Time is so strange. 

The year 2015 seems like a lifetime ago, and it also feels like yesterday. That was the year marriage equality became law of the land after the U.S. Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges ruled that same-sex marriage was legal in all 50 states. I remember that moment so vividly, and yet the time before it seems so distantly far away. 

In “Sanctuary City,” a play by Martyna Majok, the characters can’t even imagine what national marriage equality might look like. It’s set in a post-9/11 landscape. Toward the end of the play, the characters mention that gay couples can now marry in Massachusetts after that state’s Supreme Court decision in 2004. But they can’t even conceive of a time when marriage would be legal in all 50 states. 

The characters also don’t talk about the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, a never-passed law that would have granted temporary residency to undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. as minors. And the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which has protected 500,000 undocumented people from getting deported and provided them legal work authorization since Barack Obama first initiated the program by executive order in 2012, hadn’t happened yet. 

I was feeling upset when I went to go see Frank Theatre’s production of the play. There’s just been a lot in the news that has been stressful, and the particular news article I read before heading to Open Eye Theater happened to be about the University of Minnesota saying that it will comply with court-backed ICE immigration orders. This, despite the U’s statement on its website saying, “we encourage and welcome all students to apply, regardless of immigration status.” (In response, University students, faculty, staff, and community members have started a petition). 

Because “Sanctuary City” is a period piece, I began to remember what it was like back in the aughts, before Obama became president, before DACA, before the Affordable Care Act, and before marriage equality. And yet while the play’s historical context is a key part of its framework, its resonance to our current political climate felt exceedingly present.

Majok’s play was set to have its world premiere off-Broadway in 2020, but was cancelled during previews because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It eventually opened at the Lucelle Lortel Theatre in 2021, and more recently had a run at Steppenwolf in Chicago in 2023. Now, Frank Theatre’s production at Open Eye takes place as the Trump administration unleashes executive orders targeting undocumented immigrants. 

I don’t know how to really talk about this play without letting one or two spoilers slip through, so please proceed reading with caution if that will irritate you. 

At the heart of the story are two people whose parents immigrated to the United States when they were young. With a bit of luck, one of them becomes a citizen before they turn 18 after their parent’s successful naturalization process. The other does not. If fate had taken a different turn, they might have fallen in love. Maybe they could have gotten married, which would have provided perhaps an easier pathway to citizenship for the friend who was undocumented. 

As I watched the first half of the story, I thought that was what was going to happen. The two characters plan a marriage of convenience, and for a moment I thought the narrative might turn into a plot like the 1990 Gérard Depardieu and Andie MacDowell movie “Green Card,” which I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve seen many times. As you may recall, in the movie, the two leads have a fake marriage in order to aid Gérard Depardieu’s immigration process, only to actually fall in love with each other. “Sanctuary City” is not that story though.

Majok constructs the play in two acts that are starkly different from each other in tone and structure. The first half of the play features two actors – Stephanie Anne Bertumen as G, and Clay Man Soo as B. The scenes are very short and go back and forth in time. We see very little furniture, and the actors employ miming to indicate the objects they interact with and the world that surrounds them. 

The lighting design, by Tony Stoeri, is stark, and Dan Dukich’s moody sound design creates a sense of urgency in Brechtian episodic mini-scenes. 

The scenes mostly take place in the apartment where B lives at first with his mother and then alone. Escaping the chaos of her mother’s abusive relationships, G becomes a frequent visitor, often entering B’s room through the fire escape. The audience watches a growing intimacy between the two friends, though something (it’s not revealed what, at first) prevents them from becoming romantic. 

In contrast to the minimalism of the first act, the play’s second act looks a lot more like realism. It takes place in the same apartment as the first act, but now the audience can see the furniture, and the whole set is lit. Instead of short scenes that employ repetition and time experimentation, Majok develops one longer scene with an Aristotelian arc and climax. The audience also gets introduced to a third character – a gay law student named Henry, played by Keivin Yang, who is B’s boyfriend. 

I’m not exactly sure why Majok divides the play into such structurally divergent halves. The only thing I can think of is that the first act’s episodic, experimental structure adds to a feeling of confusion the characters both feel. The uncertainty of their futures and of their relationships with each other is mirrored in a script that is at times difficult to follow. In contrast, everything is made clear and apparent in the second act, and the three people have nothing to do but hash things out between the three of them.

Honestly, I strongly disliked all three of the characters by the end of the play. While I could understand each of their grievances – with the world and with each other – I wasn’t able to root for any of them because of their rotating list of character flaws – whether that be bigotry and manipulation, dishonesty and insecurity, or bullying, depending on the character.

That’s not to say the actors weren’t good in the roles. I found each of them very believable, both before and after the structural break halfway through. 

At some point as I was watching the second act unfold, getting angrier and angrier at the three characters, I realized these people are all behaving badly because their situation is so impossible and ugly. In the world in which these characters lived, there were no good options for undocumented people who were brought to this country as children. There also weren’t good options for LGBTQ people who loved each other and wanted to marry. 

The one thing I did miss in their development was any cultural references or language. Majok, who immigrated to the U.S. from Poland herself, intentionally doesn’t specify in the script what country the characters are from, and doesn’t include any signifiers about their ethnicity. I understand why she might do this, but I also wondered about what we didn’t understand about  the characters with these layers unexplored.

In any case, the play, and Knox’s direction of it, did get me riled up enough to want to talk about the play afterwards, and has had me thinking about it since. As it has in the past, Frank Theatre has chosen a play that engages with a pressing issue at large, and asks its audience to grapple with ideas through the art of theater.

“Sanctuary City” runs Thursday, Feb. 6 (sold out), Friday, Feb. 7 and Saturday, Feb. 8 at 7:30 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 9 at 2 p.m., through Feb. 23 at Open Eye Theater, 506 E. 24th St., #3732, Minneapolis, $30. More information here.

Sheila Regan

Sheila Regan is a Twin Cities-based arts journalist. She writes MinnPost’s twice-weekly Artscape column. She can be reached at sregan@minnpost.com.

The post Exploring the life of the undocumented and gay in ‘Sanctuary City’ appeared first on MinnPost.

The inaugural Black Europe Film Festival of Minneapolis / Saint Paul, a showcase of Afrodescendant cinema from across Europe, debuts tomorrow through Sunday at various locations in Minneapolis. 

With feature films, shorts, documentaries and a 1930 silent Russian film called “Black Skin” about racism, accompanied by a live soundscape created by Dameun Strange, plus workshops and discussions, the festival spotlights diverse stories from Black European filmmakers. 

Lorenzo Fabbri, a professor at the University of Minnesota and founding director and curator of the festival, said he met founding and artistic director Kudjo Kuwornu 20 years ago, and the two have collaborated on a series of projects since, most recently Kuwornu’s film, “We Were Here,” which will have its U.S. premiere at the festival. 

Kuwornu first began organizing a traveling Black Italian Film Showcase. 

“In our conversations, we realized it would be compelling to expand the scope beyond Italy to provide a more comprehensive perspective on the Black diaspora in Europe and its cinema,” Fabbri told me in an email. 

They decided to focus the festival in Minneapolis, in part because the murder of George Floyd resonated deeply in Europe among Black communities. 

“It became an important moment of reckoning and connection between Black Europeans and Black Americans, especially between Black Europe and the Black Twin Cities,” Fabbri wrote. “So we wanted to do justice to that connection and further the conversations that are already happening between local and global Blackness.” 

My colleague Deanna Pistono interviewed four of the directors featured in the festival, including founding and artistic director Kuwornu, Daniela Yohannes and Julien Beramis, directors of the experimental film “Atopias,” and Adura Onashile, who wrote and directed the film “Girl.” 

