Weekend Arts Roundup: Conceptual and Cool
by Luke Taylor and Marianne Combs
June 20, 2013
MPR News Arts Reporter Marianne Combs joins The Current's Steve Seel and Jill Riley to talk about Bertold Brecht, Galileo, Joseph Campbell, Evel Knievel, the power of happy Tweets -- and what they all have to do with the arts this weekend.
Rehearsing Failure: Part of the New Works 4 Weeks series, Rehearsing Failure is a conceptual work that centers on Bertolt Brecht as he rehearses his final show, a remount of The Life of Galileo. A "staged concept album" featuring music by Annie Enneking, this show opens tonight and runs until June 23 at Red Eye Theater in Minneapolis.
Herocycle: This production -- featuring plenty of aerialists and onstage crashes -- looks at the life of daredevil Evel Knievel through the prism of Joseph Campbell's archetypal work to ask: Is Evel Knievel a mythic hero? Herocycle is an action-packed aerial musical presented by FTF Works, and it stages at the Old Arizona Cafe in Minneapolis June 21 to June 29.
Secret City -- A Festival for the Imagination: Described by Marianne as an "early-evening Northern Spark," this festival takes place in downtown Minneapolis and along the Midtown Greenway from 6 p.m. to midnight on Saturday, June 22. It features musicians, roving video artists, dancers on bikes, ping pong players, actors and the MIMMI (Minneapolis Interactive Macro-Mood Installation), a large cloud-like sculpture at the Convention Center Plaza that changes color, shape and climatic behavior depending on the collective mood of the city's residents -- extrapolated from the words Minneapolitans are using on Twitter.
Marianne Combs joins The Current's Morning Show for the Weekend Arts Roundup every Thursday at 8:30 a.m. Read about all the latest arts news at the State of the Arts blog at mprnews.org.