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.

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Monstrous laughs with ‘Young Frankenstein’

Actor Dane Stauffer of St. Paul loves Mel Brooks’ movie “Young Frankenstein,” and he’s expecting the musical version of the show to be just as funny when it’s brought to life at the hands of Theatre 55. The show runs Oct. 9-25 at the Gremlin Theatre in St. Paul.

Theatre 55 casts actors ages 55 and older. Stauffer says, “As someone who is aging creatively, I enjoy seeing other folks get involved too without any barriers. There's so much talent on the stage, and so much talent behind the scenes in directing and everything.”

Finding ‘defiant joy’ through dance

Laichee Yang, an artist and designer based in Little Falls, was able to see a rehearsal of Ananya Dance Theatre’s new show “PREM | Love: An Occupation.” She says she was incredibly moved by the performance, which was created as a response to Operation Metro Surge. The dancers and artists move through grief, love and what they’re calling “defiant joy.”

The show runs Oct. 10-17 at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis. All performances begin at 7:30 p.m. Some performances include American Sign Language interpretation; others are designated “masks requested.”

Yang describes the performance:

"There were moments of shaking and trembling, and bodies pushing through space, and it really made me think about the idea of individual grief as well as shared grief. There was something really beautiful about witnessing all of the dancers carrying their emotions together, and it really made me think about just how we are feeling each other's humanity. And how can we feel it if we're not here to witness each other's grief?”

The heart and soul of Fred Cogelow’s woodcarvings

Rosemary Glesener is the director of the Bird Island Cultural Centre, and she adores the sculptures of master woodcarver Fred Cogelow of Willmar.

Glesener attended the unveiling of two new sculptures as part of Cogelow’s exhibit “Coming Home.” The exhibit, presented by the Cogelow Art Center, features a large selection of his woodcarvings, along with work by four area artists, at the Kandiyohi County Historical Society in Willmar through Oct. 30.

Glesener admires the way Cogelow captures the heart and soul of the characters he carves:

“I personally call him the Michelangelo of contemporary times … [Fred] will do a sketch, whether it's at the farmers market or at the mall, of someone he finds intriguing, and from that sketch, he captures the emotion and also the physical animation of the individuals. He should be considered not only a Minnesota treasure, but an American treasure in the arts.”

A new LGBTQ+ magazine and website has launched in Minnesota, three months after Lavender Magazine shut down its operations after a 30-year run. Lavender was a mainstay for the LGBTQ+ community in the state.

Q Minnesota was created by several former Lavender staffers. The very first issue came out last Thursday.

For more about the launch and what’s ahead, MPR News host Nina Moini spoke with Q Minnesota editor-in-chief and publisher, Andy Lien, and vice president of digital content and marketing, Nell Gelhaus.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

When Kristin Kobes Du Mez’ book “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation” was published in 2020, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon for the way it connected evangelical hypermasculinity with support for President Donald Trump.

Now, Du Mez is back with a follow-up — but this time, she’s focused on Christian women.

“I wanted to look at the popular religious culture that shapes Christian women's lives: Christian radio, Christian publishing, romance novels, mommy blogs, influencers, multi-level marketing companies, Mary Kay, Lularoe, all of these fun things. Hobby Lobby, right? Joanna Gaines. So I thought it was going to be a fun book,” she said.

“In the end, it was not. In the end, what I ended up uncovering was just how economic and cultural and political values are embedded inside these seemingly fluffy products that actually also help us understand how we got to our political moment today."

In “Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made,” Du Mez traces the roots of modern Christian femininity to 19th century holiness theology — a type of Christianity that promises happiness if you totally surrender to God. And that's reflected by a subculture that subtly reinforces the ideals of prosperity and purity.

By revealing this often hidden world, Du Mez hopes to make some sense out of our current moment.

She will be in Minneapolis Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church for a conversation with Rev. Angela Denker about the book hosted by Magers & Quinn Booksellers. Tickets are free but RSVPs are required.

From Twin Cities art crawls to small-town galleries, fall offers plenty of ways to explore Minnesota’s arts scene. But behind the art and performances are the artists — working to find audiences, afford studio space and make a living. What helps them thrive, and how can we support creativity in our communities?

MPR News host Angela Davis explores what’s happening in Minnesota’s arts scene, how local artists are supported and where to discover art across the state this fall.

Guests:

• Mariusz Kujawski is the executive director of the St. Paul Art Collective, an organization that supports local artists and connects them with audiences.

• Michele Anderson is the senior director of partnerships and rural strategy at the nonprofit Springboard for the Arts, where she leads programs and partnerships supporting artists and creative communities in greater Minnesota.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.   

In northern Minnesota, the largest stretch of peatlands in the contiguous U.S. can be found. This wet terrain has taken thousands of years to form. And draws scientists and experts from around the world.

That includes Jennifer de Mooy, who spent quite a bit of time there researching for her new book: "Water, Carbon, Time: Exploring Peatlands in a Warming World."

Minnesota Now host Nina Moini spoke to de Mooy about these important ecosystems.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

The way we build careers and make money is changing. MPR News host Angela Davis talks with journalist Lee Hawkins about how people create businesses, move forward after career setbacks and make financial decisions — and what we can learn from their journeys to success.

Guest:

• Lee Hawkins is a contributor to American Public Media — a unit of American Public Media Group, the parent company of MPR News — and a Spencer Education Fellow at Columbia University. He is a Minnesota native and a journalist who spent 19 years at The Wall Street Journal. He is the host of “Must Be the Money,” a podcast produced by Marketplace, and author of the book, "I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family's History Set Me Free.” He is also host of the podcasts, “What Happened in Alabama” and “Unlocking the Gates: How the North Led Housing Discrimination in America,” produced by APM Studios.

• Chris Farrell is a senior economics contributor for MPR News and Marketplace.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

One January night, in the future, four out-of-season tornadoes converge on Minneapolis and flatten whole blocks in minutes. That's the opening of Kawai Strong Washburn's propulsive new novel “The Names of the New World.” That storm throws together three strangers whose lives will become entangled over the next 25 years.

Washburn, who grew up in Hawaii and now lives in Minneapolis, has seen the predictive models that show the places he loves in Hawaii stand a good chance of being destroyed as the planet warms.

As the opening chapter of his new book shows, no place is climate-proof. But if the thought of supercharged storms, bleached coral reefs, and flooding Pacific islands makes you want to crawl under the bed, don't let that fear keep you from this book.

The writing is electric, the characters quickly make you feel invested, and, despite the backdrop, Washburn has zero interest in imagining a dystopia.

In his vision of the future, the human tendency toward compassion and mutual aid drive characters’ decisions, even as Mother Nature serves up harrowing challenges.

“More than anything, I'm hoping this book being out in the world gives people a vision of the future that feels worth fighting for,” Washburn said. “A vision of the future that makes people want to ask, ‘Why not? Why can we not do that? What's stopping us from doing that?’ And in their own ways, answers that move them closer to being part of the solution.”

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Washburn got national attention for his first novel, "Sharks in the Time of Saviors." The family saga hit "Best Book of 2020" lists for a dozen major publications, and its awards include the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and a Minnesota Book Award. Former president Barack Obama named it one of his favorite books of the year.

The book comes out Oct. 6 and Washburn will read from "Names of the New World" at an event hosted by Milkweed Books and Rain Taxi at Open Book in Minneapolis with local poet Claire Wahmanholm.

Americans in recent years have become accustomed to seeing people without homes setting up tents on sidewalks or in parks. Panhandlers at intersections. Cars with windows blocked by cardboard as the occupants sleep.

The five families Goldstone follows through modern Atlanta are less visible, but they’re right there, making your latte and trying to keep their balance on the slippery edge of homelessness. It doesn’t take much, usually a misunderstanding with a shift manager or a broken rule at an apartment, to make them lose their footing.

