This week in the economy...

...is not so good. The fallout from Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme is projected at about a $300 million hit to the Twin Cities. A lot of that hit goes to businesses and individual investors, but charities, non-profits and aid organizations are going to take it on the chin. The belt that was tightening is going to need a couple new holes to cinch in.

Intermedia Arts is the latest arts organization taking a big hit. This the 30-year old organization whose graffiti covered building on 28th and Lyndale is unmistakable. They put on the B-Girl Be Festival, the Naked Stages Performance Series and some of the most community involved arts and performance events in the Twin Cities. Now, much of their operational budget has dried up or been delayed, and like so many precarious but vital small-arts organization, they simply don't have the capital to sustain though. They will be shuttering the gallery and poetry library effective January 9th, moving staff to hourly and contract work. But they are fighting back, and need your help. From the Intermedia Arts website:

"Intermedia Arts can survive this economy. We can even come out on the other side stronger and more sustainable than ever before. But in order to do that, we need you to take action now—today.

This is what we need you to do:

1. RSVP now. We need you here at Intermedia Arts’ Community Townhall: Rally the People! at 5:30PM on Friday, December 19th. We are asking you to make it a priority to be here, in person. You will hear from artists, community leaders, Intermedia Arts’ staff and board. You will have a chance to ask questions and offer suggestions. You will find out what you can do to keep Intermedia Arts alive. We need to see you here: show your support by showing up. Free childcare available! RSVP right now!

2. Make a donation. Supporting Intermedia Arts is critical right now, and every dollar counts. We need your support to help us with our general operating expenses as we implement our plan for long-term sustainability. This isn’t about keeping Intermedia Arts open for another month; this is about keeping Intermedia Arts in our community for the long-term. Right now, that future depends on you. We need you to make a donation today.

3. Email us. We need to hear from you. We need to hear your encouragement, your ideas, your commitment of support, your suggestions and feelings. Send us your questions, tell us what you think, and look to our website for updates, responses, community FAQs and news each and every step of the way.

4. Rent our space for your next performance, event, meeting or exhibition. Our building is a valuable asset to the arts community and we want it to continue to stay active and alive.

Now is time for each and every one of us to draw on our passion and our conviction, and play our part. This is a rallying cry. Together, we will meet this challenge and lead our community forward. Because Intermedia Arts matters. Because your voice matters. Because Intermedia Arts is YOU."

Amen.

The Little Skeleton That Could Not- An Essay

Cake in 15 imagines itself as a "culture blog". Yeah, there is a good dose of music, but we are all omnivores here, with wide and variegated interests. As writers, photographers, actors, critics, commentators and god-knows-what-else, we are not just content to let culture happen around us, but attempt to be an active part of the discourse and agents of our own change. In that vein, and full of shameless self-promotion, I offer up an essay that I wrote following The Little Skeleton That Could Not by Lamb Lays with Lion, the theater company of which Cake in 15 contributors c.a.s. and Dan O. are members. It's not your usual blog fare, and if you don't like it skip it. Just 'cause you're in Blockbuster doesn't mean you have to rent a movie.

WHO ARE WE AND HOW DID I GET HERE?
The Little Skeleton That Could Not by Lamb Lays with Lion 11/20/2008, The Hexagon Bar

What just happened on stage? Nervous laughter is good, a punctuating belly laugh is better, seasoned, confounded silence is best. As one reviewer put it, “It all would have been in rather poor taste if it hadn't actually been quite funny.”

The Little Skeleton That Could Not, the latest group work by Lamb Lays with Lion played out like this at the Hexagon Bar on November 20th, 2008. It is a triptych of short scenes, each one growing with misplaced enthusiasm and senses of well-being.

In the first vignette, LLwL company member Jayne Deis takes the stage, obviously not in the best of health, hiding behind her notebook from the harsh illumination provided by the single handheld spotlight and proceeds to tell us that she is going to tell us about the 12 Steps of alcoholism. Instead, though, of reading from the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 Step program, she haltingly starts off on a list of her own creation that has darker, more personal overtones; “Number One. If you look into the mirror and find you have nothing to live for, you might be an alcoholic.” Pitiable down the list, she re-visits points until she is interrupted by Ashley Smith and Julia Mae Fairbanks Thompson, dressed in matching black pant and white t-shirts who inform her that this was last week’s performance, that she missed because she was “passed out at Memory Lanes.”

