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Weekend Arts Roundup: June 5, 2014

  Play Now [5:51]

by Marianne Combs

June 05, 2014

Our Country's Good - by Timberlake Wertenbaker - b
Victoria Gee (Dabby Bryant), Cornelius Macarthy (Black Caesar), Sam Graham (John Arscott), Tom Andrews (John Wisehammer), David Newman (Robert Sideway), Nathan Ives-Moiba (Lt. Ralph Clark), Richard Neale (Ketch Freeman), Anna Tierney (Duckling Smith), Jessica Tomchak (Mary Brenham) and Kathryn O'Reilly (Liz Morden) in Out of Joint and Octagon Theatre Bolton's production of 'Our Country's Good' by Timberlake Wertenbaker.
Robert Workman

MPR News Arts Reporter Marianne Combs joins Jill Riley and Sean MacPherson (in for Steve Seel) to talk about amazing things happening in the arts this weekend.

Our Country's Good — The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis has brought in this production by England's Out of Joint and Octagon Theatre Bolton. Our Country's Good is set in 1789 and is about the staging of the first play ever to be performed in Australia — which, at that time, was a penal colony. This play-within-a-play looks at the humanity that the arts bring to our lives. Our Country's Good continues until June 29 on the Guthrie's McGuire Proscenium Stage.

Weill & Brecht: The Berlin Years — Singers Bradley Greenwald, Prudence Johnson, Diana Grasselli, violinist Gary Schulte, guitarist Brian Barnes and pianist Dan Chouinard perform in this program that features music that came out of the short-lived but remarkable collaboration of composer Kurt Weill (not to be confused with Kurt Vile) and playwright Bertolt Brecht in late 1920s Berlin. These concerts, held in Open Eye Figure Theatre's 90-seat house in Minneapolis, run June 5 to 8.

Ancestry Books grand opening — Co-founded by Chaun Webster and Verna Wong, Ancestry Books is a new bookshop located at the intersection of Penn and Lowry in North Minneapolis. Ancestry Books focuses on literary works by indigenous authors and authors of color. On Saturday, June 7, from noon to 2 p.m., Ancestry Books is celebrating its grand opening will food, live painting from Jordan Hamilton and live music from Toki Wright and Madkwe Ndosi. The bookstore opens its doors officially at 2 p.m.

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.