Readers of Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s “Random Family” and Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed” nonfiction narratives will recognize Brian Goldstone’s approach. He embeds with families over a period of years to tell a broader story about how our country’s leaders and the policies they’ve enacted have failed our citizens.

The winner of a Pulitzer Prize, “There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America,” sensitively brings readers into the precarious existence faced by so many Americans, from sketchy emergency shelters to the pricey, run-down extended stay hotels that have bloomed on the outskirts of American cities.

The book isn’t all gloom. There are moments of beauty and joy. But anxiety infuses the stories in this book, and stress permeates every character. The subjects’ dreams are modest. They want safe housing, a decent job and a future where they can enjoy more of life’s small pleasures. It’s heartbreaking to watch even these little dreams fall away.

All the stories in this book, from low-wage airport workers struggling to make rent to single mothers forced to camp in their car, are tests of whether America is keeping its basic promise: work hard and you’ll be rewarded.

Our country has minted the first trillionaire in human history, but a growing number of working Americans can’t afford a home. Wealth inequality is increasing. Social services are disappearing. That’s a choice, Goldstone says, and a failure: “Such suffering is so unnecessary, so utterly preventable. We have the solutions. We have the resources. What we need now is the will to act.”

Read MPR News senior reporter Jon Collins full interview transcript below.

Collins: Paint a picture for me of how you settled on this specific topic, or even how you met the folks that are featured in your book.

Goldstone: My wife Elaine, who is a nurse practitioner, was working at a community health center in Atlanta, and we share a car. So every day, I would pick her up from work, and we would debrief our days. And she started to tell me about this trend she was seeing among her patients. Her patients were working, often not just one job, but multiple jobs at places like Walmart, or they were driving for Uber or Lyft, or they were packing boxes in Amazon warehouses.

What she was learning from them was that when they finished their shifts, they weren’t going to a home; they were homeless. And when she told me about that, I was stunned. Even as an educated person and someone who had even reported and researched on economic injustice and equality around the globe, I had never made the connection between work and homelessness, much less unpacked and investigated.

That really spurred me to first write a magazine story for the New Republic, following one family in Atlanta, and when that was done, I realized that I had only scratched the surface.

That there was so much more to know, and crucially that there were so many systems, not just housing, not just low wages and the volatility of work itself, but so many other systems, childcare, healthcare — that were kind of colliding to make this crisis not only possible, but I would argue, inevitable and predictable.

Collins: The conventional wisdom for Americans would be, “Well, you have a job, then you can afford a house.” But your book really illustrates the divide that many people, especially low-wage workers, are experiencing as they try to juggle everything in their lives and make it work.

Goldstone: Absolutely, for a lot of people, including me, the term “working homeless,” which is kind of at the center of this book, that term is not just contradictory; it's kind of scandalous. Many of us have been taught to believe in America that if you just work hard enough, if you just clock enough hours, you might not be able to buy a mansion, but you will at least have your most basic material needs met.

And yet for the five families who I followed for nearly six years for this book, and the many, many, many people like them, they are working and working and working some more, and it still isn't enough.

And it explodes our ideas about meritocracy — it explodes the American dream. If in the richest nation on the planet, a full-time job or multiple jobs still can't get you a roof overhead, then what is going on? And so that was really the question that was kind of hanging over my reporting throughout this period.

Collins: One of the things that really struck me from your book is the level of stress that people experience. It's not even just people stressed about their job or making a living. It's people trying to envision themselves in a stable place. It permeates every story in your book. What sort of change did you see in them during these six years?

Goldstone: There's a term that public health experts use to refer to exactly what you're describing, and that term is toxic stress. It's so important to just linger on that phrase, toxic stress.

Because that is stress that is so chronic and so debilitating that it can actually alter your brain chemistry. It can fundamentally alter your long-term trajectory. And this was especially harrowing when it came to the children in this book, to see how this toxic stress that they were plunged into and forced to endure was really choking off their futures, choking off their opportunity, choking off the rest of their lives before they had even started.

It's the stress, the ways that it then cascades into other things. The way that sleeplessness can cascade into a car accident, as happened with one person in the book, Kara, and then that leads to yet other tragic things in her life.

The important point that I really want readers to constantly be aware of is that these conditions, these circumstances are not God-given; they are not somehow natural. This isn't a Greek tragedy where these families are just struck with this unforeseen malady. Each of the circumstances documented in the book are utterly preventable.

Yes, people make choices that they regret later on. Yes, these are human beings. These are not superhuman angels or something who can do no wrong. And yet there are whole systems, whole structures just militating constantly against their stability at every turn, and that is precisely what produces that kind of deep, deep anxiety and stress on a daily basis.

Collins: Cars were also, in my mind, a character in your book to a certain degree, they serve as shelter sometimes, right? But they also are necessary in many American cities, especially Atlanta, to be able to get around, to get to work. And when something like a car falls through, everything else cascades behind.

Goldstone: Atlanta, like many cities in the country, is a place where you really have to have a car to get by. For Kara, one of the moms in the book, her car was the way that she was able to earn her income.

Because when the pandemic hit and she lost her job as a home health aide and the kids were out of school and she didn't have any childcare, she put her four kids in the car with her and started driving for DoorDash, delivering food. And so her car was literally the vehicle for her income.

There was one moment in the book where they're at a birthday party. She's taken the kids to the park to celebrate her son's birthday, and her son spills juice on her phone accidentally, and Kara just bursts into a tirade against her son.

Anyone walking by would think, “OK, this is an abusive situation. What's going on here?” But what they wouldn't know was that if this phone died, if this phone was damaged, she wouldn't be able to use her app to drive for DoorDash.

That same car becomes the closest thing that they have to shelter when Kara and the kids are forced to sleep in her car in a Walmart parking lot, terrified that a cop will knock on the window and call Child Protective Services and take the kids away.

Cars are central, and when people ultimately lose their car because they can't make the car payment anymore, and it gets repossessed, that's just one more kind of part of the safety net that has been shredded for these families.

Collins: You really can't talk about income inequality or poverty in the United States without also talking about race. First off, what sort of impacts do you see on folks in that regard? And how did you approach it as a white journalist?

Goldstone: There's a cliche in this country that anyone can become homeless, anyone can experience poverty, that it's colorblind, and to some extent, that's true. There are people from all kinds of backgrounds and of all races who experience this kind of homelessness.

And yet, in Atlanta, where the book is based, even though Atlanta is no longer a majority Black city, an astonishing 93 percent of families who are homeless are Black. That racialized dimension is really replicated in every city around the country.

Here in the Twin Cities, we know that Black and Indigenous families and individuals are overwhelmingly represented in the homeless population. So homelessness is not as colorblind as we would like to believe, and that has a history. There's an entire history of displacement, segregation, dispossession and displacement behind these disparities.

Going into this project, I really wanted to have this kind of demographic plurality. I wanted to have people from many backgrounds — the white working-class family. But the truth was, as I started going to food pantries on Saturday morning and going to shelters, everyone there was Black.

And so I had to confront the question of “What will it mean as a white man to do work where it is going to be primarily about not just black families and individuals, but lots of single mothers as well?”

I just tried to be as acutely conscious at every point in this process of the biases that I was bringing to this, the ignorance that I was bringing. And I hope that some of that ignorance, some of that naivete, was actually productive because it allowed me to have a kind of curiosity about what these families were experiencing.

But that's a question, among many other questions, that really kept me up at night, and that I think anyone doing this work needs to really struggle with.

Collins: Gender was also a huge theme. You saw it repeated over and over in these families that much of the burden falls on the women in the family. Not all of it, of course, but the women in the family and the girls in the family carry a lot of the burdens. How did you think about that, and how did you sort of navigate that fact?

Goldstone: It's absolutely true that in the population of working homeless families, and really just homeless families, they are disproportionately headed by single mothers.

I didn't go out looking for this, but when I met a family where it was a two-parent household, in the book, their names are Maurice and Natalia, it also felt very crucial to show that even in a two-parent household, even with a father who is absolutely devoted to his children and to his spouse, they too can [be] pushed into homelessness by by these larger structures.

