Northern Minnesota is under a new alert until Friday at 7 p.m.

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

Theatermaker Joe Hendren wants people to know about 

History Theatre’s Raw Stages new works festival

, taking place through Sunday in St. Paul. There’s a reading of a new work-in-progress each day. 

These are plays and musicals commissioned by the History Theatre, and this festival is an opportunity for the shows’ playwrights and artistic team to see how an audience reacts, and for the audience to ask questions and offer feedback in a Q&A following each performance. 

Hendren is especially interested in seeing “Secret Warriors,” a new play written by Rick Shiomi, a founding member of Theater Mu and co-founder of Full-Circle Theater. The play is about the 

(second-generation Japanese Americans) who worked with the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II as translators, codebreakers and interrogators. The show highlights a piece of Minnesota history: 

the Military Intelligence Service Language School

 at Fort Snelling. That reading is Saturday at 2 p.m.

St. Paul artist Stuart Loughridge is looking forward to the opening this Saturday of 

David Cunningham’s exhibit “City Life”

Cunningham’s oil paintings focus on urban landscapes and on liminal times of day when the light of dusk or dawn does magical things to a city. Loughridge says Cunningham’s paintwork is “exciting and active,” with elements of abstraction, and he appreciates the mysterious narratives of the people who populate his canvasses. 

Visitors can expect to see familiar Twin Cities sights in a new way. The show runs through Feb. 25. 

St. Paul playwright Kyle B. Dekker is a big fan of the Minneapolis band 

 who he always enjoys seeing perform at the Renaissance Festival. 

The group sings old world, revival and original folk music about working people, with sea shanties and some yodeling thrown in for good measure. Dekker loves their harmonies and bass rhythms.  

This Saturday, Sycamore Gap will be the closing act in a four-band local concert in South Minneapolis. The event is 

 an artist coop that is raising money to buy their building and create housing for low-income artists. 

The show starts at 7 p.m. and will be livestreamed on YouTube.  

Emily Bright

Author

David Cunningham’s “City Life” opens at Gallery 360. Raw Stages’ New Works Festival stages a different reading of a work-in-progress at History Theatre. Minneapolis band Sycamore Gap performs to benefit the Arbitrarium art house. 

Art Hounds: New theater at Raw Stages

Go Deeper.

Like this?