State of the Arts Blog

Your weekend outlook: More than Fair

[image]

Kate Eifrig and Steve Hendrickson star in "My Fair Lady"

It's Memorial Day weekend, which means that many will ditch the cities for all points north, or will spend their days lazing by a lake or staffing the backyard grill. But if you choose to make your get-away in the urban jungle, many cool offerings await...

It's the eternal tale of a man molding a woman to fit his perfect ideal; Ten Thousand Things presents "My Fair Lady" at the Minnesota Opera Center, and this is the last weekend in the run (my bad for not getting it on the Weekend Outlook sooner). Go for the great ensemble cast; stay for the compelling treatment of the perennial issues of class and gender.

Check out Pillsbury House this weekend for a two-fer; you can see the play "Pa's Hat: Liberian Legacy," the story of a young American woman who accompanies her father back to his Liberian homeland, and the trouble they find there. Then stay for the opening of "The Scent of God," a group art exhibition that explores the residual effects of an encounter with the holy, organized by Obsidian Arts.

Speaking of two-fers, there are two new productions on stage at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Dollhouse is a modern re-imagining of Ibsen's classic "A Doll's House," reworked by playwright Rebecca Gilman. Up in the Dowling Studio you can see "Circle Mirror Transformation" the story of five small town Vermonters who each take a community acting class and soon learn more about each other and themselves than they bargained for.

The Soap Factory presents its third installment of WORKHORSE, a showcase for short, in-progress, just beginning or just finished performance works. Workhorse offers artists the chance to share work at an early stage and gain useful feedback from their peers in an informal setting. One night only - Thursday, starting at 8pm.

It's never too late to celebrate! The Minneapolis College of Art and Design presents "AAXI: A Decade of Aesthetic Apparatus, One Year Late," a look at the design studio's first decade. You guessed it, they're eleven.

Flaneur Productions presents the seventh annual Heliotrope exhibition of underground music. At the Ritz Theater in Minneapolis Thursday through Saturday, 6pm - midnight.