Minneapolis, Minnesota
They held the annual Ivey Awards in downtown Minneapolis last night to celebrate our 68 professional theaters and to recognize artistic excellence among organizations large and small and people old and new.
Festivities began with a VIP pre-party at Seven on Hennepin, followed by the main awards show at the State Theatre. The red carpet post-party took place at Mission and its spill-over "patio," the IDS Crystal Court. Thanks are due to the financial sponsors.
Melissa Gilbert and Steve Blanchard, lead actors in the Guthrie Theater's production of Little House on the Prairie, served loosely as emcees of the tightly-run State Theatre proceedings, attended by 2,000 of the onstage, backstage, and front-of-house people who make the theater community tick.
Performers from several organizations provided entertainment throughout the 90-minute production, including members of the Brave New Workshop, Buffalo Gal Productions, the Guthrie Theater, Nautilus Music-Theater, Theater Latte Da, and Cantus.
Awards for overall excellence were presented to Open Eye Figure Theatre for Prelude to Faust, and to Workhouse Theatre for 'Night Mother. Recognition also was bestowed upon Frank Theatre for the emotional resonance of The Pillowman; Interact Center for the innovative concept and idea behind Broken Brain Summit; Ordway Center for the Performing Arts for costume design, scenic design, and choreography of Cabaret; Gremlin Theatre – and Gary Geiken, Katie Guentzel, John Middleton, Carolyn Pool, Matt Rein, and Alan Sorenson – for ensemble acting in Orson's Shadow; and to Chanhassen Dinner Theatres and Tamara Kangas for choreography in 42nd Street.
The Ivey Awards recognized three actors for individual performances: James A. Williams as Troy Maxson in the Penumbra Theatre production of Fences; Kate Eifrig for her portrayal of nine characters in 9 Parts of Desire at the Guthrie Theater; and Jarius Abts for his performance as Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch at the Jungle Theater.
Matthew Amendt, a 26-year-old actor, received the Emerging Artist Award for writing The Comedian's Tragedy, presented at the Theatre Garage last summer.
A 90-something-year-old Don Stolz was summoned to the stage to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from Diana Pearce of KARE TV and from the Guthrie's legendary – and last year's lifetime recipient – Sheila Livingston. Stolz founded Minnesota's Old Log Theater 67 years ago, pre-Guthrie, pre-Children's Theater, and pre-all-the-rest. According to the couple next to me, Stolz was still giving pre-show curtain talks as recently as Sunday night.
I had a blast and enjoyed every minute of the evening save one. Following his introduction by Minneapolis Mayor R. T. Rybak, I joined whole-heartedly in the standing ovation that greeted Dominique Serrand's arrival to present an award. He could and should have made the presentation and dispensed with his lament for the demise of Theatre de la Jeune Lune, the organization he co-founded 30 years ago that crashed and burned earlier this year, following a recognition that years of financial mismanagement and accumulated debt necessitated closure.
"The angels we hoped for have not appeared," he mourned. "The powers that be have spoken with their silence." Invoking Samuel Beckett in blessing, Serrand concluded, "Go on failing. Only next time, try to fail better."
I appreciate that Serrand has a background in European traditions where generous and indulgent support for the arts is a given and carries the character of an entitlement. While I laud the sensibility of that approach, my sympathy has its limits. Enough!
Too many of us work too hard to convince our fellow citizens, of all political stripes, that the arts merit even a pittance of public support. At our best on this side of the pond, we offer investment in artistic endeavors that require the reciprocity of good stewardship: pursuit of artistic excellence, good governance, and fiscal responsibility. Ultimately, Jeune Lune failed on the latter two points.
Several young people took the stage to receive awards last night. Unable to afford fancy suits, in their jeans and scuffed shoes they represented all the starving artists who seek only a chance to create and present their work. The tears they choked back bespoke their disbelieving amazement that, for a brief moment, the community in which they labor had lifted them from the ashes of their chimney hearths and welcomed them to the ball.
Serrand and his colleagues burned their tickets to the dance on the altar of organizational dysfunction and inattention to business basics. In this, they were abetted by what I call "the collective we" that looked away when deficits became chronic, plans became unrealistic, and the ties that bound them to the community frayed beyond repair. Finally and, perhaps, unfairly, we acknowledged that we owed no more and, in the tradition of Minnesota Nice, we kept the angels at bay and allowed the silence to speak for us.
I believe in second and subsequent acts, however, and hope that in his next adventures Serrand will be able to "fail better," if fail he must.
