Art Hounds: Fantastic true stories from Carlisle Evans Peck

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

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Cabaret of ancestors

Musician and cultural organizer Sarah Larsson wants people to know about singer-songwriter Carlisle Evans Peck’s show “Iconoclasm,” which is touring in western Minnesota.

She describes the show as part cabaret, part ritual, where the audience travels back in time to re-imagine stories from Carlisle’s family through a queer and often trans lens.

The show, originally developed as a Cedar Commission, will be at the YES! House in Granite Falls on Thursday at the Little Theater Auditorium in New London on Friday, and at the Madison Mercantile in Madison (the one in Minnesota) on Saturday.  

Sarah says: So many of these stories are dramatic and amazing to begin with. Like, there’s a story of a great-grandfather who actually was hit by a train. But coming out of these kind of fantastic true stories, Carlisle is exploring, you know, in those times and places, maybe people’s queerness wouldn’t have been able to come out or be public in the same kind of way.

So what if there were some of these queer identities among these people, and they were just waiting to be told. Or maybe not! Maybe for these individuals, that’s not the way they would describe themselves. But there’s power in telling those stories and in seeing ourselves in these people from the past. 

It’s an all-musical production with an amazing five-piece band and two backup singers, and then Carlisle embodies each of these characters, kind of like a series of sung monologues. Carlisle is this amazing, amazing, totally stunning performer carrying on the music throughout the entire piece.

— Sarah Larsson

Folk fusion night

Folk musician Emily Wright recently traveled to Montevideo for an evening of poetry and music, and she’s thrilled that these western Minnesota artists are bringing their work to the MetroNOME Brewery in St. Paul, Saturday at 7 p.m.

Brendan Stermer will read from his new book of poetry “Forgotten Frequencies” with musical accompaniment by his brother Andy Stermer and their friend Malena Handeen. (Sidenote: Andy and Brendan also produce the “Interesting People Reading Poetry” podcast.) 

Emily says: Andy’s poems and their music are wide open and make me think about the prairie. They remind me of Montevideo, where they are all from.

Brendan’s book of poetry has this amazing section in it where he took the writings from the Journal of an explorer whose last name was Nicolet and turned them into poetry.

I think my favorite poem is this one called “Forgotten Frequencies,” which is the title of his of his book, and it’s talking about how the muse of poetry and the muse of art is there, you just have to turn your dial just a little bit to hear her voice.

— Emily Wright

A feast of puppetry

Minneapolis puppeteer David Hanzal is looking forward to attending the Minneapolis Puppetry Palate: a Taste of Puppetry,” which is this year’s Midwest regional puppetry festival.

The four-day event promises to be a smorgasbord of puppetry performances and events. More than a dozen workshops held at St. Paul’s Church in Minneapolis encompass the craft and business of puppeteering and how to incorporate puppetry into classrooms and therapy settings.

The festival runs Thursday through Sunday at several Minneapolis venues. You can purchase passes for the whole festival, individual performances or for Saturday only.  

David says: Something that’s really exciting for me as a puppeteer is being able to see, you know, such a diverse array of performances from all across the region, and also artists from other parts of the country. [I enjoy] that really saturated three- or four-day window where you just get to see lots of different kinds of puppetry.

There’s a mix of puppet performances for the family as well as adult-only audiences. There’s a puppet slam. There’s a puppetry panel on education and therapy. There’s also the puppet flea market.

And there’s the community puppet build and performance workshop, which is immediately followed by the puppet parade in Stewart Park on Saturday, Aug. 17.

— David Hanzal