I just learned yesterday the devastating news that Maurice died tragically in a work accident. It feels very raw for me because Maurice was so determined that through allowing me to tell his family stories, that this crisis would finally be addressed, and that people would no longer feel the shame of experiencing the kind of insecurity that his own family and so many others do experience in this country.

Gender was in the mix throughout. There are a lot of really bad men in this book. I think that's the only way to put it. There are a lot of men who are not there for their children or their partners, and I just try to show the reality of what was happening, in all of its messiness and authenticity.

Collins: How do you deal with that sort of frustration that there's not a clean ending?

Goldstone: There were so many times as I was writing the book, and even during the reporting, where I wished I was writing a novel, where I could just kind of take the material I had documented, but put a happy ending on it, to give a tidy resolution. There really isn't one.

And Maurice and Natalia, I think, were the closest ones in the book to finding themselves at the end of the book in a place of of peace, and kind of making it through this absolutely tumultuous and wrenching year that they went through when they were homeless with their children living in an extended stay hotel.

I just have to allow that to be. I have to allow the fact that this isn't a novel; that this is real life. And you know, one thing that I believe now is that it's on us. It's on readers. It's on those who encountered these stories. It's on us as citizens to ensure that their ending, which is still being written, their lives, are ongoing, that their ending can find security.

I just always go back to the sheer scale and magnitude of this problem. There are so many languishing in a manufactured invisibility. The fact that as I argue, the real number of people who are unhoused in this country is conservatively about six times greater than the official number.

So close to 4 million men, women and children without homes in this country. The ending for all of those millions of men, women and children remains to be written. That is my hope: that readers will not just finish the book feeling sad, but that they will feel empowered to demand that the suffering end.

The Heights Theater has survived Prohibition, the Great Depression, World War II and COVID-19. Now, as it turns 100, the Columbia Heights movie house is celebrating with a week of events, and film offerings from every decade it’s been in operation.

On Central Avenue, the theater stands out with a towering vertical marquee spelling “Heights” in lights. It bills itself as the Twin Cities’ longest-operating movie house.

Since the silent-movie era, the Heights has been through at least six owners, multiple renovations, a firebombing by a rival projectionist and a stint as a discount theater charging just 99 cents a ticket.

Classic movies inspired generations of fans

Along the way, it has left a lasting impression on moviegoers. Medtronic co-founder Earl Bakken, who went on to develop an external pacemaker, credited a 1932 screening of “Frankenstein” at the Heights with inspiring him.

When Beatlemania swept the country, screaming fans filled its single auditorium for “A Hard Day’s Night.”

For Naomi Osborn, the Heights offered a chance to see classic movies she couldn’t find at mainstream theaters, including the 1944 film noir “Double Indemnity.”

“What made it special for me was I brought a friend who had never been to the Heights, nor had they seen Double Indemnity, and they thought black and white movies were boring. And that's the movie I used to convert them,” she said.

Osborn now runs Strange Hours, a late-night series that is part of the theater’s push to offer programming movie lovers can’t find elsewhere.

When previous owner Tom Letness retired in January, Ryan Oestreich came on board after helping revitalize the Music Box, an historic theater in Chicago.

Oestreich has already updated the Heights with a 4K laser projector and surround speakers. Plans also include showing new releases such as Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” on 70 mm film, and more late-night showings, all with the goal of getting more people off the couch and into the theater.

But some of the Heights’ appeal comes from traditions that predate streaming by decades.

Elise Foster, the theater’s manager, saw the 2025 drama “Hamnet” with accompaniment from the Heights’ house organist. She said the experience was unforgettable.

“Watching the organ being played and seeing you know the red curtain’s part when the show started, and just thinking, like, wow, this is truly a show. It's a performance. It is larger than just you know hitting play on a movie,” Foster said.

As it welcomes new generations of fans, the theater hopes to keep its traditional charm, along with fresh popcorn made daily.

Heights Theater centennial screenings

Saturday, Oct. 3: “Pinocchio” at 11 a.m., with live organ music; “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” at 4:30 p.m.; and “The Matrix” at 6:30 and 9:30 p.m., in 35 mm. The later “Matrix” screening includes an introduction by Natalie Marlin.

Sunday, Oct. 4: “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” at 1 p.m., with organ music before the film; “It Happened One Night” at 4:45 p.m.; and “Safety Last!” at 7:15 p.m., with a live organ score by Ed Copeland.

Monday, Oct. 5: “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” at 4:30 p.m. and “Chicago” at 7 p.m.

Tuesday, Oct. 6: “Chicago” at 4:15 p.m. and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” at 7 p.m.

Wednesday, Oct. 7: “Parasite” at 7 p.m.

Thursday, Oct. 8: “Babylon” at 7 p.m., in 70 mm, closing the festival on the theater’s 100th birthday.

Thankfully for the hotel guests — and mystery readers — Miss Marple is there, observing from the sidelines and taking it all in.

As Foley told Kerri Miller at Talking Volumes, “Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel” is the first full-length, commissioned novel featuring Agatha Christie’s beloved Miss Marple in fifty years. The challenge was translating her into a more modern sensibility.

Talking Volumes: Lucy Foley

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“[Miss Marple] would definitely not describe herself as a feminist icon,” Foley told Miller on stage at The O'Shaughnessy. “I think she would say, ‘I’m just a traditional Victorian who believes in traditional Victorian values.’ But in terms of her creation, she absolutely is, because she’s an old lady who uses her invisibility as an older woman as her superpower.”

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Agatha Christie fans since childhood, Foley and Miller also talk about the magic of Christie’s mysteries and her belief in the importance of “fair play” with the reader. Is it really possible all the clues are hidden in plain sight? Foley says absolutely. Because what’s the fun of a mystery novel if you can’t figure out who done it?

The appropriately mysterious and magical Minneapolis-based musician Aby Wolf provided music for the evening.

Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts.

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MN Shortlist is the MPR News weekly roundup of arts and culture recommendations. This week’s picks include “Paris Couture” at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Meander Upper Minnesota River Art Crawl and “Harvest Howl” at Wildlife Science Center and more.

‘A Star Full of Skies: The Values Play Experience’ at Wonderlust Productions in St. Paul — through Oct. 11

Wonderlust Productions creates original plays by picking a topic of social importance, then holding listening sessions to hear people’s stories. For this show, they wanted to explore what it means to be living in democracy when people are polarized. They sat down with almost 400 people on the full range of the political spectrum, living in both rural and urban Minnesota. This show is a fictional story that gets at these different viewpoints.

Wonderlust co-artistic director Alan Berks says the play feels like “’Our Town’ on fire.” Like Thornton Wilder’s classic play, a chorus of characters speak to the audience, but there’s nothing placid about this show.

Leaning even further into the democratic experience, the audience gets to vote on the order of the scenes in the first act, so every performance is different.

“A Star Full of Skies: The Values Play Experience” runs through Oct. 11 at the Frey Theater at St Catherine’s University in St Paul. The Oct. 10 show will be livestreamed. (Emily Bright)

The Meander Art Crawl in the Upper Minnesota River Valley — Oct. 2-4

There’s a whole lotta art happening in the southwest corner of Minnesota or, more specifically, the Upper Minnesota River Valley. More than 40-area artists are participating in the Meander Art Crawl, which has been around since 2004.

One of the organizers, Granite Falls-based watercolor painter Bradley D. Hall, will open up his home studio that was converted from a church built in 1889.

“You're stopping at a lot of the artist studios where they live and work throughout the year, so it's really interesting, and we do demonstrations of our work,” Hall said.”It's very well attended and a lot of fun: My wife makes cookies, my mom makes cookies, my sister makes about 30 dozen cookies. Please stop by.”