Debauched Identity Theatrics after the Jump

Smith and Thompson, having dispatched Deis, proceed into “an informative talk” about “an important subject”: AIDS. You can see the parenthetical quotes around their dialogue, the vernacular spins off from PSAs and After School Specials and Fairbanks one-ups Smith with biological details about the functioning of the HIV retrovirus. The discussion of transmission, a serious topic, devolves into scatological repetition of bodily fluids as the flustered twosome try to keep their place. Their scene is abruptly ended by the appearance of a skeleton onstage.

The skeleton (Melissa Anne Murphy) smiles and has an upbeat, sunny, if flip disposition. She, too, is here with an important message. She is here to talk about anorexia, and how it may be right for you. Look at the wonders it has done for her. She talks of becoming a role model for other anorexics, her temptations and the support her community brings her. If she were talking about recovery from alcoholism it would be a downright heartwarming scene. But she is not, the crowd is uncomfortable, heckles a bit and then the skeleton is interrupted by Thompson and Smith who charge back on stage with “AI” and “DS” scrawled on their shirts and skull make-up smeared on. Look at what they’ll do to pull attention back to themselves. There is a back and forth, dramatically lit, of heavy breathing, statistics that are patently false, upbeat non-sequiturs of encouragement, building until the band that has amassed quietly behind them tears into a howling rock-blues number. “Die Die Die” goes the band and the trio onstage galvanize into a goofy show-tunes dance offstage right. Deis charges back on only to be chased away by the skeleton. The band keeps playing and goes into their regular set.

What just happened here?

The closest extant category that Skeleton could be dropped in to, and was in post-show discussion, would be agit-prop. But this is no cardboard cut-out protest with a single-minded end of revolution. If Skeleton is to be considered agit-prop, it must be considered so in newer and more subtle terms. Jan Cohen-Cruz outlines these terms in the introduction to her collection of essays entitled Radical Street Performance:

“Notwithstanding,… agit-prop is possible in ‘culturally pluralistic’ societies, but with these caveats: 1. as social contexts become more complex, agit-prop may serve a an educational function around a specific issue, not necessarily advocating general revolution; 2. the actors must believe that they know a solution to a compelling social problem and be prepared to take the same steps they are urging upon audiences.”

Vaguely, the work of Lamb Lays with Lion could be considered within these parameters, but subverts them both. There is an “educational function” implicit in the use of data: you now know that 1-800-CDC-INFO is the number to call and www.hivtest.com are resources about disease control. Jayne Deis serves as an apropos discourse on alcoholism, given the locale of the performance. Even so, Skeleton, is more about the conflict of datas, the falsity and truths of abutting statements and their uncomfortable relationships. The Skeleton character builds up a positive community taken directly from support sites by and for anorexics to keep them anorexic, but this is not disclosed to the audience, nor is it presented at face value- she is a skeleton! A happy, smiling, fulfilled skeleton telling you how great anorexia can be. No wonder there are uncomfortable laughs; even if it doesn’t fall into the category, Lamb Lays with Lion is surely trafficking in agitation.

Nor Lamb Lays with Lion does not posit a solution or bring down a moral judgment with which they exhort the audience. The show starts out identifiably strange and plunges into absurdity, and this keys into how the performers identify themselves. Jayne Deis’ “Jayne Deis” might just be a hungover Jayne, a slight abstraction- you know that girl. Therein lies some of the original humor. Telling stories of drinking cigarette butts the morning after appeals to a base-level gross out humor, but also, for the young bar crowd assembled, contains a mote of self-identification. If you haven’t done it, you probably know someone who has. Thompson and Smith’s “Julia” and “Ashley” step up that distance, transforming themselves into an empty sounding board from where their research and the data they hear echoes forth. The Skeleton is familiar in tone, but so far afield in content that it makes conscious and exposes that this is a performance, and not a testimonial. The malleability of our own identity and our desire to hear information that conforms to expected conventions is toyed with and exposed in subtle, disturbing ways. The sources of information are untrustworthy, what we identify with may be further away than we think, we should be able to describe that disconnect.

So again, what is it? It is rock and roll; self-indulgent and generous, it is theatre; playing with shifting identity and information, scripted and spontaneous and not what one would expect at a bar. The words you heard had come out of a process of discussion, research and play. The scene’s absurdity comes from our own senses and the barrage of information, all of them untrustworthy in their own way. As artist Jenny Holzer’s proposed in her series “Truisms”: “Description is more valuable than metaphor”. Lamb Lays with Lion is here to describe, channel and filter the world around you, not to make it easier for you to understand.