Related: Writers and directors show show the diversity and complexity of Black Europeans through the medium of film

Meanwhile, read on to see my responses to four other films in the festival – romantic comedy “The Black Sea,” a coming of age film, “After the Long Rains,” psychological thriller and science fiction fantasy, “The Gravity” and the performative documentary “Edelweiss.”  

U.S. premiere of “Edelweiss” followed by Q&A with director Anna Gaberscik (U.S./Austria)

Part documentary, part spoken word performance, part experimental film, “Edelweiss,” by Anna Gaberscik takes its name from the white flower found in the alps, as well as the song about that flower in the musical “The Sound of Music.” The film follows various people of color living in Vienna as they talk about their experiences with micro-aggressions and racism. In an opening sequence, spoken word poetry is heard as a voiceover as the cast pose and move in studio and outdoor settings. There are dance sequences, a dramatized nightclub scene, and a scene where several of the group gather at the Alps and take in the immense beauty of the setting.

I found myself most drawn to the interview portions of the film and hearing some of the stories and experiences of folks who live and make their lives in Austria. As I watched, it struck me that some of their experiences resonated with what I’ve heard from people here in Minnesota. Racism and anti-Blackness may look different depending on geography and context, but there’s a lot likely is similar in different settings. 

Thursday, Jan. 30 at 7:30 p.m. at The Main 3, 115 S.E. Main St., Minneapolis ($12). More information here. 

Minnesota Premiere of “After the Long Rains” plus Q&A with director Damien Hauser (Switzerland/Kenya)

Zurich-based filmmaker Damien Hauser sets his third feature film in Watamu, a coastal town in Kenya, and focuses the story on a young girl named Aisha, played by Eletricer Kache Hamisi. A bit dreamy, and a bit contrary, Aisha has an independent streak, and can’t seem to help following her curiosity wherever it happens to lead. When her school teacher gives the class an assignment to find out what they want to be when they grow up, it sparks a journey of both self-discovery and intergenerational connection for the young protagonist. 

In the story, Aisha befriends a fisherman named Hassan (played by Bosco Baraka Karisa,) and he helps nurture her dreams of becoming a fisherwoman herself. The two develop an unlikely and tender relationship, but there are a couple of problems. One is her parents disapprove of both the relationship and her choice of extra-curricular activity. The other related problem is that Hassan is an alcoholic.

Hauser handles the nuances of the relationship between the two characters with care. He doesn’t shy away from potential dangers such a relationship might face. There’s one scene where Aisha sits with Hassan and his friend late into the night while they drink. Thankfully, nothing bad happens in that scene, but it also doesn’t seem like a good situation. 

At the same time, Hauser explores the positives of their growing admiration for each other, and their capacity to impact each other deeply. The tragedy of the film is the way in which Hassan’s addiction gets in the way of his desire to be a mentor to his new friend. 

It’s a beautifully shot film, with a compelling soundtrack and intriguing characters. Really what makes this film is Hamisi herself, who is so captivating as a performer you can’t take your eyes off of her. 

Friday, Jan. 31 at 5 p.m. at the Main 3, 115 S.E. Main St., Minneapolis ($12). More information here. 

Minnesota premiere of “The Gravity” plus Q&A with director Cedric Ido (France/Burkina Faso)

Burkinabe-French director Cédric Ido came out with “The Gravity” in 2022, but in a stroke of coincidence, the film happens to use a planetary alignment as a central event in the story, which is the same astrological phenomenon that is currently taking place in our night skies. 

The story takes place in a crime-ridden Parisian suburb, and involves a clash between an older generation of criminals and a new younger gang that has taken over a housing project. The new group is very well organized, they wear matching outfits, exhibit cult-like behavior and hold the upcoming planetary alignment with religious fervor. I found them to be terrifying.

Daniel (Max Gomis), is a competitive track and field runner, and is doing his best to escape the ghetto and start fresh in North American with his wife and daughter. But emotional ties to his drug dealing disabled brother, Joshua, (Steve Tientcheu), make leaving difficult. Meanwhile, their former childhood friend Christophe (Jean-Baptiste Anoumon), whose own brother died when Joshua was injured, arrives following a stint in prison to complicate Daniel’s exit. 

The earth’s gravitational pull, somehow strongly impacted by the planetary parade, proves to be the metaphorical focal point for the film, in addition to being a main supernatural element. I was biting my nails for much of the story, and found myself satisfyingly surprised by the twists Ido takes along the way. 

Friday, Jan. 31 at 7:30 p.m. at The Main 3, 115 S.E. Main St., Minneapolis ($12). More information here.

Minnesota Premiere of “The Black Sea” plus Q&A with director/lead actor Derrick B. Hardin (U.S.)

I found “The Black Sea” by Crystal Moselle and Derrick B. Harden to be so charming, and a lot of it had to do with the chemistry of the two leads – Harden – who plays Khalid, an African American from Brooklyn who in a twist of fate finds himself in Bulgaria, and Irmena Chichikova as Ina, a world-weary travel agent who hasn’t quite given up on her dreams. 

Khalid quits his coffee shop job in Brooklyn and heads to Bulgaria with the promises of an all-expenses paid vacation courtesy of an older woman who found him on Facebook. Unfortunately things don’t turn out as planned when he loses his passport and the would-be romantic transaction gets thwarted by fate. Suddenly, he finds himself in a country where he doesn’t speak the language, he has no money, and he’s the only Black person in the entire town. 

Moselle and Harden use the premise to explore dynamics of race and class in the European setting of the movie, while also exploring Khalid’s search for meaning and fulfillment far away from what he knows. Of course you can tell the romance developing from a mile away, but that’s part of the fun. Watching Khalid and Ina learn to trust each other and discover what they each want out of life is a joy to watch because the two actors have such an easy presence together. 

Pre-show reception featuring Southern comfort food from Tap In Kitchen & Cocktails.

Saturday, Feb. 1 at 7:30 p.m. at Capri Theater, 2027 W. Broadway, Minneapolis ($11.63). More information here. 

Other not-to-miss events during the festival: 

THURSDAY Jan. 30 | 4:30 p.m. | Main Cinema | More Info/Tickets
Free Short Film Program on the Black Caribbeans plus Q&A with “Atopias” director/lead actress Daniela Yohannes (Eritrea/Ethiopia/France) and director Julien Beramis (France/Guadalupe)

SUNDAY Feb. 2 | 11a.m. | Cedar Cultural Center | More Info/Tickets
Short Film Program on Somali diaspora + Q&A with directors Salad Hilowle (Sweden), Warda Mohamed (UK), and Abdulkadir Ahmed Said (Somalia)

SUNDAY Feb. 2 | 2 p.m. | Minneapolis Institute of Art | More Info/Tickets
Free Film Program on Black Lives in Painting plus Q&A with directors Salad Hilowle and Fred Kuwornu (Italy)

Free receptions: 
Thursday, 6:30 p.m. | Main Cinema | Afro-fusion catering (Afro Deli)
Friday, 6:30 p.m. | Main Cinema | Pizza happy hour (Tommie’s Pizza)
Saturday, 6:30 p.m. | Capri Theater | Soul food (Tap In Kitchen & Cocktails)
Sunday, 6 p.m. | Main Cinema | East African food (The Red Sea)

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Toussaint Francois Battiste has accomplished quite a lot for being only 12 years old. 