Showing posts with label Theatre de la Jeune Lune. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theatre de la Jeune Lune. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Monday, August 4, 2008
Fringe review: Live Action Set, Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Too many artists or their organizations presume a mantle of uniqueness in asserting that their work boldly goes where none have gone before: pushing boundaries, exploring new worlds, and creating new vocabularies or tomes in whatever discipline they pursue. Would, for the integrity of their p.r., that it was true.
Wisely, the four principals of Live Action Set – Noah Bremer, Megan Odell, Galen Treuer, and Vanessa Voskuil – avoid the overblown claims of such claptrap. They understand that the embodiment of their creativity must be innovative to them and its presentation delivered with accomplished and engaging conviction. They "get" that their collective motivation produces an "intangible creative synergy" distinct from their individual possibilities.
The results of their approach can be seen in Deviants, an engrossing, 70-minute offering in this year's Minnesota Fringe Festival. The show is a re-working of material presented at the Red Eye Theater in 2007.
Deviants is a work of intelligence by young adults, for adults of all ages, that easily could have become trite and facile. In a non-linear format, it examines constructions of the acceptable and the deviant, the desired and the repressed. Some of the forbidden fantasies-turned-obsessions, along with their real or imagined imagery, may challenge some viewers.
The genius of Deviants, if you will, may be found in its successful creation of an alternate reality and the ability of a very talented cast to transport an audience to its realms. The ensemble launches the journey using all of the raw, warehouse space of The Soap Factory, including trapdoors and pillars. While the pillars become an integral part of the set and scene, they pose an unacceptable barrier to sightlines.
The members of Live Action Set, with their varied backgrounds in theater and dance, have forged a cohesive, collective character that accents the strengths of each individual. Their future foraging across the artistic landscape will be welcome.
They are worthy successors to the ensemble of artists formerly known as Theatre de la Jeune Lune in Minneapolis (and, formerly, Paris). The work presented by the Set at the Soap Factory echoes the fascinating, early-1980s productions by Jeune Lune in the Seven Corners neighborhood of Minneapolis. Jeune Lune's founders shared an aesthetic background in their training at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq. Although the founders of the Set do not share a similar set of experiences, their bond is a shared sensibility and a commitment to ensemble-driven outcomes.
Jeune Lune collapsed in financial distress last month, nearly 30 years after its first Minneapolis performance. Interestingly, Robert Rosen, a co-founder of Jeune Lune, served as director and co-creator of Deviants (and, Rosen and Bremer both studied at the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theater in California).
Whatever their longevity together, one can wish the artists of Live Action Set a happy and productive life of continued creativity.
Deviants continues at The Soap Factory, 518 2nd Street SE, Minneapolis. Aug. 5-10 @ 7pm; Aug. 8 & 9 @ 8:30pm; and Aug. 9 @ 5:30pm. Tickets: $12 + one-time purchase of Fringe Festival button for $3.
Too many artists or their organizations presume a mantle of uniqueness in asserting that their work boldly goes where none have gone before: pushing boundaries, exploring new worlds, and creating new vocabularies or tomes in whatever discipline they pursue. Would, for the integrity of their p.r., that it was true.
Wisely, the four principals of Live Action Set – Noah Bremer, Megan Odell, Galen Treuer, and Vanessa Voskuil – avoid the overblown claims of such claptrap. They understand that the embodiment of their creativity must be innovative to them and its presentation delivered with accomplished and engaging conviction. They "get" that their collective motivation produces an "intangible creative synergy" distinct from their individual possibilities.
The results of their approach can be seen in Deviants, an engrossing, 70-minute offering in this year's Minnesota Fringe Festival. The show is a re-working of material presented at the Red Eye Theater in 2007.
Deviants is a work of intelligence by young adults, for adults of all ages, that easily could have become trite and facile. In a non-linear format, it examines constructions of the acceptable and the deviant, the desired and the repressed. Some of the forbidden fantasies-turned-obsessions, along with their real or imagined imagery, may challenge some viewers.
The genius of Deviants, if you will, may be found in its successful creation of an alternate reality and the ability of a very talented cast to transport an audience to its realms. The ensemble launches the journey using all of the raw, warehouse space of The Soap Factory, including trapdoors and pillars. While the pillars become an integral part of the set and scene, they pose an unacceptable barrier to sightlines.
The members of Live Action Set, with their varied backgrounds in theater and dance, have forged a cohesive, collective character that accents the strengths of each individual. Their future foraging across the artistic landscape will be welcome.
They are worthy successors to the ensemble of artists formerly known as Theatre de la Jeune Lune in Minneapolis (and, formerly, Paris). The work presented by the Set at the Soap Factory echoes the fascinating, early-1980s productions by Jeune Lune in the Seven Corners neighborhood of Minneapolis. Jeune Lune's founders shared an aesthetic background in their training at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq. Although the founders of the Set do not share a similar set of experiences, their bond is a shared sensibility and a commitment to ensemble-driven outcomes.
