Cedar-Riverside
WEDNESDAY PICK | Bedlam's 10-Min Play Fest: A mixed bag (in a good way) at Mixed Blood
Rumor has it that Bedlam Theatre, after nearly two years in its temporary Seward home, is closing in on a deal that will land it in a new permanent home. In the meantime, though, Bedlam is building on its long-time relationship with Mixed Blood Theatre—just down the street from Bedlam's former West Bank space—by staging its annual 10-Minute Play Festival on the Mixed Blood stage. Whereas in previous years the short plays have appeared in series, this year Bedlam's making it easy on us by staging them all back-to-back at six performances over five days. The watchword for these little plays is innovation, so don't expect any tidy little dramas: settle in to your seat, and hold onto your hat.MORE »
How welcoming is Minnesota to newcomers? Advocates for Human Rights to host community conversation
How welcoming is Minnesota to newcomers? That's the question being posed by The Advocates for Human Rights. This year and next, the Minneapolis-based nonprofit is monitoring, documenting, and assessing the experiences of immigrants and other key communities against international human rights standards. It’s part of a project called the One Voice Minnesota Network, an effort to build more welcoming communities statewide by providing tools and resources and promoting collaborations.MORE »
In Minneapolis, urban planning guru Charles Landry encourages consideration of cities' "ethical landscape"
City planning guru Charles Landry says urban planners should emphasize social and cultural capital over their traditional reliance on economics alone in the development of cities. Landry, who has evaluated the livability of cities all over the world, spoke May 7 at the Cowles Center in downtown Minneapolis to begin a weeklong residency of workshops, talks and tours of the Twin Cities.MORE »
THEATER REVIEW | Via Box Wine Theatre, "Dalí's Liquid Ladies" get deep at the Cedar-Riverside People's Center
"It's hard to nail both entertaining and profound," I wrote in a preview of the Box Wine Theatre production of Dalí's Liquid Ladies, "and no local playwright does it better than Savannah Reich." It's true: for all its accessibility, Reich's script starts upshifting soon after the curtain rises and by the time the curtain (or virtual curtain) falls, the play's firing afterburners. What starts as an amusing reenactment of a historic oddity—Salvador Dalí's surrealist pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair in New York—becomes a probing meditation on the nature of desire.MORE »
THURSDAY PICK | "Dali's Liquid Ladies" jump back into the pool at the Cedar-Riverside People's Center
It's hard to nail both entertaining and profound, and no local playwright does it better than Savannah Reich. Her play Dalí's Liquid Ladies is based on a story so strange that obviously it's true: at the 1939 New York World's Fair, Salvador Dalí installed a surrealist pavilion that you entered by walking through a woman's legs (he was way ahead of Patch Adams) and that contained a giant aquarium tank inhabited by topless women playing "mermaids." Reich's play begins as a humorous look at those women's lives, but ultimately becomes something much stranger and deeper.MORE »
MUSIC REVIEW | Portland Cello Project and Emily Wells at the Cedar Cultural Center: A split verdict
Crossing previously sealed boundaries is initially thrilling, but once they’ve been crossed often enough, you really start to need a purpose for jumping the line. It’s understandable if an old East Berliner who grew up behind the Iron Curtain still gets a charge out of strolling over to a McDonald’s in West Berlin—but his granddaughter also has a point when she observes that East Berlin has a McDonald’s now too, and that one has a dollar menu.MORE »
TUESDAY PICK | Emily Wells and the Portland Cello Project: Singing, stinging strings at the Cedar Cultural Center
The default mode for an arts writer previewing a concert like this is to say something like, "Whoa, look at the crazy things those cellos and that violin are up to!"—as though all stringed instruments have been locked up in the Mozarteum since 1850. Of course they haven't, and Emily Wells and the Portland Cello Project aren't the first musicians to bow towards new frontiers. They just do it exceptionally well. The Portland Cello Project specialize in exciting rearrangments of songs by artists from Kanye West to John Denver, and Wells is a gifted singer-songwriter-violinist who creates her arrangments with loops and samples as she performs solo. This might just be the spring's best lineup you've never heard of.MORE »
For recent refugees facing language barriers, programs in the community and at the University help maneuver the new culture
For refugees adapting to new life in the U.S., accessing health care, child care and transportation is a challenge without knowing the language.MORE »
THEATER REVIEW | Mixed Blood's "Learn To Be Latina" asks many questions, offers few answers
The satire and impropriety of Mixed Blood’s production of Learn To Be Latina are not for the faint of heart. The show is, however, for anyone ready to laugh and groan at the absurdity of race in media, and in American culture more generally. One moment a campy slapstick comedy, and the next a thoughtful commentary on individual identity and responsibility, Latina builds naturally on the themes raised in Mixed Blood’s season opener Neighbors, and delivers the audience an experience that is not merely entertaining, but truly challenging in its content.MORE »
THEATER REVIEW | "The House on Mango Street" is a stunning, hope-full production by Teatro Del Pueblo and Pangea World Theater
Where’s your Mango street? Where did you grow up and how has that shaped you? Teatro Del Pueblo and Pangea World Theater have partnered together to pose that question in their production of The House on Mango Street, now playing at the Southern Theater.MORE »
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