The talented youngster has acted on Broadway, co-starting with his father, Francois Battiste. He’s performed in “Waiting for Godot” along with Michael Shannon and Paul Sparks, and he’s acting in the upcoming Apple TV series “The Savant” with Jessica Chastain. This month, he stars in “Milo Imagines the World,” a musical adaptation of the children’s book by writer Matt de la Peña and illustrator Christian Robinson. 

Co-commissioned by Children’s Theatre Company (CTC) and two other theaters, the musical features a book by Terry Guest, lyrics by Christian Albright, and music by Christian Magby. The story follows a boy named Milo, who imagines the lives of people he meets on a subway train, and realizes people are not always what they seem.  

I met with Battiste and his mom, Shevawn Nicole Battiste (and two siblings), recently at CTC for an interview. They live in Sacramento with their large extended family on Beacham’s side, and travel depending on the elder Francois’ acting calendar. 

As I walked into the dance studio, Battiste was playing an Adele tune on the piano. I asked him if he took lessons, he said he just learned to play on his own. Beacham told me when her son was about three or four, he started tinkering at the keyboard, and learned to play “Happy Birthday” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” 

“He has a natural ear,” she told me. “We just made sure he had the tools he needed to explore that.” 

He’s also a gifted artist, and has a penchant for science experiments. I had a great time chatting with him, and I hope you’ll enjoy the conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity. 

Sheila Regan: I’d love to ask you about your theater history. Do you remember the first play you saw? 

Touissant Francois Battiste: “The Gruffalo.” I was four years old, and we were running late to see the show. 

SR: Where did you see it? 

TFB: In London. Near … what type of square was it? 

Shevawn Nicole Battiste: Trafalgar Square 

TFB: We passed by a toy store. Mom said since we were late to see the show we would probably see it when we got back. I didn’t want to wait, so the second we got to a stop light, I took off across two streets, all the way back to the toy store. 

SR: Wow, that sounds like an ordeal. What did you like about the play? 

TFB: Honestly, I don’t remember. 

SR: When did you decide you wanted to act yourself? 

TFB: When I saw my dad do it. I said, I want to be like my dad. 

SR: When did you first see your dad on stage? 

TFB: It was “Raisin in the Sun.” I saw it the first time, and then I was in it with him. There’s a part in the play where the person my dad plays gets called a toothless rat. I yelled out to the crowd when I heard that. “My daddy is not a toothless rat!” 

SR: So how did you get the part when you acted in the play? 

TFB: So, my dad got the audition for the play to play the exact same person he played the first time, Walter Lee Younger. And they were still looking for Travis Younger, Walter’s son. They contacted my dad and asked him if there was anybody he knew that wanted to try it, so he asked me, and I said yes. So I put myself on tape, and I got it. 

SR: What was that experience like? 

TFB: It was the best. 

SR: What made it so awesome? 

TFB: Well, partly because my dad was playing my dad in the play, and it was just super cool. The cast was really, really fun to work with.

SR: And have you done many plays since then? 

TFB: I’ve only done one other play since then, which is “Waiting  for Godot.”

SR: How do you manage school and being in plays? 

TFB: It’s really tough. Mom and Dad help out with that, because I’m homeschooled. They’re my teachers as well.

SR: Now you’re playing Milo. Did you read the book before you read the script? 

TFB: Guess what? 

SR: What? 

TFB: I got the book for Christmas. It was really cool. 

SR: Can you tell me the story?

TFB:  Basically, Milo – he and his older sister, Adrian, are getting ready to hop on the subway. They’re on the subway to go visit their mom who is incarcerated. While they’re on the subway, it’s Milo imagining the lives of other people, and he expresses what he thinks their lives are like through his drawings. Because he loves to draw.

SR: That’s pretty cool. Do you draw yourself?

TFB: I do. I like to draw dinosaurs. I think I brought my sketchbook. 

SR: I would love to see it. 

TFB: It’s not my best one. It’s still a work in progress.

SR: Is Milo kind of a different person than you? 

TFB: Actually, we’re kind of the same, because we both are imaginative. We both have a sister who’s annoying. In this case, I have a brother and a sister (who) can be a little annoying. And yeah, we both like to draw. We both have very imaginative minds, and we both like to cause mischief.

SR: If you were gonna tell someone a few tips to being a good actor, what would you tell them?

TFB: Don’t go completely out of your way to try to fit into a character, just try your best. Don’t try to become somebody completely different. It’s OK to mess up, because I’ve messed up countless times, and it always turns out OK. 

SR: How do they create the magic of the play? 

TFB: Well, they’re gonna have an actual subway car, and they’re gonna put it on a track, and so the train can go off stage to the left, or off stage to the right.   

SR: What’s your favorite part in the play? 

TFB: I don’t have a favorite, I like them all, but if I had to choose one, I’d say maybe the opening scene because I turn into a superhero in my imagination, and I have to fight this big old T-Rex. 

SR: Do you have to do stage combat? 

TFB: Yeah. 

SR: Have you ever done stage combat before? 

TFB: We’ve had fight scenes, but not really combat. This is another level. But it’s fairly easy compared with what I had to do in a TV show that’s coming out – it’s called “Savant” and stars Jessica Chastain. I was playing her son, and I had to have a fight scene. 

SR: What’s the plot of the movie? 

TFB: The plot in the movie is the person who Jessica plays; she infiltrates online chat groups to seek out  domestic terrorists. 

SR: What’s your character like? 

TFB: He is kind of my age, and he’s like everything you would expect from a 12-year-old kid.

SR: What’s the most significant thing that’s happened in your life so far? 

TFB: Being an actor. 

SR: Does your dad help you with your acting? 

TFB: Yes, he helps me with vocal warm ups. And helps me to get in mind states and get prepared for a show. 

SR: What does that mean? 

TFB: If you’re supposed to feel really sad, he helps me get into a sad state. If you’re supposed to be really, really overjoyed or mad, he helps me get into some of those mind states. 

SR: How do you like working with the people at the Children’s Theatre? 

TFB: Words just can’t explain how cool it is to work with these people. They’re just so fun to work with, and we have the best time together. 

SR: I imagine, often you’re working with adults. Do you have folks that are your age? 

TFB: Well, my understudy for this play, his name is Cortlan. He’s a year older than me, but he and I hang out, like a lot together. And when I was doing “Raisin in the Sun,” I split the role between myself and another boy named Camden. He was so fun. We both liked to draw. We got puzzles that we would do backstage.

“Milo Imagines the World” begins previews Feb. 4 through Feb. 11 at 7 p.m. Opening night is Feb. 12 at 7 p.m., with the run through March 9 ($15-$25 previews, $15-$68 run) at the Children’s Theatre Company, 2400 3rd Ave. S., Minneapolis. More information here.

Editor’s Note: Shevawn Nicole Battiste was incorrectly referred to as Shevawn Nicole Beacham in an earlier version.

Sheila Regan

Sheila Regan is a Twin Cities-based arts journalist. She writes MinnPost’s twice-weekly Artscape column. She can be reached at sregan@minnpost.com.

The post Toussaint Francois Battiste stars in CTC’s ‘Milo Imagines the World’ appeared first on MinnPost.

Mirror Lab, the unassuming storefront gallery in South Minneapolis on Cedar Avenue, is the kind of place where anything can happen. From music shows to gallery exhibitions plus performance art, cinema, puppetry and more, it’s a gathering space for offbeat, non-mainstream offerings. 

This past weekend, I was delighted to encounter Munir Kahar’s surrealist paintings and drawings before he heads to Indonesia for an artist residency. Kahar has been returning more often to his home country of late, first in 2019 for the first time since he moved to the United States in 2000, and again for 18 months beginning in 2022. Here in Minnesota, his creativity spans a number of spheres, from curating his “Beyond Wednesdays” experimental performance and music series to his work with Barebones, projects with the Art Shanty Projects, music performances and more. 

