We’ve got smiles on our faces and glitter in our hearts because we officially have FULL CAST AND PRODUCTION TEAM for our upcoming production of These are the Men! We want to welcome all of our guest artists under the umbrella now and can’t WAIT for you to see the fruits of our labor at The Southern Theatre in March 2015. (Pssst if you haven’t signed up to be an ARTshare member do it today!)
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As a new company member, everything is new all the time. Meetings to attend, a fundraiser to plan here, a season to plan there, oh and we make art too, right? All the business of REALLY making theater is new to me. What’s more I joined Savage Umbrella in July and shortly thereafter we restructured: swapping roles and reconfiguring how we work together. Wonderful timing, actually, because common to my experience in working with Savage Umbrella they were supportive of each other while being deliberate in their collaboration strategy. I also came into the company one month after a pretty traumatic bike accident. I received one hell of a concussion and recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury is no joke. Part of healing from something that dulls and changes your mental capacity takes HELLA patience, diligence and hope. As a product of my injury I made poor choices at times, I forgot things quite a bit, struggled with vocabulary and social anxiety. All this is to say is that I became a student in my own life again.
The situation required me to start over. To recreate not replicate. That meant relearning how to be an artist, administrator, editor, performer and collaborator all anew. Each challenge for which I had been previously suited required me to re-negotiate all of that style I had been honing over the last decade. This was a unique opportunity for me to give myself compassion. I had to let go of the behaviors and judgements that no longer served me because my old solutions were no longer soluble in my new condition and environment.
Are you ready for more art? Check out the small sampling below and get ready for our live auction tonight! ![]() (similar to the work Johanna created for the live auction!) JOHANNA WINTERS “A Midwesterner tried and true, I grew up in Minneapolis and currently live in Green Bay, and am fond of carbohydrates, living at sea level, and observing the native critters of the Upper Midwest. Upon graduating form the University of Wisconsin in 2007 with a B.A. in studio art, I have competed on an Olympic-development cross country ski team, worked as the Education Manager at Highpoint Center for Printmaking, and most recently taught as an Associate Lecturer in Printmaking at UW-Green Bay. I know Laura through her younger sister, Kit Leffler. Kit and I met at Highpoint Center for Printmaking, and I've enjoyed keeping tabs on all of the art-making projects that Kit is involved with in the Twin Cities. Those Leffler sisters are a talented pair! In creating the intaglio print Dirty Pillows, I was interested in the idea of hubris that is embedded in the Oedipus mythology and reinterpreted in These Are the Men. I was also drawn to the detail regarding the origin of Oedipus' name. It is derived from the Greek word for swelling — at birth, Oedipus was bound at his feet and ankles by his father and left to perish, and thus when he was later found by his adoptive parents his feet were swollen. The image that I etched into copper and printed with an etching press hints at some kind of bodily misfortune, yet the sufferer accepts his/her/its fate to carry an ambiguous burden without resignation.” Ohmanohmanohmanohman! The annual Savage Umbrella fundraiser is SO SOON, and we couldn’t be more giddy. A chance to share our upcoming season, eat some walking tacos, hang out with SU friends and fans AND raise some funds for making good work happen? #blessed. One important and spectacular part of the fun we have planned is our amazing LIVE ART AUCTION. We got up the nerve to ask a bunch of our local art crushes to make some work inspired by our work. So many talented local folks making such beautiful work THAT YOU CAN TAKE HOME, FRIENDS! Here’s just PART ONE of some of the artists and what they’re making for small bites, BIG IDEAS...
![]() In May I was lucky enough to get to travel to Berlin to visit the beautiful and brave Amber Davis (thanks, credit cards!). Many wonderful things happened during my visit to Berlin: a graffitti and street art tour, surprisingly good pizza, a computer game museum, late night beers and laughs with Amber, and so. much. theatre. Seeing theatre in a foreign country is weird sauce, and I completely recommend it to everyone. Wanna see what another culture is like? Then watch as they hold up the proverbial mirror to themselves. I saw a wild and wonderful production of Romeo und Julia (seriously, check out the trailer), an unfortunately boring Bruckner production at the Berliner Ensemble, a pretty awful production of Threepenny in Munich, and so much more, both bad and good, new and classic. Right at the top of my list? Der Kirschgarten - yup, Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard - at the Maxim Gorki Theatre. Four years ago the Southern Theater was in shambles, and I was pissed. Like so much anger, though, the true motivation was fear. I wanted to have that space around. I wanted it so badly. Since I first walked into that space in 2007 to see Four Humors’ Bards at the Fringe Festival, I have loved the space of the Southern. The battered arch hints at glory, the raw walls breathe potential, the view from the audience is panoramic and immediate all at once. You don’t see plays at the Southern, you step into a world. It’s a world that almost slipped through our fingers, real estate that might have been sold off and demolished to make condos for incoming freshmen, or extra parking for downtown. But that didn’t happen here. In our universe, Damon Runnals and the new Southern board hunkered down, companies and bands and wedding couples booked the space – because it is amazing – to keep it afloat, and they worked to settle their debts and dream big.
It’s been now seven years since my first show at the Southern, four since the shit really hit the fan, and over those years I have seen a lot of shows at the Southern. I’ve loved a lot of them, disagreed with some, been mesmerized and entranced, and always been challenged and absorbed by the work. Jon Ferguson’s You’re My Favorite Kind of Pretty, Theatre Novi Most’s The Oldest Story in the World, Four Humors’ The Age of Wordsworth, and so many more. If you made a list of who’s been at the Southern, it would essentially include everyone I’ve wanted to see or work with in the Twin Cities. OH BOY. We been working hard over the last five weeks to generate material for this weekend's public presentation of Vinland. See??
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