Audio plays hidden across St. Paul share secret stories about capital city

INTERVIEWER: I don't know if you saw these. But over the weekend, mysterious QR codes appeared scattered around downtown Saint Paul, marked by a curious pigeon named Harold. It's a part of a project from local theater company Wonderlust Productions called "Hidden Herald." The QR codes each lead to a short audio play with a secret story about our capital city, written and performed by local playwrights and actors. Here's a sneak peek from a play set at The Landmark Center, written by Michelle de Joya.

SUBJECT: I've lived here as long as I can remember. I've stood on these steps before. I've looked at this fountain tons of times, fed these pigeons. But today, right now, feels new. I'm hearing everything like I've never heard it before, the leaves dancing in the wind, the music of the awakening birds, the sounds of the bustling city, the poetry of the streets, the magic in the voices.

INTERVIEWER: Leah Cooper is one of the artistic directors of Wonderlust, and she's here to tell us about Hidden Herald. Welcome back. Leah. How have you been?

LEAH COOPER: Hi. I've been great. Thanks for having me on, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: This is a cute idea. I like this a lot. What was the spark for this?

LEAH COOPER: Well, you know, we recently turned one of our plays into a podcast. And we discovered how much we love audio drama because it creates such an intimacy with the audience. And we often do site-specific things. And we love downtown Saint Paul. We sense that it's a city in transition.

And we were thinking about theater we could make that would really encourage people to get back on out of the house and go explore. And this is the idea we came up with, a bunch of plays that invite you to just explore.

CATHY WURZER: See, the minute I heard this idea, I thought, ah, podcast. Actually, you know, like a roving podcast in a sense. So if I go to Landmark Center, or I don't know, the capitol, what other places in downtown Saint Paul? What would I see? How would I experience this?

LEAH COOPER: Well, what you're going to see is a sticker on the ground. They're mostly stuck on sidewalks. There's a couple in the Skyways, but mostly they're on the sidewalk. And it's a little square sticker about 12 inches by 12 inches, light blue, with a pigeon on it and a masthead that looks a little like a newspaper that says Hidden Herald.

And then in the lower right corner, there'll be a QR code. And you just point your mobile device at it, and it'll take you to a page with a play on it. You click Play and you listen. We recommend earbuds, but really, you can just wander around and discover them.

CATHY WURZER: Wow. OK. So how did you choose which locations?

LEAH COOPER: Well, we did a bunch of story circles with folks all over downtown, including people who work at the public works, people who work with the Downtown Alliance, students at the Saint Paul Conservatory for The Performing Arts. We did a bunch of research, historical and modern. And then we invited the actors and the playwrights to pursue what really interested them from the stories we gathered.

And we asked the playwrights to set their play in a specific spot. So in a sense, where you're standing when you listen to it is the set for the play. So really, it was the playwrights and the actors who picked the spots.

CATHY WURZER: Nice. Are these real stories or fictional stories, both?

LEAH COOPER: Well, kind of both, because they're all inspired by a story somebody told us. But we've completely fictionalized them. I mean, some of them take place 100 years in the future. Some of them take place in the past. One of them, which is on Raspberry Island, is the voices of the river talking. So it's a wide variety of departure from realism, I would say.

CATHY WURZER: You know, you are known for your work kind of bringing folks together. And so when you said you had story circles, I thought yep, that's right. You seem to really get energy and ideas from these story circles. Can you tell folks how you use those story circles in your work?

LEAH COOPER: Yeah. That's kind of our deal. We call ourselves a community story-driven theater company. Because everything we create, we start by thinking about a community that we're really interested in, that we think is central to who Minnesota is, but whose stories are maybe not so well-known or have even been silenced. And then we embed ourselves in that community, working through partners to invite people to share their stories with us. And then we always create a fictional container where the play is an adaptation of a classic piece of literature, or just something we think up.

And the words in the plays come from the stories, but they're fictionalized. And the idea is it takes you on a journey away from here and now, but it helps you see here and now even better.

CATHY WURZER: Sure. Give me an idea of one of the little plays that has been written and performed that was really touching to you.

LEAH COOPER: Oh, gosh. A lot of them are really touching. But I think one of the first that comes to mind is you played a little excerpt from Michelle de Joya's play at Landmark Center. And that's part of a series.

Some of the playwrights created episodic plays, where you don't have to hear them in order, but you might hear three or four different plays that are connected,. And Michelle's plays follow a bunch of little kids who are immigrants. The first scene we hear, they're at Candyland getting candy. And they're still learning English. They're still discovering this new home of theirs.

And then later, we follow them. They're in a band, playing at Amsterdam Bar. Later, we listen to one of them be part of a naturalization ceremony at Landmark Center, which is the one that we just heard. And then finally, you hear some of them at the farmers market selling things. And so that's just a really moving journey to follow those characters.

CATHY WURZER: And why is it important, Leah, to have what I would call this roving podcast in a sense, because that's how I think, set in the physical environment, where you have the QR code, that you can stand or sit and listen in that environment? Why is it important to you?

LEAH COOPER: Well, I think it creates two things that are different than you would experience in a theater. One, it's more immersive. Because the world is happening right around you. You're not sitting far away from it in an audience passively.

You're standing amidst traffic, and people walking their dogs. And the set is literally the very real world around you. So we think of it a little bit like augmented reality.

And then the other thing is, with the earbuds in, you've got this really intimate experience of the voices of the characters. It's really just you and them. So it's somehow both intimate and very public at the same time. And we think it just makes a much richer theatrical experience.

Also, it's just fun to go see downtown Saint Paul in a whole new light. The idea of the stories is they should maybe invite you to imagine the future and see things you didn't see before.

CATHY WURZER: By the way, how does Herald the pigeon play into all this?

Well, Herald's our narrator. Herald is a pigeon. I don't know if you know this. We did a bunch of research on pigeons, because, you know, they were everywhere as we were exploring downtown Saint Paul.

CATHY WURZER: Yes, they are.

LEAH COOPER: And it turns out they have amazing ability to see and pattern match, which is why we've used them as homing and passenger pigeons carrying things. They also mate for life. So we created this character, Herald, who never found a mate, but is fascinated with humans instead.

And Herald basically takes you from play to play and describes what you're about to see. So every time you click on one of these QR codes, you're going to hear Herald first, explaining where you are and what's about to happen.

CATHY WURZER: Oh, I love that. So what are you hoping people take away from this. The experience as you go through downtown Saint Paul and click on the QR codes, and they walk away with what kind of feeling?

LEAH COOPER: Well, I mean, I have to say it feels a little like during the pandemic, we all got pretty used to staying home. And now we're maybe just a little bit agoraphobic, and we're not exactly sure how to get back out there and explore places and art and community. So most of all, we just hope people will come out and discover a place that maybe they thought they knew but is in major transition right now.

The downtowns of the whole country are changing a lot right now as a lot of people stop coming to the office to work and downtowns become a different kind of space. And Saint Paul is definitely experiencing that.

The other thing is we hope that this just creates an accessible experience. There's a number of ways you can do it. You can just wander around and stumble on the stickers.

You can get a printed map that has curated trails you can take, like short and longer, easy, hard, you know. But we also have a virtual experience that you can just do from home. So if you don't live in Saint Paul, you can still go explore Saint Paul.

CATHY WURZER: You got it covered. Leah, always fun talking to you. Thank you so much.

LEAH COOPER: Thanks for having me on.

CATHY WURZER: Leah Cooper is one of the artistic directors of The Hidden Herald Project. She's with the Wonderlust Production Company.