Mysterious creatures from the land and sea populate Kahar’s imaginative worlds, as do marvelous plants, floating eyeballs, fantastical architecture and forms that make a kind of dream sense. Lovingly deliberate in his mark-making, Kahar invites the viewer into a higher plane of existence, perhaps, or at least a place where things look quite strange and extraordinary. 

You can see the work through Jan. 25 at Mirror Lab, 3400 Cedar Ave. S., Mpls. (free). More information here.

After that, watch out for the next cool thing at Mirror Lab, “Tristan Tzara Was My Best Friend in Junior High” — an immersive dinner party/ritual designed by the avant garde poet Tristan Tzara. It was written by Savannah Reich, who is based in West Philadelphia but has ties here in the Twin Cities, in collaboration with Jon Cole and Lauren Anderson.

The original iteration of the show was developed at the former Bedlam Theater and now comes to life re-envisioned with a slightly different title. Reich has a sly sense of humor in her writing, finding the magic in both the mundane and the preposterous. Her frequent collaborator Jon Cole, one of Twin Cities’ most understated comic actors, performs with Sulia Altenberg in the show.

Thursday, Jan. 30, at 7 p.m. with light meal ($25) and Friday, Jan. 31, at 7:30 p.m. with full meal ($40) at Mirror Lab, plus two sold-out performances. 3400 Cedar Ave. S., Mpls. More information here.

Sheila Regan

Sheila Regan is a Twin Cities-based arts journalist. She writes MinnPost’s twice-weekly Artscape column. She can be reached at sregan@minnpost.com.

The post Step into the Mirror Lab with artists Munir Kahar and Savannah Reich appeared first on MinnPost.

In “Dearest Earth, Darkest Sky” at Dreamsong Gallery, artist David Goldes gives us stark, harrowing landscapes that seem like they could be views of the apocalypse if they weren’t drawn from the horrors of the world today. 

Layering molding paste, acrylic and graphite onto paper, Goldes’ sculptural mixed media works evoke images we see on the news of wars around the world and speak to the cavalcade of global pandemics, fascism and environmental disaster we face. This is work that leans into the bleak state of things. 

I stopped into the exhibit on a blistery cold night last Friday. It was the weekend before the inauguration, and Israel had just agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza. I felt a sense of looming change in the air. 

In one piece, “Telling Surfaces” (2024), Goldes uses textured scratch marks to create the earth with giant craters opening up in two places. The sky above is foreboding with splotchy, misty black clouds. Goldes drew on images of Gaza’s landscape after an Israeli bombing attack.“I thought it was time to move away from abstraction,” he told me. “I mean, there’s so much in the world.” 

Goldes’ previous solo show at Dreamsong featured his graphite drawings through which he ran electrical currents, creating singe marks. “Dearest Earth, Darkest Sky” features two drawings with burnt edges of that earlier body of work, but for the most part the show veers into an entirely new direction. “I’m not a painter,” Goldes told me. “I’m not coming from painting. So this was a big surprise for me, and it was exciting to try.”

Starting with a piece of paper, Goldes uses a spatula to layer on molding paste and acrylic, and eventually adds graphite to the surface. 

I’ve often wondered when an artist decides when it’s time to move on from a particular set of techniques to something new. He told me that in this case for him, the beginnings of the change were when he was in Paris in 2023 and went to see a retrospective of Mark Rothko paintings at the Fondation Louis Vuitton. He was struck by the last paintings in particular, in a room that featured black and white paintings Rothko created at the end of his life before his death by suicide. To Goldes, the paintings looked like landscapes. 

In “Earth Memory” (2024), a plume erupts from the ground, spewing jaggedy lines into the gray sky. It’s somewhat more ambiguous than the bomb site pieces. The image could be an explosion, but it also could be oil shooting out of the earth.

Other paintings are even more elusive in their meaning. “From Above” features a floating object that looks like it could be the shape of a tooth. Goldes told me people who visited the gallery thought it looked like anything from a meteor to a tooth, or perhaps a life form from another place. Whatever the thing is, it’s quite ominous, floating in wait in the air. 

I think my favorite piece in the show is one of the two that used Goldes’ electrical current technique. In “From Sky to Earth” (2024), Goldes paints a landscape that is ripped right through the paper with a burned out chasm. This portal could go anywhere- perhaps to some hellish place, or maybe an alternate reality that doesn’t look quite so stark. I’d like to go there if I could.

“Dearest Earth, Darkest Sky” runs through March 1 at Dreamsong Gallery, 1237 4th St. NE, Mpls. Regular hours are Wed.-Sat., 12-5 p.m. (free). More information here.

Sheila Regan

Sheila Regan is a Twin Cities-based arts journalist. She writes MinnPost’s twice-weekly Artscape column. She can be reached at sregan@minnpost.com.

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Mary Prescott’s formal training was strictly as a classical pianist, but somewhere along the way, her practice became much more expansive than that one particular form. Skilled in piano improvisation and experimentation, Prescott’s art form has grown to incorporate movement, video work, and writing. She used all of those forms for a piece she performed at Public Functionary in 2023 called “Tida,” creating an immersive, dreamlike space of music, movement and projections. Last February, Prescott held her audience at Icehouse rapt for her wistfully erratic impromptu pieces. 

Based in New York and Minnesota, the Thai-American artist will be returning to Public Functionary on Jan. 30 for a sold-out event that’s a part of The Great Northern, called “Mother Tongue.” It’s a screening of a short documentary the artist created that explores cultural narratives around food, followed by a conversation and culinary samples. Before that, she’s performing “Lucent Ground” on Friday, Jan. 24 at Berlin, weaving folklore and music with collaborator Kengchakaj. For “Lucent Ground,” Prescott’s work in voice, piano, percussion, found sounds and video comes together with Kengchakaj’s electronic processing, and Thai-tuned Moog synthesizer. 

Prescott’s interdisciplinary impulses started early. She never trained as a dancer, but always wanted to, until she was 14 and was told she was too old to train in ballet. But she did write outside of music, and took writing classes during college. “I think the rigidity of the classical music world made me want to rebel, I guess you could say,” she told me in an interview.

During her college years, earning piano performance degrees from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, and Manhattan School of Music, Prescott began realizing a life as a classical pianist wasn’t exactly the right path. “Everybody’s playing the same music, and they’re all judging each other on how well or not well they play that same music,” she said. “It’s full of judgment, and I was kind of not interested in that anymore.” 

A new path revealed itself after Prescott founded a summer music program in Vermont with her friend Akiko Sasaki. Through the experience, Prescott got to know Sasaki’s husband, jazz pianist and composer Jesse Stacken, who grew up in Hopkins. “Jesse and I were always talking about music, and he had an improvisation a day project, and I was inspired by that,” she said. 

She decided to do an improvisation a day project herself, except from the perspective as a classical, rather than a jazz pianist. “I’m gonna just forget everything that I know as best as I can, and I’m gonna try to just let go of my preconceptions about what good is and then get into it that way,” she said. 

Every day, Prescott recorded herself improvising, and posted it online. “Doing that project made me think so differently about what I had done with my whole life and my whole creative process, and just what music was or could be,” she said. 

Eventually, Prescott realized she wanted to move away from classical music altogether, including her teaching work. She began performing improvised piano, and then she was awarded a residency at Arts, Letters & Numbers in upstate New York where instead of devoting her time to music, she began to make videos, and taught herself video editing using Final Cut Pro. She’s found ways to bring dance into her work as well, without formal training. 