Jeune Lune collapsed in financial distress last month, nearly 30 years after its first Minneapolis performance. Interestingly, Robert Rosen, a co-founder of Jeune Lune, served as director and co-creator of Deviants (and, Rosen and Bremer both studied at the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theater in California).
Whatever their longevity together, one can wish the artists of Live Action Set a happy and productive life of continued creativity.
Deviants continues at The Soap Factory, 518 2nd Street SE, Minneapolis. Aug. 5-10 @ 7pm; Aug. 8 & 9 @ 8:30pm; and Aug. 9 @ 5:30pm. Tickets: $12 + one-time purchase of Fringe Festival button for $3.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Fringin' and dancin'
Minneapolis, Minnesota
If you have not submitted your advertising banner to the website of the Minnesota Fringe Festival by now, you are out of luck. It is one of the lowest cost deals in town and, between now and mid-August, the Fringe's will be one of the top five most active websites in Minnesota!
The festival runs 11 days, July 31 - Aug. 10, at numerous venues in the Uptown, West Bank, Northeast, and North Loop neighborhoods of Minneapolis. At least 1,000 artists will present more than 800 performances of 156 different shows, aided by 400 volunteers.
As a sassy teenager of 15, the Fringe has outgrown the pangs of its 1993 birth, delivered with a loan from the Cedar Riverside Business Association. It now is the Midwest's largest performing arts festival, and the largest nonjuried and uncensored Fringe in the U.S.
As my friend, John Munger, noted on his blog, Going Through the Movements, the Fringe "offers more dance in 11 days than any part of the [Twin Cities] dance community offers at any other time of the year." He has the statistics to prove it. I intend to see at least three of this year's dance offerings.
Live Action Set is creating some of the freshest and most engaging work in town these days. Its show, Deviants, will play at The Soap Factory, with a cast including Noah Bremer, Megan Odell, Robert Rosen, Galen Treuer, and Vanessa Voskuil. These are the folks who brought us the 2005 Fringe hit Please Don't Blow Up Mr. Boban.
Last year, Penelope Freeh presented one of the strongest shows in the Fringe. This year's offering is small aïda, a two-woman show for herself and Stephanie Fellner, to be performed at Theatre de la Jeune Lune.
DRP Dance will make its third Fringe appearance with Modern Muses at the Southern Theater. It features four women performing choreography by Danielle Robinson-Prater.
The maximum ticket price for any Fringe show is $12, plus a one-time button purchase for $3. A complete schedule for the festival is at www.fringefestival.org.
If you have not submitted your advertising banner to the website of the Minnesota Fringe Festival by now, you are out of luck. It is one of the lowest cost deals in town and, between now and mid-August, the Fringe's will be one of the top five most active websites in Minnesota!
The festival runs 11 days, July 31 - Aug. 10, at numerous venues in the Uptown, West Bank, Northeast, and North Loop neighborhoods of Minneapolis. At least 1,000 artists will present more than 800 performances of 156 different shows, aided by 400 volunteers.
As a sassy teenager of 15, the Fringe has outgrown the pangs of its 1993 birth, delivered with a loan from the Cedar Riverside Business Association. It now is the Midwest's largest performing arts festival, and the largest nonjuried and uncensored Fringe in the U.S.
As my friend, John Munger, noted on his blog, Going Through the Movements, the Fringe "offers more dance in 11 days than any part of the [Twin Cities] dance community offers at any other time of the year." He has the statistics to prove it. I intend to see at least three of this year's dance offerings.
Live Action Set is creating some of the freshest and most engaging work in town these days. Its show, Deviants, will play at The Soap Factory, with a cast including Noah Bremer, Megan Odell, Robert Rosen, Galen Treuer, and Vanessa Voskuil. These are the folks who brought us the 2005 Fringe hit Please Don't Blow Up Mr. Boban.
Last year, Penelope Freeh presented one of the strongest shows in the Fringe. This year's offering is small aïda, a two-woman show for herself and Stephanie Fellner, to be performed at Theatre de la Jeune Lune.
DRP Dance will make its third Fringe appearance with Modern Muses at the Southern Theater. It features four women performing choreography by Danielle Robinson-Prater.
The maximum ticket price for any Fringe show is $12, plus a one-time button purchase for $3. A complete schedule for the festival is at www.fringefestival.org.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Nonprofit governance: How unsexy and irrelevant is that?
Minneapolis, Minnesota
The recent announcement that Theatre de la Jeune Lune will shut down permanently prompted many analyses about what went right as well as wrong during the storied lifetime of a mainstay in the Twin Cities' cultural milieu.
