Art
Perfect Play or Musical of 2015: Renegade’s Eastland
Renegade Theater Company has earned its second consecutive Perfect Play or Musical plaque, this time for a dramatic musical that marked the centennial of the tragic sinking of the SS Eastland. The 1915 shipwreck resulted in the death of 844 passengers, the largest loss of life from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes.
Titled Eastland: A New Musical, the play was partially inspired by Jay Bonansinga’s 2004 historical novel The Sinking of the Eastland: America’s Forgotten Tragedy. The show debuted in 2012 at the Lookingglass Theater in Chicago. Renegade’s staging in August 2015 was just the second professional production of the haunting musical written by Andrew White, with a folk, blues and ragtime score by Ben Sussman and Andre Pluess. (more…)
One Man, One River, Many Stories
Mike Simonson had a project planned for his retirement. That was the type of guy he was. I’d never heard him talk about retiring, and then the first time he mentions it he’s laying out a plan to produce an epic radio documentary about the St. Louis River … for fun.
I wasn’t surprised Mike had no intention of slowing down after four decades in journalism — a journey he started at the Denfeld Criterion in the mid-1970s, continued at various commercial radio stations during the 1980s, and concluded with a 24-year stint as Wisconsin Public Radio’s northwestern region correspondent at KUWS-FM in Superior. And maybe the topic of the St. Louis River shouldn’t have surprised me either. Mike lived on the river for most of his life, and routinely swam across Stryker Bay for fitness and pleasure.
Still, I was blown away by the idea. Mike had chosen documentary topics in the past that seemed broad, but by comparison were quite specific — Forever Ace: The Richard Bong Story (2012) and We Are Holding Our Own: The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald (1995). (more…)
Selective Focus: Gelid
Frank Sander, untitled
It is hard to not feel a bit inadequate when a friend will schlep 4 miles for groceries when it’s 15 below, and my biggest concerns are where’s my Zhivago DVD, and do I have enough cloves to stud a lemon for a hot whiskey. That said, Winter is my favorite season — not as some endurance test, but as a time to heed nature’s insistence that we “lie low to the wall until the bitter weather passes over” (John O’Donohue). (more…)
Poll: Best Play or Musical of 2015
Which Duluth-area theater production made your little Greek mask laugh or weep the most last year?
This poll has closed. The results were:
Renegade Theater Company’s Eastland – 44 percent
Duluth Playhouse Children’s Theatre’s Shrek – 31 percent
Duluth Playhouse’s Mary Poppins – 25 percent
The Plays of 2015
Before we launch PDD’s poll to determine the best play or musical of 2015, we present this list of every play or musical from the past year we could track down, with the hope that you’ll let us know in the comments if we’ve forgotten any.
Avenue Q – The Underground
Banning Around the Christmas Tree, or, The Last Noel of Don Ness – Rubber Chicken Theater
The Barber of Seville – Lyric Opera of the North
Behind the Shining Star – Duluth Playhouse Theatre for Young Audiences
The Birds – Renegade Theater Company
Blithe Spirit – St. Scholastica Theatre (more…)
Selective Focus: Cabin Fever
Aaron Reichow, untitled
While it has been too warm to be stuck inside contracting the negative strain of cabin fever (Winter will no doubt find us), this week we can emphasize the phrase’s positive connotations. Such retreats represent our desires to simplify, to get away from the dissonance and clutter of what we ordinarily deem important. They foreground necessity and diminish the superfluous, and manifest our plainest requirements for dwelling; heat, light, a water source, a welcoming entry, maybe a window to gaze from or peer into. (more…)
Perfect Duluth Day at the Dump
Video by Frank Sander.
The Inheritance
My grandmother Irene was a pitiful, crazy person. Not all the time, unfortunately, or she’d have been packed into some coarse New England institution for experiments with electrons and lithium derivatives much earlier. As it was, because she alternated her violent and impulsive behavior with periods of serenity and excellent baking, she was allowed to quietly produce one, two, three, four and finally five wards of the state, one right after the other, before she was wrangled by the authorities and medicated to death.
Her youngest boy, Fred, who she kept along with three more kids, believed that shock therapy, medication, and age had actually healed Irene just enough that she could think rationally about what she’d done. So she overdosed herself on lithium.
We met her once, about a year before she died. She looked like a watercolor version of our mother, all smeared and indistinct in comparison. We had no idea she was our grandmother. Our mother introduced her as “Irene,” no more information. (more…)
Selective Focus: Constant
Aaron Reichow, untitled
What won’t you change in the new year? What remains a fixture in our lives? That was this week’s challenge; to find the things that ground us in a world of whirring flux. Easier said than done in a region whose predominant feature is an endlessly shifting inland sea. I would like to have seen some people as “constants” (as they’ve always been in my life), but hey, I only edit this thing. (more…)
2015: The Year in Duluth Gig Posters
Here it is, PDD’s annual gallery of gig posters. It’s not comprehensive, just a smattering of promo images that grabbed attention in 2015. (more…)
Saturday Essay: New PDD feature starts in 2016
Over the past 12.5 years of Perfect Duluth Day’s existence, there haven’t been many posts that would be considered “essays.” The term is a little vague, but it’s probably understood by most that an essay is something more artistically crafted and of more substantial length than the average PDD post. Examples that come to mind from the past that would be considered essays are Laurie Viets’ “Last Place on Earth — 1983” and my own “Trespassing at UMD’s Old Main in 1992.” There are probably a dozen other examples eluding my memory, but the point in general is that there have been some essays on PDD, but not enough.
