Cyn Collins, Writer
Cyn Collins (cynth@bitstream.net) is a Twin Cities freelance arts and culture writer. She is the author of West Bank Boogie: 40 Years of Music, Mayhem and Memories, a 2007 Minnesota Book Awards finalist in nonfiction. She’s published reviews and profiles in publications such as the Star Tribune and Vita.mn and was a regular writer for The Bridge, howwastheshow.com, Pulse of the Twin Cities, TC Metro magazine, Buon Gusto, Southside Pride, and Rift Magazine. She is the co-host/programmer for Dig Up the Roots on KFAI, and co-producer of KFAI’s Write on Radio. Her blog features entertainment updates and music reviews; she also writes the Daily Planet’s weekly advice column, Life of Cyn. She lives in the Seward neighborhood with her husband Brook Martin and their two cats.
THEATER | Five Lears at Bedlam: Guts spewed, cupcakes eaten, Shakespeare accused of fascism
Outside in and inside out, Bedlam Theatre’s performance of King Lear (in collaboration with four other radical theaters) was wickedly funny and dark. Joining Bedlam Theatre in Lears were Trutheater Theater (Rhode Island), the Nonsense Company (Madison, Wisconsin), The (Loosely) Affiliated with Puppet Uprising Players of Pennsylvania (with Eric Ruin, formerly of Minneapolis), and Insurgent Theater (Milwaukee). MORE »
Local food, one yard at a time – Backyard Harvest in your own backyard
The food revolution will begin in your own backyard, if the Backyard Harvest program takes off. The Permaculture Research Institute – Cold Climate hopes this year’s pilot project in Minneapolis will have people clamoring “IMBY” — in my backyard. Their mission: to strengthen the Twin Cities local foods infrastructure one yard at a time. MORE »
MOVIES | "Of Time and the City": An elegiac look back at Terence Davies's Liverpool, a lovely place despite those damn Beatles
“Some lovely moments grow and sorrows not known until tomorrow cloudy the happy hours in the sun.” The nostalgic visual poem Of Time and the City depicts happy moments of writer/director Terence Davies’s life in Liverpool during his childhood and into his 20s, with his acerbic commentary on changes, modernity, the rich, and the Beatles. MORE »
MUSIC | Frances Gumm return to re-scorch the earth
Be forewarned: for 37 short but searing minutes, Frances Gumm’s aggressive rock will melt this town at their Scorch the Earth CD re-release party at the 331 Club this Friday. Frances Gumm, infamous for their hard-core, take-no-prisoners, get-in-trouble-with-the-cops ways, sold out the first issue of Scorch the Earth and are bringing it back again on the Maine label Pidgeon Records. MORE »
MOVIES | "The Exiles," a luminous document of American Indian life in the early 1960s
The Exiles opens with Edward Curtis’s photographs of traditional American Indian profiles and dwellings, flowing into photos of the rundown Bunker Hill neighborhood of Los Angeles, where American Indian exiles from the southwest reservations lived in great numbers from the late 1950s to the early 60s. This black and white film is a luminous beauty, screening at the Walker Art Center in a recently rediscovered and newly restored 35mm print. MORE »
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