE »

Sometime around last July, the Art Shanty Projects sent out their request for proposals. Ice seemed very, very far away, but I sent the request to my old friend Dana in California and said, "Hey, we should do this!"  (We previously collaborated in eighth grade with our environmental talk show Let's Talk, with Barbie and Marge.) In August Dana got married and I officiated her wedding. In September she went to Russia for an artist's residency and then she returned and said, "Hey, the proposal deadline is in three days, what are we going to do?"MORE »

Last winter, my friend Rachel James and I went to visit the Art Shanty Projects for the first time, as we had both just moved to Minnesota that year. Excited by what we saw, Rachel and I decide we wanted to make a shanty. The main motivation was to create our own magical escape from the grimness of winter, somewhere full of color and life. We couldn't think of anything more appropriate than a lush forest on a frozen lake where we could bring together friends and strangers to exchange stories, watch performances and experience a little magic. Rachel and I invited some friends and colleagues with a wide range of talents and interests to help us.   MORE »

Heaven bless Jezebel. Over the past ten years, I've come across so many thinly-written soul-searching young white male characters in film, television, and books that I despise with so much vitriol that I can't even articulate it properly. This inability to express my hatred probably explains why people look at me like I'm a few grapes short of a bunch whenever I try to discuss this matter. But Jezebel is busy whipping out their 2000-2009 Best of and Worst of Lists, and in their post Your Boyfriend Sucks: The Worst Fictional Dudes of the Decade, Hortense summed up my feelings about this recurring character better than I ever could:  MORE »

Old Knifey and the Cutthroats play good ol' country: set-on-the-porch, listen-to-the-grass-grow, feel-MORE »

MORE »

This Thursday, two of the Twin Cities' most alluring sirens are on the same bill at the Acadia Cafe: Shannon Johnson of Kymara and Alicia Wiley of, wellMORE »

MORE »

MORE »