Minneapolis theater gets a nudge from Wendy Knox

Throughout Wendy Knox's professional life, there's been a primary, guiding question. She puts it this way:

"How do I find a way to infuse the work that I do with the values I have?"

Knox describes herself as a practical, unpretentious Midwesterner. She grew up in St. Cloud and started out majoring in chemistry in college, but then became interested in theater. She received a Fulbright Scholarship to study theater in Finland.

At home and at work, Knox considers herself an activist who's not afraid to share her opinions. She regards putting a piece of theater on a stage as a political act. She wants to confront people's everyday perceptions of modern life. Many Frank plays try to look unflinchingly at all the forms of oppression operating in society. Knox believes people need more of a critical discourse in their lives, and she thinks theater is an effective tool.

"In this country in particular we don't do much critical thinking about what we see, what we do, and I think it's important that we do that," she says.

And the reason for that?

"We're not asked to," Knox says.

Frank Theatre has a penchant for producing plays other theaters avoid, either because of their subject matter, complexity or both. In recent years, it's turned increasingly to the work of the Obie Award-winning--yet controversial--playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. A couple of years ago, Frank mounted Parks' edgy adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter," with a title too profane to mention on the radio.

But Wendy Knox's favorite writer, whose work she believes best defines the spirit of Frank Theatre, is Bertolt Brecht.

Frank Theatre is presenting Brecht's "Mother Courage" in an empty old Pillsbury mill building in Minneapolis. The post-industrial ambience of the space is something Brecht probably would have approved of. Knox calls him the most influential playwright of the 20th century who, in her words, aimed his pieces at the intersection of art and social consciousness.

Knox says Brecht's dense and difficult plays are like an excavation.

"I read a Brecht play and I feel really stupid," she says. "And then it's like a giant archeological mission to sort of dig through and figure out what does he mean, what's this? And that really doesn't happen until you get the actors around the table."

One of those actors is Maria Asp. Asp refers to herself as a "repeat Frank offender." She's been with the company for 12 years.

"I think Wendy Knox is the most ambitious woman I know," Asp says.

Ambitious, but not power-hungry. Frank Theatre plays are extremely collaborative. Asp says Knox has created an atmosphere where all of the participants share ownership of the production, even if at first, they don't have the slightest idea what it's about.

"'What's up with that?' That's the Frank quote," says Asp.

It's Knox's favorite catch phrase, as in, "What's up with that? That scene over there--what's up with that?"

It's a question that gives the entire cast and crew permission to help supply the answer.

"We sit there," Asp says, "and we pick through the play, and we find something that's a little complicated or confusing and she'll give the 'What's up with that?' Then she'll nudge and prod and use a questioning process, not to find 'the meaning,' but to find a meaning together."

The Pillsbury A Mill machine garage is one of several non-traditional spaces Frank Theatre has transformed into a temporary playhouse. It staged the musical "The Cradle Will Rock" in the old Sears Building in Minneapolis, and another Brecht play at a former munitions plant in St. Paul.

Star Tribune Theater Critic Graydon Royce says Knox has shown incredible imagination with her use of what he calls "found spaces."

"It's almost like a homeless theater," he says. "I mean she finds places where nobody else is and says, 'Let's do a show here.' And it really becomes part of the experience."

While Royce lauds Knox's adventurousness as an artistic director, he says Frank productions don't always meet the challenge of the material. He says when he's made that argument it irritates Knox. She thinks she deserves credit just for taking the risk.

"Kind of like I'm a teacher and she handed in an essay and it might have been messy," Royce explains. "And she says, 'Well, you know, I wrote that with my left hand.' Well, that's great, and for left-handed work it is great. But the fact of the matter is, I can't read it."

Still, Royce says without Knox and Frank Theatre, the local theater scene would be far less interesting.

Knox herself says theater was never a career path for her. She's slightly amazed her company is still around. That could partly be due to the fact that, despite her ambition, Knox has realistic expectations about its impact.

"I don't think I can change the world with Frank Theatre," she says. "I can't. But, if you can change how someone thinks about something, if the experience of seeing the work that we put on stage nudges them toward something, then we've done our job."

Knox says as long as Frank Theatre's work isn't being duplicated anywhere else in the Twin Cities, it'll keep going.

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