* De Young, David “Lamb Lays with Lion w/Plastic Chord video from the Hexagon” (How Was The Show Blog, http://howwastheshow.blogspot.com/2008/11/lamb-lays-with-lion-w-plastic-chord.html)
** Cohen-Cruz, Jan Radical Street Perfomance, (London: Routledge Publishing, 1998) 14
*** Holzer, Jenny The Venice Installation, (Buffalo, NY: The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, 1990) 3

Also at the Lamb Lays with Lion website: www.lamblayswithlion.org

The Little Skeleton That Could Not will be presented at the Bedlam Theatre January 16-18 in conjunction with Paint the Town by Insurgent Theatre from Milwaukee and musical performance by To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie.

Acting in the Times: Shadowlands and Dying City

It is a historic moment in America. It is a moment that is made historic by the confluence of past and present contexts- the immediacy of war and economic crisis, a history of division and an act of coming together. Times like these, days like November 4th, 2008, are days that will marked in grand narratives of nations and culture, they are days too that will be remembered by individuals- we will tell where we were, what we are doing, like we have done since. PostSecret, the ongoing project where people anonymously mail in their deepest secrets to share had an aptly succinct illustration of this confluence of personal and social narrative this week: a letter was sent that read, "November 4th, 2008 will be the BEST DAY OF MY LIFE. Barack Obama is our 44th President and I finally caught my cheating/abusive boyfriend red-handed."

Narrative brings me to theatre, which is also where history will have me- seeing two plays this historic week. On the 4th, the night of nights, I went to escape the built up tension (after performing my civic duties of voting, encouraging others to vote and engaging in Starbucks’ illegal coffee-for-votes scheme) at the Guthrie in order to preview Shadowlands. Shadowlands is the story of C.S. Lewis (played by Simon Jones) and the opening of his life as he falls in love with Joy Gresham (Charity Jones), an opinionated American divorcee. It is a love story, set against the backdrop of Lewis' comfortable mid-50s Oxford existence; erudite, clad in tweed, sherries and old boy’s discussions, a wholly safe and neutered space.

The play opens with Lewis at a lectern delivering a speech about the love of god for humanity, a subject that Lewis addressed in many of his writings, from the interventions of Aslan in the Narnia stories to the correspondences of the devil Screwtape. The context of faith and pain is brought forth from the beginning,and as Joy struggles through illness and the love develops and deepens, the refrain that "the happiness then is worth the pain now"- and it's inversion- resonates deeply. The story is one of disruption of a settled life, of pain and reconciliation- a strong universally accessible theme which is reached through the easy and assured presentation. The story is fixed in a time period but is so comfortable in it that we can dissolve that context in favor of the over-arching narrative, and find currently applicable identification.

Parallels, Modern Times after the Jump

Across the river, The Bottling Company, a talented young group of University of Minnesota/ Guthrie Program BFAs (boot camp for Guthrie-aspiring actors, for better or for worse) were closing up their run of Dying City. Penned by Obie-award winning playwright Christopher Shinn and first produced in London in 2006, Dying City is also a play that is also fixed in a specific time and place, but unlike Shadowlands, never manages to transcend that context. Set on two nights and moving fluidly between the two, we see the final night discussion of Craig (Ian Holcomb) and his wife Kelly (Kate Durand) before Craig ships off to Iraq, and the visit of Craig’s gay identical twin Peter (also Holcomb) a year later, during which time, Craig has died. The temporal shift lends itself to some nifty shifts by Ian Holcomb and the terse staging and direction say as much about the discourse around relationships in war as the text does itself.

Dying City purports to be a study of dissolution, betrayal and invasion, but as I type that, I feel like I should be writing a blurb for Days of Our Lives. The plot hinges upon events that have occurred in the not distant memory- upon events in which we are still embroiled- but it never brings itself about to create a narrative critique or build any analytic inferences from events in the context of the world to the story of the play. If we are to believe that play is occurring at a specific point in history, as Iraq, references to Jon Stewart, Tivo and “Law & Order” force us to, then there is precious little space to give themes space to breathe. Shinn does the text no favors by trying to pack in themes- sexual violence is mentioned, but not explored, infidelity, homophobic slurs, suicide, drug abuse, all these things swirl darkly in a play that says that it needs to expands the discourse but condescends to doing so. It is a theatrical trick that comes off as formally executed anger at 2004.

Returning home, I turned to MPR, and there was Dick Gordon wrapping up “The Story”. In response to a listener’s rhetorical query as to why the media was always surprised about the decency of everyday people, Gordon editorialized to the crux of the difference between these two examinations. He said, “in times like these, people’s true stories are what the country needs.” The heart of analysis and criticism is always coming back to the questions- Why This, and Why Now? To make a theme dependent upon context is to weaken it's staying power, but to articulate the story independent of context can make it work in any time and place, and make the moment critical again.