“I think being a musician helps, because there’s already a natural rhythm in the body,” she said. Piano playing is a kind of choreography of the hands, with detailed, micro movements, she reasoned. “Maybe it’s just a translation to the larger body.” 

For her performance this week, Prescott is bringing New York-based Thai musician Kengchakaj for a one-night show. The two performed “Lucent Ground” a year ago in New York, and are giving it another go. “I just really wanted to bring Kengchakaj here,” Prescott said. 

Then on January 30, Prescott is featured in the Great Northern Festival, which opens this weekend. The festival takes place over 10 days and is chock full of performances, dining pop-ups, dialogues around issues like climate change and outdoor activities, including a sauna village. 

Prescott’s event, “Mother Tongue,” is a kind of precursor to a large-scale performance piece coming to the festival in 2026, “Ancestral Table.” The future work will explore the connections between climate, migration, and cultural legacy through Thai family recipes, and will feature performance and video as well as a shared family meal. 

This year, “Mother Tongue,” brought together a number of artists and community leaders who shared dishes from their cultural inheritance with each other last fall. Prescott is cooking Thai dishes for the project, with help from her mother. “She is not going to be on stage, but she is gonna be cooking with me to prepare the food,” she said.

In September, Prescott invited 5 guests to join her for a special dinner. Among them were dancer/choreographer José Luis,  theater and visual artist Ifrah Mansour, museum leader Kate Beane, writer Kao Kalia Yang, and visual artist Eyenga Bokamba. Each person brought a dish that represented their cultural heritage, and told a story about it. “There’s so many stories that are told through food,” Prescott said. 

At the dinner, Mansour told a story about her refugee Somali family, and how they packed the press that made canjeero (a kind of Somali pancake) first and foremost. Beane made an indigenized version of the Minnesota classic tater tot hot dish with wild rice and buffalo, Bokamba made a Congolese dish made with chicken, tomato and spinach over rice, while Luis made shredded chicken on tostadas. Yang made Hmong egg rolls, and Prescott made curry puffs, her mom’s specialty. 

“Everybody who came to this meal was so sweet and so generous with their story and their food and about sharing and tasting and asking questions,” Prescott said. She documented the dinner, and will be screening the film followed by a discussion with some of the participants.  

Prescott’s performance at Berlin takes place Friday, Jan. 24 at 8 p.m. at Berlin, 204 North First St., Mpls. ($15-$25). More information here. While “Mother Tongue” is sold out, you can peruse the other happenings as part of the Great Northern here. Among the events are a performance by two-spirit singer and composer Jeremy Dutcher called “Motewolonuwok” on Friday Jan. 24 at 7 p.m., and a screening of “The Last of the Sea Women,” a documentary about the haenyeo divers of South Korea’s Jeju Island who, in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, are doing their part to protect the ocean floor. It screens Saturday, Feb. 1 at 7 p.m. at The Main Cinema, 115 SE Main St., Mpls. ($15). More information here.

Editor’s note: An earlier edition of this article indicated Prescott’s Jan. 30 show is at the Icehouse. It is at the Public Functionary.

Sheila Regan

Sheila Regan is a Twin Cities-based arts journalist. She writes MinnPost’s twice-weekly Artscape column. She can be reached at sregan@minnpost.com.

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At the center of “Super Deluxe,” an exhibition featuring the work of Cameron Patricia Downey at Midway Contemporary Art, hovers a black limousine that rests on four blocks, situated underneath the gallery’s exposed structural steel. The automobile acts as a central focal point and symbolic heart of Downey’s body of work that both celebrates and interrogates the meaning of luxury within the Black community. 

Born and raised in north Minneapolis, Downey is an alum of Juxtaposition Arts – the north Minneapolis teen-staffed art center – and a graduate of Columbia University. Their work has been shown and acquired by the Walker Art Center, they’ve exhibited in the Twin Cities, around the country and beyond, and they’ve had a solo museum exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara. On Jan. 16, Downey opens their first solo exhibition in Italy at a gallery called T293. The next day, Downey is featured in a group show at Hair + Nails’ gallery in New York. You can also still catch “Super Deluxe” through Jan. 25. 

An anti-disciplinary artist, Downey uses a range of mediums in pursuit of art that layers together theory, culture, personal history and social commentary. “Super Deluxe” uses materials like linoleum and vintage lamps to relish in the material meaning of luxury. There’s a sideways “Wheel of Fortune” homage, a collection of colored wigs connected to a video game dance pad, and a photograph of a figure in a pinstriped suit and a white wide-brimmed hat stretched out in the back seat of a limousine.

Reflecting on the exhibition, Taylor Jasper, an assistant curator at the Walker, noted Downey’s work engages with visual languages that are “both deeply personal and broadly resonant, but also rooted in cultural signifiers that evoke the complexities of Blackness.” 

The comment was made in a conversation between Jasper and Downey last week at the gallery. The conversation ranged from the blues and repetition to consumerism and the eroticism of particular materials. In the dialogue, Downey said the gallery was originally built to store limousines, and that their great grandfather had been a chauffeur in St. Louis. They recalled learning how to drive a 2001 Dodge Caravan on the edge of its life. 

“I remember, even in that setting, against all odds, my mom being in the passenger seat and imparting upon me little tips and tricks as to how to make the ride the smoothest and the most luxurious for the people riding in it,” Downey said.  

Their mother would tell Downey stories of her grandfather’s car, which had automatic windows, a rarity at the time. Downey also found out their father was a limo driver at one point as well. 

“I think I’m always interested in cars,” Downey said. 

Downey said they approached the object in the show with a feeling of being OK with their own desire toward them. 

“Since luxury is this recurring theme, I think surfaces and veneers and adornments are something that show up again and again,” Downey said. “Flooring as being like the basis for the home space is a really interesting thing, but then linoleum is something else all together, because you actually have to have a floor to have linoleum – it isn’t the floor itself. It’s just like the signifier that there’s a floor there.” 

In “McMansioner,” (2024), Downey creates a geometric sculpture using wood and steel, wrapped in brown linoleum. The piece separates itself from the conventional use of linoleum, as something you put on the floor, and elevates it into a kind of monument. The piece seems to marvel at the linoleum for its place in memory and stories and also finds a new narrative for it.

In a pair of hanging sculptures called “NowandLater” I and II (2024) made from plastic-covered ice pops and other snacks like pork rinds, pickle and hot fries, Downey transforms the food item into glimmering adornment with the help of acrylic and epoxy.

The artist got the idea working on a commission for Metro Transit, and the sweet frozen treats were offered on a day of working.

“I was just struck by how elegant and beautiful these really modular things are that are just sugar water,” Downey said. They noticed how the treats were both a delicacy and immensely accessible. “I love that light passes through it.”

At the end of the talk-back last week, an audience member asked if Downey felt conflicted about having to consume to make work. Downey responded that they consider themselves a Facebook Marketplace warrior, and is drawn to objects that have had a previous life.

“I get to engage with this haunting by using an object that has lived or has existed at different points in time,” they said. “Inherently, there are some specters present. And I think that, for me, connects back to memory being this really unstable breeding ground for making work.” 

In a way, the work moves between nostalgia and a reshaping of memories and materials into new forms. “Super Deluxe” both delights in the ghosts of desire from a past time and context, and asks what new truths these memories can shape into the future. 

“Super Deluxe” is open through Jan. 25 at Midway Contemporary Art, 1509 N.E. Marshall St., Minneapolis. Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. More information here. 

Sheila Regan

Sheila Regan is a Twin Cities-based arts journalist. She writes MinnPost’s twice-weekly Artscape column. She can be reached at sregan@minnpost.com.