The tour is free and self-guided (maps are available online and along the crawl) with stops ranging from the studio of silversmith Jean Menden in Clinton downriver to the Prairie Arts Center in Madison. (Alex V. Cipolle)

‘Gods & Monsters’ at Otherworldly Arts Collective in Minneapolis — Oct. 2-3

A Halloween-themed group art show is celebrating the dark arts and horrors of all kinds. The exhibit will feature work from more than 100 artists inspired by horror films, ancient mythology and more. In addition to the art on display, visitors can play spooky bingo, get a tarot reading and enjoy food and drink from Norseman Distillery and FoxCakes Bakery. The show runs Oct. 2 and Oct. 3 from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. (Annie Russell)

‘Harvest Howl’ at Wildlife Science Center in Stacy – Oct. 3

Wildlife Science Center in Stacy invites the public to enjoy the autumn weather with local shopping, food and spending the day surrounded by nature at this Saturday’s “Harvest Howl.” The annual event holds educational demonstrations and a market featuring local artisans and vendors. Organizers encourage visitors to explore the Wildlife Science Center’s grounds, including its wolves, bears, cougars, raptors and other resident wildlife.

“Harvest Howl” runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tickets can be found on the center’s website in advance or purchased at the door. (Chandra Colvin)

’Paris Couture’ at the Minneapolis Institute of Art — Oct. 4-Jan. 17

A new exhibition from Paris tells the story of haute couture, from its origins in the 19th century through the Belle Époque, the World Wars and postwar period to the 1980s and today. In fact, the most recent piece of fashion history in the show is from earlier this year and it captured the imagination of Max Bryant, Mia’s associate curator of European decorative arts and sculpture.

“It's an evening dress and jacket, and it's made of these 27,000 organza ovals,” Bryant said of the garment, which was designed by Matthieu Blazy, artistic director at Chanel. “Applying them by hand took 2,000 hours of work. The effect of this piece is really extraordinary, and you can really see the labor that goes into a garment like that, and how different it is from ready to wear.”

Haute couture is, after all, the highest level of dressmaking, sewing and craftsmanship. “Paris Couture” will also feature more than 80 designs from Dior, Balenciaga, Schiaparelli, Grès, Imane Ayissi and more. Très chic. (Alex V. Cipolle)

‘On Relationship: What Connects, What Divides’ at M.E.T. Projects in Red Wing — Oct. 4-Nov. 1

This exhibition at the new Red Wing contemporary art space M.E.T. Projects features artworks spanning three decades of mindbending sculpture from Tom Lane, who taught art at the University of Minnesota for 44 years. Imagine chairs fusing together (like a modernist twist on the props in the 2025 horror film “Backrooms”) and disembodied porcelain fists pumping out of walls. There will be an opening reception with Lane at 3 pm Sunday, Oct. 4. (Alex V. Cipolle)

Cine Latino Film Festival — Oct. 7-11

The Main Cinema in Minneapolis will host the MSP Film Society’s 14th annual Cine Latino Film Festival. Cinephiles can expect five days of movies, parties and cultural events, opening with “La Bola Negra.” Directed by Spanish filmmaking duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, the cast includes Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close.

Beyond the screenings, the weekend includes flamenco dancing, a pop-up market featuring local Latine artists and businesses, and a food and wine event with Caribbean bites and live music. The festival closes Oct. 11 with the Brazilian bank-heist comedy “Old Bandits,” starring Fernanda Montenegro and Ary Fontoura. (Annie Russell)

‘Roots’ at All My Relations Gallery in Minneapolis — Oct. 8-Dec. 12

The newest installation at the All My Relations Gallery features 12 Indigenous artists who tell their stories of identity and intersections rooted in the land in the forms of sculptures, photography, painting and more.

“Roots” showcases emerging as well as veteran artists from various tribal nations of the Midwest.

For some artists, including Madelyn Churchill and Wish Garbow, the show will be their first exhibition.

“Our opening receptions are always a great mix of people who appreciate art and those from the community,” Juleana Enwright, the gallery’s manager said. “I'm really excited that there's some first-time exhibitors and some emerging artists because it really makes the exhibit opening a lot more vibrant and a lot more energetic.”

The opening reception will be held on Oct. 8 from 6 to 8 p.m. at All My Relations Art Gallery in Minneapolis. (Ava Grace)

A new gallery in downtown Fargo is centering Native artists from across the midwest and the country.

Sovereign Studio and Gallery opened in late September, but its founder, Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ Dakota artist Joseph Williams, has been dreaming of opening a space like this for years.

“There is no question about the quality of work that is created from our Native American and our Indigenous communities, top tier, just incredible, passionate work,” Williams said. Williams is the former director of Native American Programs at the Plains Art Museum, a few blocks from Sovereign, and spent more than three decades working in the art field.

“But there really isn’t a place for us to showcase our works that isn’t outside of a weekend market, or that’s supported by an institution consistently.”

For Sovereign’s inaugural exhibition, the work of dozens of Native artists at all stages of their careers is on view. There is the bright geometric work of Gerald Cournoyer of Nebraska and the expressionistic paintings of Roger Broer of South Dakota, two nationally renowned Oglala Lakota artists. Sharing a wall is also the ledger art of Chris Pappan (Osage, Kaw, Cheyenne River Sioux, and mixed European heritage), another nationally recognized artist who founded the Center for Native Futures in Chicago.

Williams says the art of Hillary Kempenich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa based in North Dakota, will be nationally known soon.

Kempenich is “one of the undiscovered masters that we have in the area,” Williams said. “Her work is about Indigenous women representation and being able to tell their own story, often being told by men or academics.”

There is also work from established Minnesota artists, including Kent Estey and Penny Kagigebi of the White Earth Nation and Laura Youngbird of the Grand Portage Band.

“The goal is to promote and stand up Native artists full time from here on out,” Williams said. The mission is to make Fargo a national hub for Native arts.

Sovereign is the brick-and-mortar space of the nonprofit that Williams started, Indigenous Art House, which develops cultural programming throughout the area, such as the Northern Plains Indigenous Film Festival, which premiered in early 2026 at the Fargo Theater.

The gallery’s inaugural exhibition will be up through autumn. Williams says the gallery will feature other programming too, like live music, arts education, artist talks and a book club based on Native literature.

“It’d be great for folks to come down and check this out,” Williams said. “But overall, whether it's here in Fargo or if it's in northern Minnesota or in South Dakota, support native artists. Their work is uniquely Midwest.”

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.

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

What does a painting sound like?

Rochester trombonist Jon Sievers suggests looking at — and listening to — “Canvas to Composition” at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona. Minnesota composer Eric Heukeshoven created sonifications of four artworks in the museum’s permanent collection.

The composer assigned sounds that describe the color, texture and feeling of the works. The compositions will be revealed Friday, at the museum’s New Look Masquerade Party, which is part of its 20th anniversary celebration.

In the museum, Sievers says, you’ll be able to hear the music without wearing headphones:

“It's like focused sound that's aimed at just at you, and there's an indicator of ‘here's where you should stand’ as you're appreciating the sonification of [each] particular artwork.”

A prairie swaying on the gallery wall

Kristine Chapin of St. Paul says she was captivated by Linda Snouffer’s installation, “A Prairie Stroll,” at the Dow Gallery in St. Paul. Snouffer’s botanical prints recreate the native grasses and varied shades of the Minnesota sky. Hung on dowels, the dyed and printed fabric sways as you walk through the room, which Chapin says gives you the feeling of walking through a tallgrass prairie.

The show’s run has been extended through Oct. 17 to align with the St. Paul Art Crawl, and Snouffer will be on site Oct. 16 from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. and Oct. 17 from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Folk music for a cause, with room to dance

Theater blogger Kendra Plant of St. Louis Park is looking forward to an evening of music when Soul Trouvère and Ukrainian Village Band perform an all-ages concert this Saturday to benefit Unidos Minnesota. Both Minnesota bands perform folk music from Eastern Europe, and Plant says dancing is encouraged. The show is Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Celtic Junction in St. Paul.