Shadowlands runs November 1 - December 21, 2008 (Opening November 07) on the McGuire Proscenium Stage.

Dying City has closed, but check for future Bottling Company productions.

Random Arcana: Simon Jones as Arthur Dent in the BBC's production of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I thought that C.S. Lewis seemed familiar!

Shameless Self Promotion

Theater company Lamb Lays with Lion is holding a staged reading of a new play 10/14, written by CakeIn15 contributor Dan O. and featuring CakeIn15 boyfriend c.a.s. We're proud of it, it's ours, we'd like it to be yours.

Dates: ONE NIGHT ONLY- Tuesday October 14, 8pm
Tickets: Free Admission, $5-20 suggested donation at door
Theater Information: Cedar-Riverside People's Center Theater- 425 20th Ave S, Mpls 55454

Vinegar Tom: The Devil Within

Finally got down to the Ritz to see Frank Theater's production of Vinegar Tom, a mid-1970's play by British playwright Caryl Churchill. We were there on an auspicious night, too. As we sat in the audience, across the river Frank Artistic Director Wendy Knox received an Ivey Award for directing The Pillowman, last season's moving, grotesque triumph at the Guthrie Dowling Studio.

Vinegar Tom is another biting, engaging romp that Knox and her troupe of Brecht-loving thespians revel in. This work ostensibly deals with the story of women accused of being witches, but through Churchill's pen and Knox's directing becomes a still prescient feminist critique. And yes, given the recent political climate, it is still a vigorous issue for exploration.

Starting with a sex scene and unraveling from there, banter turns to squashed desire and anger becomes suspicion, faith becomes a tool, and the whole dehumanizing thing sets itself in motion. You don't need inventions and fantasy here, most of this stuff is straight history, but with appropriate and effective theatrical punctuation. Frank is a company from whom I have come to expect engaging performances, but it should not go without saying that the company turns in a great show, especially Lori Neal as the Cunning Woman, a healer whose hope for a positive view of her work is undercut by the reality of the play. Complete with modern songs, direct address to the audience and a final scene twist whose image is jarring but whose scene that had me laughing and biting my lip, it's a heady ride, and something to think about before the accusations fly.

Adult Ticket Prices: $25 on Friday and Saturdays, $22 on Thursday and Sundays

Students, Seniors, Groups of 10+: $23 on Friday and Saturdays, $20 on Thursday and Sundays

Performances Dates:
Showing for four weekends September 12-October 5

Go to the Ritz Theater (www.ritztheaterfoundation.org) website for more information.

Theater Review: The Irresistible Rise of Big Daddy Ubu

The Irresistible Rise of Big Daddy Ubu, a Nimbus theater production which opened this weekend at the Theater Garage, throws a whole lot of elements into the mix. I'm almost certainly missing a few, but here's a laundry list: Brecht, Jarry, the Chicago mafia, penis jokes, Monty Python, various pop culture icons including Enya, Guy Noir, Donald Rumsfeld, free market politics, corporate greed & aggression, National Public Radio, organic vegetable references, buffoonery, meta-theatrical devices, and lots and lots of text. It is then perhaps strange that, upon the culmination of all this, it felt as though they hadn't pushed it far enough. Buoyed by the inspired and present performance of Mark Rehani as Dogsburough, a brilliantly executed take on the detective & lawyer Casey (Scot Moore), and a solid performance from Joe Herman in the title role, the play does manage to get from beginning to end fairly intact, although I couldn't shake the feeling that they were stuck somewhere between second and third gear most of the time.

To reduce the plot down to its basic elements, Big Daddy Ubu is a big fat gangster who shoots, intimidates, and farts his way through a corrupt Chicago food industry, ultimately putting his ill-used conscience on trial & attempting to murder his even fatter wife along the way. It's a grotesque comedy that seeks to expose the big-wigs for who they really are and, I suspect, make a basic mockery of corporate industry that threatens to monopolize even our grocery stores. The trouble is that the composition almost immediately overwhelms the whole, and the characters, while occasionally coming into focus, are burdened with so much expository dialogue that we never really get a sense of why any of it matters. The pop culture jokes mostly fall flat, either because they're three or four years old, or because they just don't really fit in with the rest of the action (although there is an Enya joke that I very much appreciated.)