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I took a jaunt out to the Sheraton Bloomington Hotel to see the Mystery Café for the first time. It’s actually been around for decades, and I’d long heard about the company, which mixes comedy and theater with an audience interactive element and dinner. This season, the company offered four different plays, and I went to see “Alma Murder: A Killer Class Reunion” as my entry point. 

From the very beginning, the conceit of the show is that you aren’t just watching a play, you’re a participant. Two actors, Rita Boersma and Paul Somers – who played school staff members – greeted my partner and I, smiling and telling us we didn’t look at all different from what they remembered. We were shown to our table and advised to write our names and graduation years, and place our meal choices at the top of our place settings. 

What followed was about an hour and a half experience framed around a high school reunion, complete with characters such as the former football quarterback, prom queen, school nerd, and various staff members filling up the story. It’s a broad comedy performed by an able cast of experienced comedic actors, with the curves to the plot thrown in just before each course of the meal is served. Audience members became part of the story throughout the show, and were called on to solve the murder at the end, with prizes offered to whoever correctly guessed the villain. 

The group has had a number of different locations over the years – the Venetian Inn, the supper club that closed in 2001, Benchwarmer Bob’s in Burnsville and Nicklow’s. Now they perform at Majestic Oaks Golf Club in Ham Lake, where they’ve been for 13 years, and the Sheraton in Bloomington, the group’s newest location. 

“Most of the places we’ve historically been at don’t exist anymore,” said proprietor Brian Kelly. “The supper clubs and things like that are just a thing of the past, so it’s been a little difficult finding a home, and the pandemic certainly didn’t help that.” 

Kelly took ownership of The Mystery Café in 2016 from previous owner Lee H. Adams.

“The history is that The Mystery Café was born in Boston in 1988,” Kelly told me. “Adams was one of the creators of that Boston version of the show. In 1989, he moved to Minneapolis and started the Mystery Café here.” He noted that while the original Boston Mystery Café has franchised the business, the Minnesota version is independently owned and operated. 

Kelly’s been acting with the troupe since 1994. 

“It was one of my first professional gigs,” he said. Kelly’s career has long centered in the comedy and improv world, with ComedySportz being his first entry point. 

“ComedySportz taught me that I was maybe funny,” he said. “The Mystery Café taught me chops.” His career has also included acting in more than one production of “Tony & Tina’s Wedding” and “Triple Espresso.” 

When he first took over the company, Kelly figured he could cast himself in the shows, but quickly realized the production side of things took up more of his time, and it was best if he had an understudy role. He does generally come up with the concepts for the different shows, and writes the scripts, often with a co-writer. 

“I’m always working with somebody else, because I find that there’s a much better bank of ideas,” he said. “And I have no ego about the thing. I just want the best idea.” 

A lot of the actors in the show are folks who’ve been at this for a long time and have got chops not only in playing off each other, but playing off the audience as well. Gene Larche was particularly funny playing multiple characters.

It’s all very interactive. The actors double as servers, and they also come up to your table at various points in the show. You can even bribe them (with fake money) to get more information.

“It’s very interactive, and in that way, it’s not necessarily directed at the average theater goer,” Kelly said. “I like to think of it as being kind of a gateway to people who maybe don’t do a lot of theater. I get a lot of people coming up to me who say, ‘My partner dragged me to this and I wasn’t sure, but you guys are really funny. I really enjoyed it.’ And ideally, they’ll go to see other theater (performances) as well.”  

Sitting at my table were two super-audience members, Sarra and Candice Beckham-Chasnoff. They’ve been married for 30 years and had just celebrated their anniversary. They have been going to theater in the Twin Cities since 1999, when they took their daughter to a Shakespeare production in the park. Their daughter ended up becoming an actor, and the couple stepped up their theater-watching game when she was in high school. 

“She went off to college, and then when we were empty nesters, so we started just going to a lot of theater every week,” Candice Beckham-Chasnoff told me. “We ended up following a bunch of actors in town.” The two see about three shows a week, and have twice won the Beverlee Award, at the Minnesota Fringe Festival for their endurance theater watching-abilities. 

Like the Beckham-Chasnoffs, the Mystery Café tends to get repeat customers, who come not just for the story presented in the play, but the added experience this kind of interactive performance offers. 

“Alma Murder: A Killer Class Reunion” runs for three more shows: Friday, Jan. 17, Saturday, Jan. 18, and Friday, Jan. 31 at the Sheraton Bloomington Hotel, 5601 W. 78th St. Tickets are $78. More information here.

The company’s other show, “Til Death Do Us Die,” has shows Fri., Jan 17 at 7 p.m., and Sunday, Jan. 25 at 12 p.m., at Majestic Oaks Golf Club, 701 Bunker Lake Blvd. N.E., Ham Lake. More information here.

Sheila Regan

Sheila Regan is a Twin Cities-based arts journalist. She writes MinnPost’s twice-weekly Artscape column. She can be reached at sregan@minnpost.com.

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Ben Barnes is finally making his music dreams come to life after first finding success in film and television roles like Prince Caspian in the “Narnia” movies, the Darkling in Netflix’s “Shadow and Bone” series, and villain Logan Delos in “Westworld.” The 43-year-old British artist released his first EP, “Songs for You,” in 2021, and is starting his tour of his full-length album, “Where the Light Gets In,” which gets its release on Jan. 10. Produced by Sam Farrar of Maroon 5 and drummer Paul Hamilton, the album features Barnes’ pensive, hopeful songwriting. He’s heading to Minneapolis as part of his U.S. tour on Jan. 21. at the Fine Line. 

Here’s an interview with Barnes. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Sheila Regan: Doing the acting thing and the touring musician thing must be fairly complicated just in terms of scheduling your tour amidst shoots. How do you work that out? 

Ben Barnes: It is complicated, is the answer. I’ve just been shooting for the last four months a new TV show based on a Stephen King novel called “The Institute.” I was in Canada shooting that, and the whole time we were sort of prepping and planning the tour. I think generally that December, January, February tend to be quiet in terms of new projects starting up. So I just made the decision four or five months ago, before I started filming, that that would be the time for the tour, and if anything came in, movie wise or whatever, then I was just going to take this time for me and for music and for the tour. This has been a dream I put off for over 20 years. It’s important sometimes to do something for yourself and to make space for the things. 

SR: Congratulations about “Where the Light” gets in it.  You had an EP in 2021 – “Songs for You,” but this new one is your first full-length album? 

BB: Yeah,I released the EP during the pandemic, which was sort of done all very remotely, and people were sending in instrument recordings from all over the place, and then it was sort of put together. There were songs I’d written completely by myself at the piano. Music can be such a collaborative endeavor, and so to make a full album, it was so wonderful to be able to write songs and collaborate with people, to be able to have producers in a studio, a whole band in a room coming up with ideas of little riffs or whatever. And I think that my favorite kind of music is played by bands of musicians, and so it was a real treat to be able to finally do it that way. 

SR: How did you get connected to Sam Farrar? 

BB: I actually met him through James Valentine (also of Maroon 5). James and I met in a gym in Los Angeles, and he had seen some covers on the internet that I had done with a band called Scary Pockets, which is an LA based band, and  think has played with them as well, and he had seen them, and knew me from that, and I think from some of my acting stuff. He stopped me to talk about that, and then I reflectively geeked out over him being such an amazing guitar player, and he sort of walked off. And then I just thought to myself, I’m trying to do music here. What am I doing? Allowing this man to walk away? So I chased after him and said, I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’d ever want to try and write something together, is there? This feels like kismet, that we kind of met in this way, and then he and Sam, actually, we wrote one song together on the album, which is the title track, “Where the Light Gets In.” 