“I’m drawn to the way the event connects Minnesota’s Ukrainian and immigrant communities through music while supporting Unidos MN. It feels especially relevant to Minnesota right now, and like a strong example of local art responding to the communities around it,” said Plant.

Nearly a century ago, thousands of Minneapolis workers went on strike in the middle of the Great Depression. It turned violent and police shot dozens of strikers, killing two.

Members of a Teamsters local were fighting for union recognition, better wages and limits on their working hours. The strike ultimately helped turn Minneapolis into what was known as a union town.

Now, author John Hanson has written a new book about the strike, called “Fight & Win: Minneapolis Teamsters Strike, 1934." He joined MPR News host Nina Moini to talk about his personal connection to the story.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

Carol Anderson has been sounding the alarm for years.

As a historian at Emory University, she is intimately acquainted with America’s legacy when it comes to voting access. Her book, “One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying our Democracy,” was longlisted for the National Book Award in 2018.

She brought her deep knowledge of history and concern about what’s happening to voting access now to Red Wing on Sept. 23.

During a conversation at the Sheldon Theatre with MPR News host Kerri Miller, Anderson said she’s worried the Jim Crow-era is beginning anew, thanks to persistent attempts to deny communities of color their right to vote.

“I see it as the result of a long-term campaign to undermine the strength of our electoral systems,” she told Miller. “How many times can you hear ‘stolen election, stolen election, voter fraud, voter fraud, voter fraud?’ If you say a lie enough times, it becomes the truth, and there's a nasty long history of hollering ‘voter fraud.’”

But while Anderson acknowledged the country’s track record on voting access is grim, she also applauded the only thing that has ever held it at bay: voters who are active and civically engaged. She pointed to the Red Wing audience as evidence.

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“This is, what, a Wednesday evening? And you’re here listening to a talk about voter suppression and voting rights?” she laughed. “This is where our strength is. It is people getting educated about what’s happening and knowing not to listen to the lies about election integrity and voter fraud.”

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Isaac Thompson grew up in the Twin Cities dreaming of becoming a professional violinist. His career took him off the stage and into arts leadership — and eventually brought him back home to lead the Minnesota Orchestra, the same institution that inspired him as a kid.

MPR News host Angela Davis talks with Thompson about his first year as CEO of the orchestra and his vision for making classical music more accessible.

Guest:

• Isaac Thompson is the president and CEO of the Minnesota Orchestra, a role he began in October 2025. He previously served as president and CEO of the Oregon Symphony and held leadership roles at the New York Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

Isaac Thompson serves on the Minnesota Public Radio Board of Trustees.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.    

Foggy mornings, apples and pumpkins abound: anyone in the mood for a ghost story? Or rather, in the case of Shannon Sanders’ debut novel, “The Great Wherever,” a story narrated by ghosts who have some pretty strong opinions about the living? This recommendation comes from Victoria Ford of Comma, a bookshop in Minneapolis.

Here’s the scenario: Aubrey is 31, adrift and in debt, when she learns that she and three cousins have inherited the family homestead in Tennessee. Aubrey’s great-grandfather was one of the first Black landowners in the country, and legacy draws the cousins together to make a fraught decision: keep the land or sell it?

Watching over the four living characters are four ghosts whose deaths prevented them from inheriting. Tethered to the land, they do not want to see it turned into a Costco parking lot. As the ghosts observe, gossip about, and try to influence the cousins, the stories of their own lives and deaths — the secrets that are also part of the family inheritance — come to light.

“I just loved Shannon Sanders' voice as an author. She's funny and wry, even though it's a bit of a sad story,” Ford said. “It's a hot summer in Tennessee, and [you can practically] smell the barbecue and feel the sweat trickling down your back as the cousins are debating what to do.”

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Louise Erdrich's latest honor inspired in her a new appreciation of how the supposedly solitary art of writing depends on the help of others.

Erdrich is this year's recipient of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize. It's named for the late sisters — silent film actors Dorothy and Lillian Gish — whose will called for the establishment of an award for "an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.”

Since the prize began, in 1994, winners have included Bob Dylan,Frank Gehry, Merce Cunningham and Ava DuVernay.

Erdrich, 72, is already a Pulitzer winner for her 2020 novel “The Night Watchman” and a National Book Award winner for her 2012 novel “The Round House.” In 2015, she received the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. During a recent telephone interview with The Associated Press, Erdrich said that after learning of the Gish award, she researched the lives of the two actors and was impressed by how they made everyone involved in a given film feel appreciated.

“They would talk to the stage hands and anyone else who was around, the people who helped put a production together. That's something very close to my heart,” said Erdrich, citing her experience as a bookstore owner. “I love being part of the entire structure of bringing books to people.”

Like such peers as Ann Patchett and Lauren Groff, Erdrich has firsthand knowledge in both the creation and selling of books. In 2001, she helped found Birchbark Books, an independent store based in Minneapolis that champions “the power of good writing, the beauty of handmade art, the strength of Native culture, and the importance of small and intimate bookstores.” (Erdrich, whose books often center on Native lives, is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.)

In a statement released Friday, Gish selection committee member Sara Reisman praised Erdrich's writing for its “indelible effect on my understanding of Indigenous life.”

“Adjacent to her writing practice is Birchbark Books," Reisman added, “a community-based teaching bookstore with international presence that amplifies the work of Native and non-Native writers (and) celebrates that which makes each of us different.”

Have Americans given up a sense of virtue in their political leaders? What does character mean when so-called “authenticity” is prized over moral goodness?

As publisher of The Bulwark and host of The Focus Group podcast, Sarah Longwell has thought long and hard about these questions. When she was a young conservative growing up in the ‘90s, she applauded Republicans who held then-President Bill Clinton to task for his moral failings.

“I was very attracted to the idea that character counted,” she tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “In the years post-Clinton, that idea of virtue or character really was animating for the right — at least in their rhetoric. So it was deeply shocking to me, when Donald Trump came on the scene, to see every Republican I knew, both personally and who I had admired from afar, fall in line.”

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Longwell’s new book, “How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time,” is a call for pro-democracy groups to unite and push back against authoritarianism. Her thesis is built upon hundreds of focus groups she’s conducted since President Trump was elected — with Republicans, Democrats, Independents and the politically homeless — where she’s heard voters say that character just isn’t the deal breaker that it used to be.

“But I do think for America to have a better moral line of what we’ll tolerate,” she says. “It will require a [candidate] to come in and — not pretend to be perfect — but they should lean hard into the idea that we can be better than this.”

Guest:

• Sarah Longwell is publisher of The Bulwark and host of The Focus Group podcast. Her new book, “How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time,” is already a New York Times bestseller.

Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts.

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MN Shortlist is the MPR News weekly roundup of arts and culture recommendations. This week’s picks include “The Secret Garden” at Stages Theatre in Hopkins, the inaugural Selby Days festival in St. Paul and more.

Lake Superior 20/20 Studio & Art Tour — Sept. 25-27

Fifty-nine artists will show their wares across 20 host sites on the North Shore, from art studios to farms and nurseries, for the 15th annual Lake Superior 20/20 Studio & Art Tour.

“Most of the artists involved in the tour are from the local community, and we do have some artists that are from out of state, but most of them are pretty local to the Two Harbors-Duluth area,” organizer and potter Paul Zoldahn told MPR News.

Lake Superior 20/20 Studio & Art Tour

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Maps are available online and in print at tour stops. Expect everything from handmade jewelry and clothing to paintings, blown glass and ceramics. In Two Harbors, look for the narrative Ojibwe illustrations of Carl Gawboy and the uniquely activist ceramics of pop-up artist Nathan Bray, hosted at the studio of Lisa Perrin-Kosmo, who creates dreamy paintings of nature and animals. (Alex V. Cipolle)

‘The Secret Garden’ at Stages Theatre in Hopkins — Sept. 25-Oct. 25

You likely know the basic idea of “The Secret Garden” without having read Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic 1911 novel: Spoiled Mary Lennox comes to live with her uncle on the moody English moors. There, she discovers her late aunt’s secret garden, and with the help of her cousin, a maid, and a gardener, brings new life to the garden and to the whole house.