One commentary by David Hawley on MinnPost.com ("With Jeune Lune's triumphs over and legacy clear, its wondrous nomads move on," 6/24/08) celebrated both the endings and the beginnings to be found in Jeune Lune's demise. One passage by Hawley caught my eye, and that of several others:
Well.
There is no need to pile on and credit this sentiment as a fatal flaw in the organizational culture that led to Jeune Lune's demise. The sentiment is alive, healthy, and expressed regularly by artists in all disciplines.
I have heard this sentiment, and worse, from agents of more than one arts organization during the current calendar year alone. You also may have heard the comments; hopefully, you have not made them yourself.
I used to think such expressions were born from desperation and the poverty mentality that grips many in the smaller arts world. Now, I see them as ignorant and arrogant. Or just plain stupid. They hurt all of us.
Any artist who wishes to exercise total control with no accountability is free to operate as a sole proprietor or as a for-profit business. However, once one crosses over and assumes the mantle of an incorporated, 501(c)(3), your business becomes the public's business. And the public relies upon your board of directors to look after its interests.
We might whine, curse, and complain if we must. Then we need to grow up and step up to the plate of adult nonprofit governance.
The Principles and Practices for Nonprofit Excellence, created by -- and available for pdf download from -- the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, articulate 10 principles of accountability and 133 management practices that can inform artists, administrators, board members, and wanna-bees.
For sure, as the Principles state, "Board members should be committed to the mission and dedicated to the success of the nonprofit." However, "Nonprofit board members are responsible to make decisions in the interest of the organization and no other party, including themselves."
The Center for Nonprofit Management at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis offers regular classes in all aspects of nonprofit management and governance. One need not be a regularly-enrolled student to attend. I have found several classes helpful over the years.
Yes, there is a lot of nuance about the checks and balances of governing and managing nonprofits; that is grist for future posts.
The basics remain relevant. If we care enough to do our work in the arts, then we should care enough to get it right in practice and in attitude.
The recent announcement that Theatre de la Jeune Lune will shut down permanently prompted many analyses about what went right as well as wrong during the storied lifetime of a mainstay in the Twin Cities' cultural milieu.
One commentary by David Hawley on MinnPost.com ("With Jeune Lune's triumphs over and legacy clear, its wondrous nomads move on," 6/24/08) celebrated both the endings and the beginnings to be found in Jeune Lune's demise. One passage by Hawley caught my eye, and that of several others:
I remember, decades ago, when I was chatting with a Jeune
Lune core member ... who was lamenting about having to deal
with a board of directors in order to gain the benefits of nonprofit status.
"Their job is to get money for us," the performer said. "But they want to
talk to us about what we're doing and all that. It's none of their business
and a terrible waste of time."
Well.
There is no need to pile on and credit this sentiment as a fatal flaw in the organizational culture that led to Jeune Lune's demise. The sentiment is alive, healthy, and expressed regularly by artists in all disciplines.
I have heard this sentiment, and worse, from agents of more than one arts organization during the current calendar year alone. You also may have heard the comments; hopefully, you have not made them yourself.
"No one, least of all a donor, is going to tell me how to run my organization!"These statements do not emanate from mature organizations. They almost always are found among small and midsize groups.
"I founded this organization and I will shut it down before I give up control!"
I used to think such expressions were born from desperation and the poverty mentality that grips many in the smaller arts world. Now, I see them as ignorant and arrogant. Or just plain stupid. They hurt all of us.
Any artist who wishes to exercise total control with no accountability is free to operate as a sole proprietor or as a for-profit business. However, once one crosses over and assumes the mantle of an incorporated, 501(c)(3), your business becomes the public's business. And the public relies upon your board of directors to look after its interests.
We might whine, curse, and complain if we must. Then we need to grow up and step up to the plate of adult nonprofit governance.
The Principles and Practices for Nonprofit Excellence, created by -- and available for pdf download from -- the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, articulate 10 principles of accountability and 133 management practices that can inform artists, administrators, board members, and wanna-bees.
For sure, as the Principles state, "Board members should be committed to the mission and dedicated to the success of the nonprofit." However, "Nonprofit board members are responsible to make decisions in the interest of the organization and no other party, including themselves."
The Center for Nonprofit Management at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis offers regular classes in all aspects of nonprofit management and governance. One need not be a regularly-enrolled student to attend. I have found several classes helpful over the years.
Yes, there is a lot of nuance about the checks and balances of governing and managing nonprofits; that is grist for future posts.
The basics remain relevant. If we care enough to do our work in the arts, then we should care enough to get it right in practice and in attitude.
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