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Not Your Run-of-the-Mill Arts: Some Fun Summer Entertainment in the Twin Cities
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From Minnesota Monthly |
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Opera in the Ruins
Nothing like a few arias under the stars. The brand new Mill City Opera company, which stages open-air productions amidst the otherworldly ruins of the Mill City Museum courtyard, debuts this summer with “Pagliacci.” The story, a play-within-a-play tragedy about jealous actors in a commedia dell’arte troupe, gets updated, in both costume and set, to 1878, the year that fire first engulfed the old riverside mill. The Mill City Museum is along the riverfront in downtown Minneapolis. July 12–20, millcitysummeropera.org
Ad-libbed Antics
Forget “Who’s Line Is It, Anyway?” Today’s improv is light years beyond prop games and audience shout-outs. To prove it, the sixth annual Twin Cities Improv festival gathers over two dozen comedy troupes from all over the country—as well as a few big fish from the local pond—for a four-day laugh fest at HUGE Improv Theater. See how local yuksters Brave New Workshop and ComedySportz stack up against the funniest comic improvisors from New York and Chicago. June 21–24, twincitiesimprovfestival.com
A Walk(er) in the Park
Consider it a community park for the conceptual art-minded. For the third year in a row, Walker Art Center launches Open Field, its summer-long experiment of art activities on the museum’s lawn. In addition to Walker programming, individuals can book the grassy space for any activity they dream up (last year witnessed everything from bull-whipping and yarn-bombing to guerilla yoga). This year, look for Minneapolis-based design studio ROLU, who plans to build an exact-replica “set” of an Alec Soth photograph. June 2–September 2, walkerart.org
Garden-Variety Opera
Picnic Operetta, Scotty Reynolds’s nutritious, ambitious theater tour of urban community gardens, is back. This summer’s show is “The Return of King Idomeneo,” a crunchy, street-corner update to Mozart’s classic Italian-language opera. As usual, collaborating chef/gardener Nick Schneider will be preparing a story-specific menu of organic eats. Put on your Crocs and pull up a lawn chair. August 11–September 23, mixedprecipitation.org
Shakespeare Comes to Powderhorn
You think the Globe Theatre had air conditioning? Or a sound guy? “I like to say The Strange Capers do Shakespeare like Shakespeare did it,” says company founder Eric Holme. “God is our lighting designer, and we create the middle of the night in the middle of the afternoon by saying ‘O tedious night!’” The outdoor acting troupe, stacked with Guthrie talent, adds a second venue this year, bringing The Comedy of Errors to the Bloomington Theatre and Art Center as well as to the company’s usual home at Powderhorn Park. June 30–July 15, strangecapers.com
Puppets in Your Driveway
It’s part puppet show, part utopian community experiment. Dubbed the Driveway Tour, Michael Sommers’s and Susan Haas’s breathtakingly brilliant Open Eye Figure Theatre will send a puppet show right to your backyard. Or your front yard. All you have to do is invite your neighbors over. Since 2003, the Driveway Tour has reached 40,000 people in more than 500 neighborhoods. Watch also for the theater’s Two-Wheel Tour, a tandem bike pulling the city’s smallest stage through urban neighborhoods to present impromptu, five-minute shows. June 1–August 15, openeyetheatre.org