Adaptations of the book have appeared in multiple films, plays and a 1991 Broadway musical. Stages Theatre in Hopkins opens the world premiere of an adaptation by Jeannine Coulombe Friday.

Director Anna Crace says this version focuses on the children in the story.

“Rereading it now in 2026, it just felt like this is a celebration of young people who are learning how to care about each other and learning how to take agency in their own lives and make their own choices, and that choice is to help others. To help other young people feels just kind of magical to me.”

Crace says the garden is written like a character in the show, and it comes to life on stage with the help of a puppeteered robin, flowers and other animals.

The 65-minute show is geared toward children ages 8 and up, largely because Mary is orphaned at the start of the story and is grieving her parents. Younger children are welcome at their parents’ discretion. (Emily Bright)

‘Merciless’: Indigenous Lands Since 1776’ exhibition in Minneapolis — Sept. 26-May 16

A new exhibition remembers and celebrates Indigenous resistance at the Weisman Art Museum. Through various mediums, including augmented reality, “‘Merciless’: Indigenous Lands Since 1776” invites visitors to reflect on the history of land and Indigenous people.

The title comes from a passage in the Declaration of Independence that refers to Indigenous people as “merciless Indian Savages,” said exhibition curator Kendra Greendeer.

Greendeer said highlighting Indigenous women artists — Natchez Beaulieu, Marlena Myles and Missy Whiteman — grounds the exhibition in traditional Indigenous values and teachings. Artworks are displayed both inside and outside of the museum.

“I really wanted to center on this connection of land and people that have encountered dominance and geographical restraint since 1776,” Greendeer told MPR News. “‘‘Merciless’: Indigenous Lands since 1776’ is really highlighting or calling attention to the contradictions of this term ‘merciless.’”

The Weisman Art Museum will hold a free and public opening festival on Sept. 26 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The exhibition itself will be on display through May 16, 2027. (Chandra Colvin)

Thirtieth anniversary of Franconia Sculpture Park in Shafer — Sept. 26

In 1996 in the St. Croix River Valley, a small group of artists started what would grow into an outdoor art museum with more than 100 large-scale sculptures dotting a grassy 50-acre site.

In the three decades since, Franconia Sculpture Park has hosted hundreds of local, national and international artists-in-residence to create the whimsical, conceptual and downright comical artworks that mark the landscape, from Chris Manzione’s optical rock that references the wildly painted camouflage warships of the early 20th century to Asako Nakauchi’s constellation sail honoring the tens of thousands of victims of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan.

Franconia at 30

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The free Franconia birthday party, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, will feature scavenger hunts, mural making, bouncy houses and a chance to meet the 2026 artists-in-residence as well as see newly installed sculptures.

Can’t make the festivities? The park is open 365 days a year. (Alex V. Cipolle)

Selby Days in St. Paul — Sept. 26

Selby Avenue in St. Paul is getting a new neighborhood festival this weekend. The inaugural Selby Days includes art, live music, food, local makers and more.

The festival takes place across three main spaces: Selby Grove will host live acoustic and electric music, community sing-alongs, line dancing and even a mechanical bull; Creative Hearts Yard will feature local artists, handmade goods and live art; while the Butterfly Grove offers a quieter space for poetry, photography, interactive art and wellness activities.

Selby Days runs from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday around Selby Avenue and Grotto Street in St. Paul. (Annie Russell)

‘Sky Poems: A poetry and flag-raising event’ in Minneapolis — Sept. 27

Minneapolis artist A.P. Looze has a history of taking textiles and turning them into handmade flags that build community and mark history, especially for the trans community.

On Sept. 27, Looze will gather three major Twin Cities poets — Danez Smith, Heid E. Erdrich and Junauda Petrus (the latter two being Minneapolis’ first and second poet laureates) — for “Sky Poems,” an event featuring poetry performances and flag-raisings that reflect on Minneapolis in the aftermath of Operation Metro Surge.

“I'm really proud to be presenting flags, short poems on flags with Danez Smith and Junauda Petrus,” poet Heid E. Erdrich told MPR News. “It's really the culmination of what I've been doing with poetry as public art.”

“The poem — I wrote it during the occupation,” Erdrich added. “It is an anti-ICE poem, and it has a swear word in it, but I pronounce it the way an old farmer would pronounce it.”

The event is free and runs 2-4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 27, at the Land Stewardship Project Flag Pole at 821 E. 35th St. Attendees are encouraged to bring blankets and lawn chairs. The flags will fly for about a month. (Alex V. Cipolle)

The Twin Cities Arab Film Fest opened Wednesday evening for its twentieth edition. This year’s theme is “Looking Forward, Looking Back,” which looks back at Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) filmmaking. It also looks at the films of past festivals.

Friday night, there will be a retrospective of short films from Lebanese filmmaker Hadi Moussally, whose work often explores the experience of being Arab and queer. Moussally left Lebanon in 2005 and now splits his time between France and Barcelona.

“Before I left, it was horrible,” Moussally told MPR’s All Things Considered. “There was some underground things happening, but [it was] horrible. But honestly, comparing it to other countries, [it’s] less [horrible]. I come from Tripoli, from north of Lebanon, and it's very traditional, conservative and everything, so I only had bad representation.”

“And it changed so much today,” he said of the social landscape in Lebanon. “For example, today there's so many drag shows [and] queer parties. I'm not going to say it's a perfect place to be, because everything is still in between. You can be yourself, but not really.”

Moussally says his experience — both in Lebanon and emigrating to France — informed his filmmaking journey.

“It’s more about loving yourself and who you are and not being ashamed of who you are, and be grateful for that instead of hiding it to please other people,” he said of trying to “integrate” when he moved to France. “Because at the end, people will judge you anyway. So do whatever you want, and be happy.”

Moussally’s retrospective will cover films made since 2020, when he became more of a presence in front of the camera as well as behind it. He says the big message he wants festival-goers to take away from his films is “representation.”

“That's very important to see that queer Arabs exist, because people don't think that we exist or we just like being oppressed all the time.”

“We need to remind people that we are Arab, we are queer and we are queer Arab, and we exist. This is very important. We need to show how we live, and we need to see how the other people are living to be able to coexist and find a better world that we can live in.”

Aside from Friday’s film retrospective, Moussally will host an event Saturday night as his queer drag queen persona, Salma Zahore.

If you’re looking for a new place to catch everything from local indie films to the old classics, a brand new 36-seat micro-cinema theater opened Thursday on the East Side of St. Paul.

The theater comes out of TriLingua Cinema, which has been running pop-up screenings for the last six years. It’s located in the same building as the East Side Freedom Library.

TriLingua Cinema executive director Sidney Pisano and board member Kazua Melissa Vang shared more about the theater on Minnesota Now.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

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.

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

A new take on ‘Death of a Salesman’

Girl Friday Productions is currently staging “Wife of a Salesman,” and Twin Cities actor Kathleen Winters says she can’t think of a better comeback to the local theater scene. Written by Eleanor Burgess, the play doesn’t name the salesman’s wife, who pays a visit to his Boston mistress, but the characters are written in clear reference to Arthur Miller’s famed play, “Death of a Salesman.” In his play, the two never meet, but Burgess uses the confrontation to explore hurt and healing, commitment and the way women define themselves. The show runs Thursdays through Sundays through Oct. 4 at the Gremlin Theatre in St. Paul. The show runs 90 minutes with no intermission.

Here’s Winters’ review:

“I hesitate to use superlatives for fear that people will think I'm exaggerating, but this show really is terrific in all respects. There are twists and developments that I'm not going to give away, but that are so clever and so engaging, you can't even blink.

The performances are just top-notch...genuine, grounded, relatable portrayals. Great costumes, great set, sound and lighting. There is at least one light cue that is so funny. I mean, honestly, you have to see it. Who makes a light cue funny? But this play and this designer do.”

