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MN Shortlist is your weekly curated roundup of recommended events from MPR News, highlighting standout performances, exhibits and gatherings around the region.

 — World Refugee Day is June 20, and a coalition of musicians from around the world known as Songs for a New Home is hosting a benefit concert. The 

 starts at 7 p.m. June 20 at the Pillar Forum and Cafe in Minneapolis and will raise funds for the Karen Organization of Minnesota.

 in the United States, an ethnic group that fled Myanmar due to persecution and political violence. 

 — Franconia Sculpture Park is hosting a 

 for Pride month featuring a tribute to The Grateful Dead and a guest appearance by Wake Up the Heads. The performance will also include an all-ages drag show from Tooth & Nails Productions. Free drop-in art activities will be provided from the art market featuring LGBTQIA+ artists.

The Shafer park’s longstanding summer concerts bring local, national and international music talent alongside a picturesque backdrop of its 50 acres of artwork. There’s even going to be a drum jam! 

 — Good Harbor Hill Players will be sharing their 

 at the North House Folk School Commons. This community-based, nonprofit puppet theater is based in Grand Marais. They have been performing since 1999, and this pageant tells a story of a community’s transformation.

The performance will feature stilt-walkers and larger-than-life puppets, as well as live music. This summer’s story captures the nuance and journey of welcoming change and opening ourselves to others. It is a timely story of identity, belonging and understanding. 

 — Modern dating is difficult for people across the gender and sexuality spectrums, and the issues surrounding it are captured in the comedy 

 which enters its final weekend at Lyric Arts Theater in Anoka.

The show follows Jordan as he searches for Mr. Right, all the while his closest friends find love and settle down. This production is directed by Max Wojtanowicz, perhaps best known for producing Musical Mondays at Lush Lounge and Theater. 

 — This play offers a novel take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, revisiting the detective and companion as a female duo. This comical take on the classic mystery turns up the volume on theatrical storytelling as the small cast catapults into a story of two roommates, both women — Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson — as they sniff out the truth and get themselves lost in adventure.

It’s a witty retelling done by Kate Hamill, who also has a modernized “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility.” It’s a wild night with two of the keenest gals on the newly imagined block. At the 

St. Croix Festival Theatre in St. Croix, Wis

 — There's a fascinating exhibit at the 

 right now by Shelley Caldwell that will have you looking up. Involution is an installation exhibit, where Caldwell hangs painted leaves from the ceiling. You can walk through and feel the leaves, some of which are decorated with Caldwell's grandmother's buttons.

Caldwell works from her family farm in rural Faribault County. 

 — According to the World Health Organization, the painful and chronic condition endometriosis affects about 190 million women and girls worldwide. Two of those women are Kristin Stowell and Maria Bartholdi, and they wrote a musical about it.

Theatre in the Round of Minneapolis will host a world premiere starting June 20 of the full-length version of 

” (a proto version debuted at the 2022 Minnesota Fringe Festival). Stowell, a music director in Washington, D.C., and Bartholdi, a podcaster in Minneapolis, grew up as childhood friends and creative collaborators in Cloquet.

The musical follows the diagnosis journey of Jan, a career-driven businesswoman, with musical numbers like “Dear Aunt Flow,” “My Sexy OBGYN” and “I’m Your Gastroenterologist.”

“She wants to succeed in business while really trying,” Bartholdi says. “But this disease is keeping her from living it to her fullest potential, and that's also the sad reality of people with this disease a lot and have to struggle with. And, it’s an absurdist comedy.” 

 of Prior Lake calls himself a “mall brat.” In the mall heyday of the eighties and nineties, Rackley’s father worked for a shoe company and moved the family each time a new store opened. From the ages of three to 13, Rackley estimates he spent 70 percent of his time in malls.

This experience is at the heart of Rackley's solo exhibition 

 at the Tweed Museum of Art at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. The exhibition features miniature recreations of the shopping mall where he spent the most time as a child — the Gwinnett Place Mall in Duluth, Georgia (the same mall featured heavily in season three of the TV show “Stranger Things”). There is also a green screen and digital projection that places viewers inside a mall environment.

“My experience of the mall was this kind of magical one where I had access to spaces that most people didn't get to go in,” Rackley says. “But there was also this sense of isolation. I was an only child in a world of adults in a space built for shoppers, and so it really wasn't a space designed for me.” 

Minnesota African American Heritage Museum and Gallery

 in Minneapolis hosts a free opening reception for the interactive art exhibition “Radical Joy!” at 6 p.m. today. The exhibition features the work of Twin Cities artist-composer-curator Miko Simmons, including projections, soundscapes, and paintings.

The exhibition will continue to evolve during its six-month run. 

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MN Shortlist is your weekly curated roundup of recommended events from MPR News, highlighting standout performances, exhibits and gatherings around the region.


MN Shortlist, June 20-26: Drag shows, refugee beats, and Sherlock with a twist

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