To encourage more, we’re launching a new feature called the “Saturday Essay” next week. In each installment, a local writer will share an anecdote, go on a political rant, dissect some event in popular culture or for whatever other purpose string together a healthy amount of words on some subject. Basically the hope is to do for essay writing what “Selective Focus” has done in the past year for photography on PDD. (more…)
Selective Focus: Holidays
Paul McIntyre, untitled
As I have little to add to the vast literature surrounding this holiday, I can only recommend one of my favorites: Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory.” His own reading of this short story used to be a staple this time of year on Minnesota Public Radio. I have no idea why they’ve departed from playing it, but here is a link to a 2006 This American Life episode that includes a tear-defying excerpt: Episode 255 (more…)
Selective Focus: Empathy
Marie Zhuikov, “Buddy, Winter 2012”
Should I infer from the lack of submissions this week that there is a lack of empathy in our world at the moment, or merely accept that the concept is a difficult one to represent? Being prone to hyperbole, I’m going with the former assumption, while hoping that a more general theme next week will boost contributions. Let’s go with “holidays.” (more…)
Selective Focus: Air
Mary K. Tennis, “Steve, Cranes”
It’s easy to take pristine air for granted while living in this Arcadian spot, but an alarming study of phytoplankton from the University of Leicester posited this week that rising carbon emissions could deplete the planet of breathable air. This brought starkly to mind the homophone err, and deepened my belief that true change can only occur from the ground, up — or in this case, from the micro-organismic. (more…)
Duluth’s Visual Culture
Video by Brooke Joyce.
Selective Focus: Food
Erin Naughton-Garrison, “Drag Queen Baby Shower Buffet”
Nice. I was expecting perfectly-plated smart phone grabs from local restaurants, and instead received a group of highly original interpretations on this week’s theme. Erin’s da Vinciesque tableau was especially arresting, and I appreciated the subtext of food as a tradition we convey along generations. Staying with the elemental, next week’s theme will be “air.” (more…)
My Time with Arrowhead Regional Arts Council
Joni Van Bockel and a friend during her time in Duluth.
Hi, I’m Joni Van Bockel. In June I left the Twin Cities to work and intern for the wonderful folks at the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council. This internship has been an extremely valuable learning opportunity for me both as a professional seeking a career in the arts and as a young artist. (more…)
PDD Video Lab: “Windows” at the Tweed
Sharon Louden’s exhibition is on display at the Tweed Museum of Art through May 29.
Pick your favorite soundtrack from the choices below and play it along with this silent video.
Cones
Video by Will Smyth, featuring a bunch of cones. Some are clearly in Duluth. Some are probably not.
Selective Focus: Editor’s Choice
One year of Selective Focus would be impossible to capture in a single post, so I’ve gleaned just a few personal favorites. I think we’ve accomplished together many of my initial desires to foreground the real people who live work and play here, and to build community through art, no matter how homely or grand. (more…)
Selective Focus: Loss
Karen Owsley Nease, “Selling Mom’s Car”
There is a perverse fullness in loss. Loss propelled me here. It informs my need to make art. It makes space for the unexpected to grow. Atul Gawande’s recent book “Being Mortal” describes “the chasm of perspective between those who have to contend with life’s fragility and those who don’t.” Loss widens our apertures to see farther down narrow, well-worn paths. It opens us to risk, and to more keenly-felt joys. (more…)
Painting Charlie Parr’s guitar, and who the heck is Dave Hundrieser?
My wife, Shawna Gilmore, has an interesting job. Today, for example, she painted the back of Charlie Parr’s amazing guitar. The instrument is a phenomenal work of art, both front and back. Next Tuesday is a great opportunity to come out and hear Charlie make music with it alongside his good buddy, Dave Hundrieser. Read more about Charlie and Dave, and see the garage they recorded in together previously, at Ed’s Big Adventure.
By the way, Teague Alexy, Tin Can Gin, Don Ness, Emily Larson, a stunning tap dancer, and I, will also be participating in Cornucopia at the Red Herring Lounge. Check out this amazing event on Facebook/a> and the PDD Calendar.
Selective Focus: Bliss
Tyler Johnson, untitled
Bliss is seldom of an epiphanic nature; it often just slowly suffuses us, when after years or moments prior we’d barely thought it possible that matters could just placidly align. But a surfeit of joy can be just as intolerable as an abundance of grief. Neither can be sustained, and each will evanesce, then quietly, someday, return. (more…)
Selective Focus: November
Hugh Reitan, untitled
Limbs (of trees) stripped near to bare, firewood cribbed, quilts at hand, larders stocked. This is the month that Maslow’s hierarchy seems tangibly real, unless you’re an artist and thus inclined to invert the pyramid. Many diverse takes this week, despite my dread that a theme so prospectively barren would go unchallenged. Credit a strain of Scandanavian fatalism? Anyhow, thanks. (more…)
PDD Video Lab: Experimental Animation – Film to 3-D
In this silent video Adam Dargan, an animator from Duluth who now lives in Minneapolis, takes the physical exploration of film and re-imagines it in a 3-D environment.
If the silence is too much to take, we’ve selected some possible soundtracks for you. Start the video above, then press play on a soundtrack below.