Art and healing come together in Duluth

Kylee Pass of Duluth is a lover of arts and crafts and a former advocate for First Witness Child Advocacy Center. She recalls enjoying the first art exhibit the nonprofit coordinated in 2023, and she’s excited to see their new event this weekend, The HeART of Healing. The exhibit features work by 40 artists who answered a community call on that theme. It's a short-lived show at Zeitgeist Friday and Saturday. Pass says there will be live music and a chance to hear from some of the artists at 5 p.m. on Friday. She adds that all artworks are for sale, and artists were able to choose whether to keep the proceeds or to donate some (or all) of it to First Witness.

The HeART of Healing

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Pass said, “The biggest lesson that I learned in being an advocate is that folks don't receive justice from systems in the way that they think they do. Part of why I love art, specifically for folks moving through healing of any kind is it gives you the control back."

Jazz singer Bernadette Spray at Crooners

Anne Harrington has been following the work of jazz singer Bernadette Spray for years. Harrington admires Spray’s powerful voice and skill at scat singing. The two met when Spray was a child and Harrington worked in special education. Spray was diagnosed with autism at age 2. Now in her 20s with a degree in musical education, Spray will perform on Saturday, Sept. 26 at Crooners Supper Club in Minneapolis from 8-9:30 p.m.

Harrington said, “She's been performing around the Twin Cities for some time through a grant that she received to help promote awareness and acceptance of people with autism, and this will be the first time she's doing it to make a living rather than donating the proceeds to nonprofit organizations through the grant.”

“RuPaul’s Drag Race” season 8 winner Caldwell Tidicue, better known as Bob the Drag Queen, will perform at the Fitzgerald Theater on Friday for his “Now Clap!” comedy tour. The artist and producer says this show will be more personal that his previous comedy shows.

“I talk a lot about the state of the world that we're living in, but I also get really personal talking about my life, talking about, through a humorous way, obviously, what it's like to grieve and also do comedy,” Tidicue said. He has talked openly about his mother’s death in 2024.

The drag star is now an internationally renowned actor, author and comedian, but Tidicue credits his professional start to the Twin Cities.

“I was a young actor at my first ever professional acting gig, so I was living the dream. Shout out to CLIMB Theatre if you're still around,” he said. (Yes, the theater is still active). “Minnesota was my first ever professional acting gig.”

The summer after his freshman year of college in Georgia, Tidicue moved to South St. Paul for nine months to work with the theater in Inver Grove Heights.

“I like to brag that I had a 651 number for a very long time.”

Tidicue said while much of his time in Minnesota was shadowed by struggles with alcoholism, he has fond memories going to the Mall of America and LGBTQ+ bars and clubs.

“I used to go to the Gay 90s, which is the gay bar out there, and on college nights when they would have 21-under nights, and the Saloon,” he said. “The Saloon used to have go-go dancers in the showers. I was like 19 from Columbus, Ga. So I was like, oh Lord have mercy! This is crazy!”

The Twin Cities is one of the first stops on the tour and Tidicue says he’s always excited to come back.

“My perception of Minneapolis has changed a lot. Now I think a lot about drag icons like BeBe Zahara Benet, Manila Luzon who have come through the Minneapolis scene, and so I've been able to really reshape what Minneapolis is for me from like a teenage children's theater actor to now a stand-up comedian.”

Tickets to his show range from about $46 to $83.

More than 50 years after the release of Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks,” a document featuring hand-written working lyrics for two songs went up for auction.

In 1974, Ellen Ziffren, then a 24-year-old, spent time at Dylan’s Minnesota farm as he worked on the seminal album. She also was present as he recorded “Blood on the Tracks” in New York.

“I was cleaning things out, and I opened this box, and in that box was this folder, and in that folder were a number of things that I had kept from 1974 pertaining to the time that I spent being involved with ‘Blood on the Tracks,’” Ziffren said on MPR’s All things Considered.

The lyrics sheet features the songs “You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” and “Idiot Wind.” The lot also includes drawings from Dylan done during studio downtime.

“There was one very funny little drawing that he and I did together, and that's in the auction,” Ziffren said. “And then he drew me, which I was not aware of him doing when I was drying my hair one day, and he did a little drawing of me. And then wrote a two-line thing called ‘Blues in E for Ellen,’ and it was just two silly lines.”

The auction closes Thursday and is already at more than $200,000.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Say you've written a book. Congratulations! Now begins the long process of trying to get it published. While you are sending out your work and waiting — and waiting — for that elusive “yes,” what do you do?

For Carolyn Williams-Noren, the frustrating process inspired her to start sharing her work without waiting for permission.

Williams-Noren began by following the path most poets take to finding a traditional publisher. She sent her manuscript to poetry contests and to open reading periods for various publishers, waiting months to hear back from each.

“I started to really crave just being able to share work more immediately. I started to actually take inspiration from cooking dinner, like during this period of extreme discouragement with being able to ever share or publish poetry publicly, I realized that I had actually been sort of cooking dinner for my family almost every night for a couple of decades, and that there was sort of no internal drama about that.”

She started making comics: illustrated favorite recipes, sprinkled with comments and anecdotes. She emailed them to friends, and the feedback was great. The email list grew, and so did the stack of comics. She took a workshop on riso printing and started to think about printing her own zine.

Then, about a year ago, Williams-Noren got the call. Her poetry collection had won the Wick Poetry Center's nationwide first book contest, judged by preeminent poet and podcaster Pádraig Ó Tuama. Kent State University Press wanted to publish her collection. She was thrilled.

The book is called “Oil Courses,” and it came out earlier this month. Here’s how she describes the work:

“It is inspired by my experience growing up in Alaska with a dad who worked in the oil industry, and it kind of comes out of my lifelong, really deep understanding of how reliant we are on oil, and also of the harm that extracting and using fossil fuels can do.”

She also kept pursuing that zine, which she titled “This is Good.” Picture a staple-bound mini book with a homey, handmade look, printed in blue ink. It’s the first in a series.

“I bought the paper, so I'm in,” she said, laughing. “I have enough comics made to make four issues, and I'm planning to do four over the next year and do them quarterly."

It's a tale of two Creations: poetry collection on a weighty topic from a university press and a self-published zine that includes her favorite recipe for chicken noodle soup. But Williams-Noren says she's so proud of both.

“The publication of the poetry book is an honor. The making of the zine is fun and exciting, and I’m really not willing to say that one is more valuable or more important than the other. They both have their place in my creative practice right now.”

And she hopes her work inspires readers to create.

Williams-Noren is holding launch event for both books on Sept. 24 at 6:30 p.m. at The Toolbox Collective in Minneapolis.

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Tattoos can mark a memory, honor someone we love, express something about who we are — or simply be a piece of art we like enough to put on our bodies. But choosing something permanent can bring up questions about meaning, regret and how others might see us.

MPR News host Angela Davis talks with a sociologist who studies tattoo culture and a St. Paul tattoo artist about why people get tattoos, what they mean to us and how attitudes towards tattoos are changing.

Guests:

• Jordanne Le Fae is a tattoo artist and co-owner of Weird Ink Society, a tattoo shop in St. Paul that focuses on creating a welcoming environment for clients.

• David Lane is a criminal justice professor and sociologist at Illinois State University. Part of his research focuses on tattooing, tattoo culture and the social world of tattoo artists. He is also the author of “The Other End of the Needle: Continuity and Change among Tattoo Workers.”

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.    

Did you ever read the “Baby-Sitter's Club” books? Who was your favorite character?

That series by Ann M. Martin is now 40 years old, and it keeps on ticking, having spun off into graphic novels, a Netflix series and even a musical in development, with music by the composer of “KPop Demon Hunters.”

To mark the milestone anniversary, Scholastic is releasing 15 expanded "Super Special" books, which are longer and feature the voices of the whole club.