SR: For the other songs on the album, are you coming up with lyrics or the melody before you get into the studio? 

BB: Yeah, a few songs I’d started writing back in Budapest when I was filming “Shadow and Bone” in season two, so I had four or five songs that were in pretty good shape. And then with my friend Kevin Burke, who is another artist and had played in a band with me, we kind of polished some of those songs. So I had basically lyrics and melodies for about half the songs, and then I collaborated with people on the music for the rest of the songs, and all the lyrics essentially are mine. But for the first time ever on this album, I actually wrote some lyrics to some music that other people had kind of sent me, which was a fresh endeavor for me. I wanted to try all the different ways to see what’s working, kind of experiment in that way. It was rewarding to see what would work. I didn’t have confidence it would work unless I wrote the lyrics first, but actually I think if you’re in the room with people while it’s happening, and the songs are about things that you want to write songs about, it feels incredibly rewarding, and they still feel like yours, which is the crazy thing. When we’re rehearsing the tour, I’m like, wow, I’m seeing these songs that are mine.

SR: What character are you playing in the Stephen King movie?

BB: I’m finally playing a good guy after a few years of playing psychos. I’m playing an ex-cop who finds himself in a small town where there mysterious goings on, and we find that there is an institution nearby which is full of kidnapped telekinetic and telepathic children.

SR: Did you tell your agent, “I want to play a good guy next time?” 

BB: It’s interesting because the last time I went on tour, I was singing these hopeful, joyful and kind of soulful songs to people. And it felt very in line with who I want to be as a man. And then I would go back and play these creeps or kind of vicious men. It was starting to feel like too many in a row, and starting to taint my experience of it. I really enjoy playing the villains and playing people whose minds work in different ways, but I also was keen to see if I could use what I’d learned in the last five, six years of playing bad guys and create fuller, more interesting, more dynamic characters that you might be rooting for a bit more.

SR: In the video for your song “Beloved,” it seemed like a therapist appointment that was being portrayed. 

BB: My mom was a psychotherapist, and when I was touring in Europe, I was talking about the song “Beloved,” about how it was gentle encouragement to people to allow themselves to be loved. I made a joke on stage, and I just said, Oh, wow, I’m being everyone’s therapist right now. Lots of people posted that moment, and so I was like, Oh, maybe I should be someone’s therapist in the video. 

SR: It seems like you’ve got a lot of engagement with your fans. 

BB: Yeah, they’re very active, and they make beautiful posters. I actually hired one recently. Someone had been posting all these amazing designs, so I got someone to contact them and say, would you be interested in designing a poster for me? They’re making all this amazing stuff anyway, which I really want to repost. So I just decided to get them to make something for me which was amazing. They’re pinned on my Instagram. They’re a professional designer, but they also just happen to be making a lot of stuff as a fan as well. So it was pretty wonderful. 

SR: Do you think that has to do with all your work in fantasy and science fiction? I think of those genres as having active fan culture, especially with fan fiction. 

BB: I’ve been around for a while now doing this stuff. Narnia was getting towards 20 years ago when I filmed that, and I think I’ve done lots of different kinds of genre stuff. Book lovers and people who fall in love with different stories, and the characters in them can be fiercely loyal. They’ll follow you into horror or comedy or action films or whatever it might be, and gratefully, into the genre of music that I’ve been putting out as well. It’s been fantastic to have that kind of engaged fandom. 

SR: I was listening to your music with my boyfriend, and he thought you sounded like an early David Gray. Are you a fan at all? 

BB:  I noticed on Apple Music today, the upcoming albums were myself next to the new David Gray album. So that was kind of interesting. I actually have a piano at home that David Gray recorded on. I tend to think my influences are more sort of 70s, like Stevie Wonder, Elton John kind of influences, but I love David Gray, so I’ll take it.

SR: How did that happen to have the piano? 

BB: I got it from a producer, John Alagia, who was one of John Mayer’s producers, and he helped produce my EP. And then, in the pandemic, when his studio was shutting down, there was a baby grand piano in there that they were trying to re-home, and I loved it from the very first second. So I got to have it. Then after I got it, he told me the history that I think David Gray had recorded on it. 

SR: What’s so special about this instrument?

BB: It’s just the warmest sounding piano I’ve ever heard. It’s a 1970s Yamaha. 

SR: When did you start playing?

BB: Honestly, in my mid 30s, I had one lesson when I was a kid, and hated the teacher.  I think I was about six, and she was mean, so I didn’t want to go back. And I regret it very deeply, because I would actually be a decent piano player now, but it’s amazing what you can do with motivation. 

SR: Do you practice specifically on the piano, or is it mostly supporting your music writing? 

BB: I think it supports the way that I write. In the middle of the set I always play a couple of tunes by myself at the piano, because I think it’s nice to have that sort of different storytelling dynamic. I get lessons from other people in my band. 

SR: What kind of prep are you doing for the tour? I imagine doing films and TV also has really long days and travel. 

BB: Vocal health for the next two months is definitely something which scares me. I’ve been doing a lot of training while I was filming. We had some great rehearsals this last week, and I’ve got an incredible band. So I think the hardest part is actually being quiet during the day for me, because I just want to take charge of things and help get everything how it needs to be and solve everything for everyone. And my actual job is to sort of keep quiet during the day, which is harder than it sounds. 

SR: And your band that you’re going to be touring with, are some of them the same people that did the recording? 

BB:  Yes. The drummer, (Paul) Hammy is also my music manager. And then Charles Jones, who’s also going to open for me, is playing piano. He’s an incredible, incredible talent. Sophia James actually is in the band, and she also played on the record. The band is actually made up of solo artists, So all of the band, except the drummer, will all open at some point. I wanted it to feel like a real sort of festival of joy.

Ben Barnes performs Tuesday, Jan. 21 at 8 p.m. at the Fine Line, $46. More information here.

Sheila Regan

Sheila Regan is a Twin Cities-based arts journalist. She writes MinnPost’s twice-weekly Artscape column. She can be reached at sregan@minnpost.com.

The post ‘Prince Caspian’ (Ben Barnes) heads to Minneapolis appeared first on MinnPost.

Remember in the first few months of 2020, when flapper attire and Gatsby parties were all the rage? COVID-19 put a swift halt to the trend, but as the 100 year anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald publishing “The Great Gatsby” approaches, we’ll be seeing some “Jazz Age” stylings around the Twin Cities. 

For one thing, Friends of the St. Paul Public Library is planning a whole year of programming in partnership with different organizations. This year, there will be an exhibition on view at the Minnesota Historical Society’s Gale Family Library and Minneapolis Institute of Art, plus talks, readings, performances, and walking tours – you can see the full line-up here. 

First up is a book launch and conversation for “F Scott Fitzgerald: A Composite Biography,” at the Arlington Hills Community Center, 1200 Payne Ave. It’s a celebration for the multi-author biography published by the University of Minnesota Press published in July of 2024. Editors Niklas Salmose and David Rennie will be there, along with two of the book’s contributors – David Page, a retired writing instructor from Inver Hills who has worked on numerous Fitzgerald-related writing and video projects and Ross Tangedal, an associate professor of English and director of Cornerstone Press at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. 

I had a chance to read this book over the summer, and I enjoyed digging into the author’s life chapter by chapter. Because each author takes on a different period from Fitzgerald’s life, you get different angles and perspectives as you go through the book. In Tangedal’s chapter, he explores the modernist architecture of Buffalo, N.Y. as possibly an impactful early memory for young Fitzgerald. Page, meanwhile, focuses on the author’s formative years in St. Paul. Some of the writers lean toward literary analysis, others touch on philosophy, popular culture, as well well as broader trends in American society. 

