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Weekend Arts Roundup: Falling in Love with Art

by Marianne Combs

October 09, 2014

Romeo and Juliet
The Thousand Things staging of Romeo and Juliet is just one thing to love this Fall.
Ten Thousand Things

MPR News Arts Reporter Marianne Combs joins Steve Seel and Jill Riley to talk about a couple of live shows that involve a lot of onstage creation and improvisation.

For Art Lovers: St. Paul Art Crawl — This year the St. Paul Art Crawl continues to grow with more than 300 artists, 17 buildings, and in Lowertown, on University, Grand and various other locations in St. Paul. The St. Paul Art Crawl runs this weekend all across St. Paul.

For Book Lovers: Twin Cities Book Festival — The free book festival is a book lovers delight. The air filled with the scent of black type on paper, local publishers on hand, readings and talks all day with many authors stopping by. The book festival happensSaturday, Oct. 11, from 10am-5pm at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds.

For Nature Lovers: Tiger Lion Arts "Nature" — The Minnesota Landscape Arboretum hosts the walking play "Nature". The play unveils Emerson and Thoreau's mutual love affair with the natural world. The play wanders around outside with the sounds of nature and the words of Emerson and Thoreau, with the addition of music from bagpipes, ancient flutes, drums and rich choral arrangements.

For Lovers: Romeo and Juliet — Ten Thousand Things (known for putting on shows at prisons, homeless shelters, low-income housing and community centers) brings the tale of Romeo and Juliet to life. The leads, Anna Sundberg and Namir Smallwood, are two rising young stars in the theater world and should be great in these roles. The run for Romeo and Juliet begins this weekend at Open Book in Minneapolis and then moves to the MN Opera Center Oct. 30- Nov. 2.

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.