The first, released Sept. 15, is "Baby-Sitters on Board," a graphic novel adapted and illustrated by Raina Telgemeier and Gale Galligan. Today’s young “Baby-Sitters Club” readers may recognize Telgemeier for her own bestselling graphic novels, including "Smile," "Guts" and “Sisters,” among others.

Emily Regnier of Cherry Street Books in Alexandria, Minn., expects the new "Super Specials" to be a big draw for readers. She says the new book feels updated for today while still leaning on the characters and situations readers love.

In this book, the whole club flies to Florida, takes a cruise to the Bahamas and returns for adventures at an amusement park. Each character has a predicament to work through, ranging from awkward run-ins with fellow passengers to new crushes and babysitting triplets on board.

Duncan Sheik, the Tony- and Grammy-winning singer-songwriter who crafted the music for “Spring Awakening,” has died. He was 56.

Sheik died Thursday night, according to a post on his Instagram page. “The world has a lost a singular talent, and deeply influential voice in music and theater,” the post reads. “His musical legacy will continue to inspire generations to come.”

Sheik had been best known for his lasting radio hit “Barely Breathing” when he turned his sights on Broadway with “Spring Awakening,” resulting in the envelope-pushing show that musicalized teenage angst.

“With the exception of our director, we are all kind of Broadway outsiders. We wanted to shake things up a bit. And we just set out to make this really cool piece of theater,” Sheik told The Associated Press in 2007, as the show swept Tony nominations.

Sheik also tackled musicals based on “American Psycho” and “Alice in Wonderland,” and “Barely Breathing” spent 55 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 16. But he was probably best known for “Spring Awakening,” which ran for over 860 performances on Broadway starting in 2006.

“His deep feeling and his delight gave us so much beauty,” playwright and actor Eisa Davis wrote. “Duncan, thank you for your friendship and for the sublime music.”

‘Spring Awakening’ roused a new side of Sheik — and Broadway

The musical — adapted from a 19th-century play by German playwright Frank Wedekind, with music by Sheik and lyrics by playwright Steven Sater — is frank in its portrayals of incest, abortion and suicide. It's intended partly as a warning that teens need good information about sex to avoid tragic mistakes.

“I don’t mean to be disrespectful to more traditional theater composers,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2015. “I love Stephen Sondheim. But it’s my mission to make sure that the theater is paying attention to what the rest of the world is listening to.”

Sheik and Sater were practicing Buddhists who met while chanting. They were collaborating on Sheik's third album, “Phantom Moon,” when Sater mentioned he was working on a new production. Neither had written a musical before.

“I said to Steven, ‘I’m happy to do this musical, but I only want to do it if the music in the play is the kind that I and my peers can get behind stylistically and relate to and enjoy,’” Sheik told the AP in 2006.

They made a pact: They'd retain the provincial, 19th-century Germany setting but with, as Sater put it, “the characters breaking into pop-contemporary when they sing.”

“Spring Awakening” won eight Tony Awards, including best musical, as well as the Grammy for best musical show album.

“Sheik’s music, spare in its simple orchestrations, lush in the lapping reach of its seductive choruses, embodies the shadowy air of longing that infuses the show, the excitement shading into fear, the joy that comes with a chaser of despair,” The New York Times said in its review.

The show is beloved in the musical theater community for breaking ground in staging and content, alongside the likes of “Rent” and “Hamilton.” It returned to Broadway in 2015 in a well-received production by Deaf West Theatre. An off-Broadway version is slated to open this fall, as is his musical “Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen,” based on Moyoco Anno’s manga of the same name.

The cast of the original show was loaded with breakthrough actors like Jonathan Groff, Lea Michele, Lilli Cooper, Jennifer Damiano, Gideon Glick, John Gallagher Jr., Lauren Pritchard and Krysta Rodriguez, who have each gone on to fame in TV, film and stage. Groff would go on to earn a Tony with “Merrily We Roll Along,” and Michele became a superstar with “Glee.”

Sheik blended musical theater with pop music

Sheik next channeled the music he heard getting past the velvet ropes of trendy, late-1980s Manhattan clubs for a Broadway adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel “American Psycho.”

The 1991 novel — later made into a 2000 movie starring Christian Bale — chronicles a homicidal New York yuppie named Patrick Bateman who is obsessed with high-end clothes and beauty products even as he slashes his way through Manhattan. Sheik, who also supplied lyrics, recalled only getting halfway through the book before throwing it across the room as a Brown University student.

For one standout song, “You Are What You Wear,” he reached out to old girlfriends to ask a question: What were you really into wearing in the late ’80s? He put the answers in the tune about high fashion: “Chanel, Gaultier, or Giorgio Armani/Moschino, Alaïa, or Norma Kamali/Should I rock/The Betsey Johnson/Or stick with classic/Comme des Garçons?”

“Duncan is really a genius and an intellectual and brings something both uniquely his but importantly of this period to the stage,” producer Jesse Singer told the AP at the time.

Because Bateman, played onstage by Benjamin Walker, fancies himself a bit of a music critic — spewing mostly inane ruminations about Phil Collins and Huey Lewis and the News — Sheik also peppered his score with sly reworkings of “In the Air Tonight” and “Hip to Be Square.”

“There’s definitely an art to be able to write a song that on one level is a pop song and one that also has to tell a story and keep an audience engaged in terms of a larger narrative arc,” Sheik told the AP in 2013. “When you’re writing a song for the theater, it has to accomplish all this other stuff. It has to work in tandem with all these other agendas and creative impulses.”

The show, directed by Rupert Goold and with a story by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, made its premiere in 2013 in London. On Broadway in 2016, it bombed, lasting less than 90 performances.

“We were all sort of worried that it might be too violent for people and it might seem too misogynist,” Sheik told the AP on the eve of the opening. “But, in fact, the truth is this piece is a critique of a certain way of thinking about things. So in truth it’s better to go all-in.”

‘Barely Breathing’ was nominated for a Grammy

Growing up between South Carolina and New Jersey, Sheik learned guitar as a child and got his first synthesizer when he was 12. He was heavily influenced by Talk Talk, David Sylvian and Nick Drake. His self-titled debut album was released in 1996 and Rolling Stone gave it a four-star review, calling it “a defiant debut — beautiful and benevolent of spirit.”

“Barely Breathing,” from that album, was nominated for best pop vocal performance in 1998 and would be kept alive on TV shows like “Glee” and “Girls.”

Other projects include “Whisper House,” an album and musical — a ghost story that ran in 2010 at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego — and “Legerdemain,” an album that explored the tension between art and commerce. His most recent album was 2022's “Claptrap.”

But for someone who had once been a total stranger to Broadway, he told AP in 2016 that he had a sense of mission.

“I feel like it’s become my project to kind of drag different people who might not normally go to musical theater pieces to come see a piece of musical theater,” he said.

He is survived by his parents; his wife, Nora Ariffin; and a daughter, Ines.

Mark Dayton held a career in public service in Minnesota that spanned five decades.

He is well known for serving two terms the state’s governor, leaving office in 2019. Before that, Dayton’s career included stints as a state agency official, state auditor and U.S. senator.

Dayton talked with MPR News politics editor Brian Bakst to reflect on his career and discuss his new memoir, titled "Perseverance." In this conversation, Dayton recounts his personal challenges and his time as governor. He also revisits his call to increase taxes on the wealthiest Minnesotans — a campaign promise he fulfilled— and his role in legalizing gay marriage in the state.

Also on this episode: election season is underway in Minnesota. On the ticket is an open governor’s race, an open U.S. Senate seat and the full state legislature. Both of the state's major party chairs join the conversation to share their political lay of the land as voting begins.

Guests:

• Mark Dayton served as the 40th governor of Minnesota. He also served as U.S. senator and Minnesota state auditor.

• Alex Plechash is chair of the Minnesota Republican Party.

• Richard Carlbom is chair of the Minnesota DFL Party.

• Dana Ferguson is a politics correspondent for MPR News.

• Peter Cox is a senior politics reporter for MPR News.

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