In the introduction, the editors write that the seeds for the book began back in 2018, when scholars gathered for the 18th International Ernest Hemingway Conference, relaxing on a very hot day under a tree, sipping rosé. The group decided to take a plural approach to the new endeavor, inspired by Fitzgerald’s own quote from his “Notebooks,” that an author is “too many people, if he’s any good.” 

I first read “The Great Gatsby” in high school in my English class. I remember a discussion during that year about which book we thought was the “Great American Novel.” Our class was eager to suss it out, and to find out the opinion of our teacher. Since the day Ms. Reed admitted she felt “Gatsby” deserved the honor, I’ve held the book with some reverence, though I don’t know how valuable picking one “Great American Novel” really is. 

There was a lot in “A Composite Biography” that was news to me, and I’m guessing you will find tidbits that you find surprising as well. Here are a few details I learned reading the book: 

F. Scott Fitzgerald was named after Francis Scott Key, who wrote the text for “The Star-Spangled Banner” 

It turns out Fitzgerald was a distant cousin of Key, and was also related to Mary Surratt, who was hanged in 1865 for conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, according to writer Helen Turner. 

Fitzgerald’s father, Edward Fitzgerald, bragged about aiding Confederate spies

The elder Fitzgerald was from Maryland, a slave state that didn’t secede from the Union, and his family had been “deeply embedded” in Southern culture for generations before the war, Turner tells us. Throughout his young life, Scott heard elaborate stories about his father ferrying spies across the Potomac river and other acts of allegiance toward the Southern side.

He kept a detailed ledger of his life 

In about 1919 or 1920, Fitzgerald began a ledger where he recorded every piece of fiction he published – noting both American and British magazine publishers and American and British book publishers of the same stories. He also kept track of money he earned from his writings, his transactions with Hollywood producers, and his wife Zelda Fitzgerald’s earnings. Perhaps most interesting, he has an autobiography section, beginning with the year he was born. That was in part sourced from his mother’s baby book and later from his own memories. You can actually see a pdf and transcription of the ledger here. 

Fitzgerald’s ledger reveals the way white supremacy culture played out for the author from an early age

A chapter focused on Fitzgerald’s life in 1902 and 1903 by Joel Kabot (a speechwriter for U.S. Sen. Chris Coons), draws on the author’s autobiography to look at two encounters with African American boys. In 1902, Fitzgerald visited Maryland (his family was living in upstate New York at the time), and mentions that he made friends with an African American child, “name forgotten – name Ambrose,” Fitzgerald wrote. A year later, he returned to Maryland for another visit, and reports that he “turned on his two Black friends Roscoe and Forrest,” and describes along with another boy tying them up. The ugly incident is worth noting when thinking about Fitzgerald’s later writing. In “The Great Gatsby,” Fitzgerald confronts racism directly, painting the racist character Tom in a negative light. On the other hand, his early story, “The Offshore Pirate,” is steeped in cringe-worthy stereotypes of its supporting Black characters. 

Fitzgerald’s short story, “The Ice Palace,” was partially inspired by the St. Paul Winter Carnival

In Page’s chapter about Fitzgerald living in St. Paul in 1908 and 1909, he mentions that an early muse of Fitzgerald’s named Violet Stockton had a maternal grandfather who laid the cornerstone of the first Ice Palace in 1866. According to Page, the ice palace of the Winter Carnival inspired Fitzgerald’s story of the same name. 

Fitzgerald took dancing lessons at a place called the Ramalay School of Dance on Grand Avenue 

Page briefly mentions Fitzgerald was invited by the mother of one of his friends to take dance lessons and would spend long Saturday afternoons at the school, learning from Professor William H. Baker, who was also a bartender at the White Bear Yacht Club.

Fitzgerald’s first publication was in St. Paul Academy’s student magazine, “Now and Then” 

The story was a murder mystery about a newspaper reporter. 

Garrison Keillor may have been wrong about Fitzgerald’s feelings toward St. Paul

In Walter Raubicheck’s chapter about the years 1920 and 1920, he cites a speech “Prairie Home Companion” humorist Garrison Keillor gave in 2002 saying that Fitzgerald didn’t like St. Paul very much. Raubicheck writes this wasn’t entirely true. 

“The Midwest for Fitzgerald was the embodiment of an America older and more rooted than the one that created modern New York,” he writes, noting that in “The Great Gatsby,” narrator Nick Carraway returns to the midwest disgusted by the moral decay of the east coast. 

He never graduated from college 

Reading David Rennie’s and James L. W. West III’s chapters about Fitzgerald’s time at Princeton, I kept thinking about Jason Schwartzman’s character, Max Fischer, in the movie “Rushmore.” Fitzgerald excelled at extra-curricular activities, but his poor academic performance made his status at the college precarious, and he’d often be barred from performing with the school’s theatrical club, which produced his works. He ultimately dropped out and enlisted in the army during World War I.

He and Zelda once were banned from the White Bear Yacht Club

After Fitzgerald published his smash hit, “This Side of Paradise” in 1920, he and Zelda partied like there was no tomorrow in New York City, eventually getting kicked out of the Commodore Hotel. In 1922, the couple moved to St. Paul, in part because Zelda was pregnant. The couple managed to be excluded from the White Bear Yacht Club, still in existence today. 

He saw Zelda’s life as his material

Before I read “A Composite Biography,” I had heard about Zelda’s famous “review” of “The Beautiful and the Damned,” Fitzgerald’s second novel, where she jokes that her husband stole her diary and letters and plagiarized them. It’s a tongue in cheek piece, but it turns out he did borrow liberally from his wife’s life throughout their relationship. 

But it goes farther. It’s not just that Fitzgerald was appropriating aspects of Zelda’s life in his writing – he would get sore when she used it herself for her own writing projects. The conflict reached a fever pitch while Fitzgerald was writing “Tender is the Night,” a novel inspired in part by Zelda’s experiences in mental health institutions. Zelda, meanwhile, secretly sent her own autobiographical novel to editor Maxwell Perkins because she feared her husband’s wrath. 

Scott Donaldson, in his chapter about 1932-1933, even includes a sadistic private note Fitzgerald wrote that seems to be a plot borrowed from the play “Gaslight,” to drive Zelda to insanity, though it seems he never acted on the plan.

Ernest Hemingway lost his patience for Fitzgerald’s literary critique

Things started out swimmingly between the two authors, with Fitzgerald admiring the younger author’s work and introducing him to his editor, Perkins. Ermest Hemingway partially took Fitzgerald’s advice on his novel, “The Sun Also Rises,” according to Jade Broughton Adams, though he told Perkins the cuts Fitzgerald suggested were his own idea. Later, when Fitzgerald wrote a detailed nine-page report on “A Farewell to Arms,” Hemingway “derided” his former mentor, according to Delesalle-Nancey. Soon after, Fitzgerald forgot to call time while acting as timekeeper for a boxing match between Hemingway and Canadian author Morley Callaghan, and their friendship was damaged.  

“The Crack-Up” was under-appreciated

“The Crack-Up” was first published as a series of essays in Esquire Magazine in 1936 and later released as a collection posthumously. While the essays have since earned praise as being one of Fitzgerald’s greatest achievements, they were universally panned at the time. Among the largest critics? Hemingway, according to Elisabeth Bouzonviller.

This is just a sample of the rich material in this extensive, intriguing biography. If you want to hear more from some of the authors, head to the Gatsby At 100 series opening event on Saturday, Jan. 18 at noon – both in person and live stream (free). More information here.

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