Full review after the jump

It's easy to sit back and critique, and there's enough here to recommend that you take a look. Near the end of the program, Nimbus includes a section which calls for conversation, an exploration of the exchange between audience & the work presented on stage. Taking that challenge, I'd like to start a conversation regarding the (smaller) Twin Cities theater community. There is clearly abundant talent among the ranks, and we all understand that putting on a fully realized production is no small task. It takes weeks of rehearsal, thousands of dollars mostly raised from private individuals, and a huge commitment from a team of actors, designers, and creative minds to even get the show onto a stage. Given so much energy and effort, why is it so difficult to end up with a product that transcends the ordinary? I don't think it makes me overly optimistic to hope & expect for something new, something visionary, a piece that teaches me about the craft, every time I attend a piece of Twin Cities theater. I have no desire to be a cynic - I understand the challenges at hand. But I also refuse to accept mediocre theater as the status quo. There are too many theater degrees (at a cost of what, $20,000 in tuition each?), too many clear & present issues to tackle, and frankly, too much at stake for so many shows to grind it out from beginning to finish, achieving adequacy but rarely transcending or challenging the medium in which they operate.

Somewhere in the middle of Big Daddy Ubu, Ubu is on the floor having pummeled the character who plays his conscience into a dizzy mess. He holds out his hand to be helped up by his wife. They are both immensely fat, and yet, she takes his hand and pulls him up with no effort what-so-ever, and the play goes on. It was in that moment that I lost the belief that I was watching Ubu in this world. I was instead watching a group of actors gamely work their way through a somewhat over-wordy adaptation of Alfred Jarry, and that was that.

Is it acceptable to want more? Go see it, and decide for yourself.

The Irresistible Rise of Big Daddy Ubu plays at the Minneapolis Theater Garage, September 5-28. For tickets, call 651-229-3122 or www.nimbustheatre.com

Theater for Foodies

I’ve watched the occasional cooking show on Bravo or the Food Network, but never had I found myself amid such experts until last Thursday, in attendance at a rehearsal for The Cooking Show Con Karimi and Comrades. Revolutionary Chef Mero Cocinero Karimi is here in town to perform his roving cooking show at the Bedlam Theater, and I had the pleasure of being ever so briefly exposed to the many secrets the show contains. These secrets, being secret, cannot be divulged - Mero Cocinero Karimi speaks tersely of the CIA and possible infiltration, and so you must go see the show and discover them for yourself.

Rest assured, however, that you will witness something special. The three comrades in question are Mero Cocinero Karimi, special guest Comrade Katie Rose McLaughlin, and the stage manager Comrade Tsai. Working in a mode that mixes clowning, improvisation and good old-fashioned story telling, they sing, dance, and chop their way through a cooking spectacle that will top anything you’ve ever seen on television, and probably (if you’re like me) anything you’ve ever seen on stage as well. And there’s FOOD! You get to try some! Free tastes!

The Cooking Show also functions as a clever and functional political treatise. Never preachy, the comrades display a lightness of touch & understanding of the deep history behind the dishes they prepare and the stories they tell. By the end of the night, be you Blue, Red, or “Other,” you just might find yourself feeling part of the larger community at whole - One that comes together to experience good art, and leaves with a full mind and satisfied palate.

Go here for the website: merococinero.com

It’s at Bedlam Theater (1501 S. 6th Street, Mpls, MN)
August 28-30 & September 5-7.
All shows @ 8 pm, doors open at 7:30 pm.
Tickets only $20, with discounts for masses, elders, & youth.
B.Y.O.B. (Bring Your Own Bowl.)

Buy tickets @ 612-341-1038 or merococinero.com

Idigaragua relaunch and the new Massgraves!

One weekend left, boys and girls, to check out the fabulous Fort Wilson Riot composed Idigaragua. Idigaragua may be hard to pronounce, but it sure is fun to watch. The music is catchy and you'll find yourself humming once you've left the theater. Plus, there's pirates! Zombies! ...and journalists (oooo! scary)!

Idigaragua is complemented this time around by Lamb Lays with Lion's new show, Massgraves. Massgraves covers the Egyptian book of the dead, home mortgages, Nosferatu and the end of the world as we know it. Through it all is wonderful music by local band Kill the Vultures. Although a more heady play than the aforementioned Idigaragua, Massgraves is worth the extra $5 to check out.

Each show runs about an hour with a nice break in-between to grab a beer, a coffee, or some food at the wonderful Bedlam Theatre.

For more information on the shows, please check out the Bedlam's website.

Download mp3s by Fort Wilson Riot:
The Birds Turn Violent
An Imagined Civil State
What Was the Part I Played?